Fucking damn it, Susan Sarandon. Ok, vulgarity out of system (temporarily), but seriously, damn it. Earlier this week, the venerated actress and well-known liberal advocate appeared on MSNBC for an interview with Chris Hayes, and insinuated that if Bernie Sanders doesn't get the Democratic nod for the Presidential election she would consider voting for Trump rather than Hillary. Within days she attempted to renege on that suggestion via twitter (presumably out of shame and hindsight), but her response of "I don't know, I'm gonna see what happens" when asked by Hayes if she personally would vote that way was already out there, reaching a larger audience than does her twitter, and causing the kind of damage that only a celebrity political endorsement can. As an observer of political discourse, I try to see the issues from both sides; understanding that views differing from your own are valid and arise from experiencing the world differently is not only an exercise in humility but also the only way to convert others to agreeing with your view. But on a personal level, I am pretty effing liberal. I agree personally with Susan Sarandon on a number of issues about which she has been vocal, but I have to call her out here not just for being irresponsible--as many have already done--but for being plain wrong. Not morally wrong, factually wrong.
First, let's consider her reasoning for supporting Bernie. As she says, Sanders is the only "candidate who makes decisions whose judgement turns out to be true but who does it at a time when it's not popular." Bernie is a progressive candidate, in many ways he is the most progressive. But it's not up to you (or anyone) to decide that the liberal view of social issues is "true." There are plenty of people who would disagree with the progressive stance and even though I'm not one of them, I can't say that what I think is the truth and what they think is false. More important, though, is the fact that Bernie is not quite as historically progressive as his supporters would like to claim he is. For an easy starter, there's his voting record on gay marriage. Bernie has never voted against gay marriage, and he opposed DOMA from the get, true, but that wasn't because he was always so forward-thinking about the rights of the LGBT community. It was because he felt the law interfered with states' rights to decide on the matter individually. As popular Vermontian Peter Freyne wrote, “Obtaining Congressman Bernie Sanders’ position on the gay marriage issue was like pulling teeth … from a rhinoceros." Sanders did come out (so to speak) for gay marriage a few years earlier than Hillary did, but that doesn't mean we can pretend he was that supportive when it was "not popular" as Ms. Sarandon said.
Gay marriage is not the only issue, by the way, on which Senator Sanders has not always had the most praise-worthy (to a liberal) position. While Bernie has not so subtly called out HRC for claiming to be progressive while having voted for the invasion of Iraq, his opponent was correct to point out that Sanders voted "against the Brady Bill five times." This "The Week" article from February of this year does a great job at pointing out the inconsistencies with progressivism in Bernie's voting record. On issues of gun control, criminal justice reform, and foreign policy, his rhetoric of necessary change doesn't quite align with his Senatorial voting record. 'It's super unprogressive to support the Iraq War, but I'll repeatedly vote to finance it. The armored vehicles found in police departments like Ferguson's are a mechanism of an institutionally racist criminal justice system which must be stopped, but I voted against a law that would have outlawed them.' For somebody whose platform is exclusively being the ever-progressive, these are pretty major issues.
Even above the discrepancies in actual governing issues, the most ridiculous part of the Chris Hayes interview has to be Sarandon's remark that Sanders "has no ego in this thing." A politician. With no ego. So, a person saying 'I think the country should be like this and I need your vote because I'm the person to achieve that goal' has no ego? Does she just not know what ego is? It's a pretty necessary component of becoming a politician. Even fellow mega-famous actor (& self-proclaimed Bernie lover) George Clooney concedes that to be in politics one needs a "tremendous amount of ego." To me, one definitive sign of an inflated ego is the practice of suggesting somebody else is wrong or flawed for doing or saying things that you've done or said yourself. Like, for example, in the Democratic debate just a few short weeks ago, when Bernie trivialized HRC's apparently overly complicated answer on fracking. "My answer is a lot shorter," he said, "No I do not support fracking." Well I'm glad Sanders was able to give such a cut and dried answer on that matter, but people like Peter Freyne will recall that this simplicity wasn't always your political MO (and personally, for this liberal, gay marriage is a much simpler issue than fracking). I am by no means saying Bernie is a bad guy or doesn't have solid interests at heart; I absolutely think he does and that he's about as sincere as a politician can be. I'm just saying it's ridiculous to portray anyone with their eye on the Presidency as some white knight with "no ego."
It'd be stupid for anyone to cast their Presidential vote based on celebrity advice, but somebody as long-term famous as Susan Sarandon knows her words do carry influence. She's a smart person, and I agree with her about a great deal, but in no effing way would a Trump Presidency "bring the revolution immediately," and neither would Sanders taking office. Because that's just not how it works. The US is not a country poised for revolution, and simply changing who occupies a seat in our existing political structure is not what a revolution is. We have a Constitution, for a plethora of reasons, and one of them is to check the power of our highest office. So, in reality, for someone as financially well-off as Susan Sarandon, whoever gets elected this November won't affect your personal life that significantly. But it will affect the daily lives of a lot of other people, and frankly, it's pretty fucked up that you'd be willing to risk the security of immigrants, Muslims, and the women's rights you've previously championed and which would come under threat from a President Trump to prove an ideological point.
No comments:
Post a Comment