Tim Robbins Does What No One Else in Hollywood Has the Courage To Do

The headlines covering Tim Robbins’ tweet all say he “slammed” conspiracy theorists for comparing his movie to the assassination attempt of former President (and current frontrunner for the presidency) Donald Trump. Apparently, soulless freaks online are comparing the shooting to his film Bob Roberts. He took to Twitter to deliver an important message. He has me blocked on Twitter from the old days when I was a Hillary Clinton fanatic. I would love for him to unblock me (if reading this, my Twitter is @awardsdaily).

What shocked me about this is that no one in Hollywood who is in the “in group” has the nerve to say anything like this. The closest you get is Bill Maher who continues to even have Republicans on his show, Real Time, and those who have been chewed up and spit out by the New Puritans on his Club Random show, most recently Armie Hammer.

Here is the tweet:

“Get over your blind hatred of these people. They are fellow Americans. This collective hatred is killing our souls and consuming whatever is left of our humanity.”

Wow. Four years ago, I felt I had no choice but to escape my insular bubble and get to know the people we’d all been conditioned to hate and dehumanize. I didn’t just discover that all of that hatred was misplaced; I realized we have two separate realities in this country. When you are on one side or the other, you believe that’s the right or correct. But you can only understand this moment if you can macro out and see both sides, clearly and humanely.

The hatred aimed at Trump is unlike anything I’ve ever seen in my lifetime, and much of that can be laid at the feet of the legacy press that uses Trump hate to sell their stories. It’s as simple as that. But people on social media are also feeding the beast for their own reasons. They are united in hate. I understand political differences. I understand why Trump drives people crazy. I don’t understand the level of escalating attempts to destroy him. It’s backfiring anyway.

The assassination attempt on Trump was horrifying. It should have been a moment that brought us together as a nation. But people on the Left now are locked into a fear bunker and they’ll never come out of it. The only hope for this country is if more voices rise up outside that bubble and start to tell the stories they won’t tell.

Trump is the line that people on the Left are not allowed to cross. Many consider anyone on the other side a sworn enemy. This doesn’t go both ways. This isn’t a case of “both sides.” One side with all of the power hates the other side with none of the power. It doesn’t really matter if people on the Right hate the Left. They don’t have the power to marginalize or exile them in any way that matters. By contrast, the Left behaves like Trump supporters should not be allowed to participate in American life. It’s chilling.

I crossed the Trump line and, frankly, the people on that side are nicer. They still have a sense of humor. And that counts for a lot. Maybe that’s the proble with the Left. Humor has been eliminated and everyone has lost their minds.

Ah, Bob Roberts, from a time when there was something left of the Left that wasn’t obsessed with all things Trump. I miss those days. But Bob Roberts is like the movie Civil War. It’s the fever dream of the Left of what Trump World is like, but it’s not really what it’s like because almost no one in Hollywood has any clue. When Aaron Sorkin writes his follow-up to the social network, it will be like Civil War or Bob Roberts, not like Bob Roberts was made about Trump. It’s a funny, clever political satire from 1992. That came out of the Reagan era and into the Bill Clinton era. The Left back then was still subversive in its storytelling. They hated Conservative Republicans. Bob Roberts is 100% how the Left sees Trump. But it isn’t really what defines nor drives the Trump movement.