A Warning for Hollywood on Election Day No Matter How It Turns Out

I predicted Trump would win in 2016 and won $100. In 2020, I can’t remember what I predicted but I think believed Trump would win. Now, I still can’t predict. It’s a very tight election, and it could go either way. The one thing I know for sure is that these aren’t two equal sides. One side has all of the power and the other side represents a challenge to that power.

The bigger problem is that the side with all of the power believes they are under an existential threat by the other half of America. They believe it is a fight for WHO they are not what they believe. They believe this across the board. The LGBTQIA community believes they are under threat because the Right is not okay with “gender affirming care” on minors. On the left they believe if you don’t believe that it is an existential threat to who they are.

They believe that women should prioritize abortion and that anyone who believes the baby should have a right to life is threatening WHO they are, not what they believe.

In situations like this, and it’s happened three times in our history — all were called “Fourth Turnings” — the side with the power becomes fascist-like in order to preserve WHO they are and banish those who are not like them. We used to be able to get along as a country, even with our political differences.

But three times in the past — the Civil War, the Cold War and now, we were citizen against citizen. In the South, after the Civil War, the white southernors believed they were under an existential threat by the freeing of the slaves. Mass hysteria ensued after years of fanning the flames of fear such that the only way they could feel “safe” was with segregation and all manner of crimes against humanity. That is the worst of the three examples by far.

A lesser example was the Cold War which happened after the country had come together to fight in World War II. The FBI and the CIA, in their efforts to go to war with the Russians, had to win hearts and minds in America that there was an American way of life that was threatened by Communists (Civil Rights often went hand in hand with Communism, as did Jewish people). They turned neighbor against neighbor, they ruined careers overnight with one accusation and they banished anyone who wasn’t one of them.

The Twilight Zone did a beautiful job of depicting this mindset in The Monsters are Due on Maple Street.

In all three of these instances, culture and government had to be fused as one. How else to enact and demand total compliance and conformity? The American left of today has decided that half of the country is not like them and thus, doesn’t belong. It has nothng to do with what people believe. I could be pro-choice and pro-gay and it wouldn’t make a difference. I am now in the “not like them” pile and thus, just being my friend publicly is a brave act.

What is accepted are those who don’t just obey the rules of utopia but fight for them like a good soldier. They say on social media that they are fighting for WHO they are, not what they believe.

So what all of this has led to is a much less free America and Hollywood. The fight to preserve who they ARE has become an oppressive, fascist-like force throughout American culture and unfortunately, it’s killing Hollywood.

It should never be that someone like me, who made a joke on Twitter and is voting for the wrong person (Trump) should have all of my advertising disappear overnight, some screening invites, perks, etc. It should never be this way for anyone in this country but especially not Hollywood. This isn’t about me. If I wanted what those in Penske media have, all I had to do was keep my mouth shut and be a good conformist. But I didn’t, and so here we are. But I am grateful that I’m not being put in jail or hanged in the town square, so there’s that.

I have no idea who is going to win. It’s an incredibly close election and I imagine that people who believe they are under an existential threat will do anything — like push out a duly elected president and install his vice-president and then cosplay “making history.” It means George Clooney writing an op-ed in the New York Times. It means John Oliver, Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert must beg people to help preserve WHO THEY ARE, not what they believe.

To believe in democracy means you must accept that you share a big country with people who aren’t like you and don’t believe what you believe. This is why utopias become dystopias – they have no choice but to become more authoritarian to preserve the ideal.

As I’ve said before, a Trump win would help move things along by puncturing the mass delusion that WHO THEY ARE is under threat. It is that collective fear, that desire to name names, to accuse and out your fellow Americans as thought-criminals that is wrong. It’s just Hollywood doesn’t realize it yet. They think just win this one election and we’ll all be okay, we’ll all be safe. But it isn’t the threat of Trump that is the problem for them. It is that what they have built is not sustainable.

Here are some lessons for Hollywood to navigate this moment

Celebrities are fading

They don’t seem to realize it yet, and it’s a hard thing to watch all of that former glory slip away, but it has slipped away. It is made worse by the politics. I know I am one to talk but I’m not in the position they are. They didn’t have their income stripped because of their ideology. They’ve become uninteresting to the public, just as the movies Hollywood puts out have become uninteresting.

I’ve seen people use international box office numbers to attempt to paint a more positive picture on what is happening in Hollywood but I think that is kind of cheating. I suppose Hollywood could remain an export but that just means less culture for us here in America. We need culture. I get that to the Left, “woke” ideology is their new religion. So a Kamala Harris win is, for them, a way to prop up what they wish to reflect.

The problem is that government and culture are aligned like they were during the Cold War and probably the post-Civil War South and all of Hollywood, quite frankly. Yes, it was racism without a doubt, but it was also rooted in fear and hysteria after the slaves were freed. This idea of preserving WHO YOU ARE is what often drives that kind of propaganda to uplift one kind of American. In that case, back then, it was the WASP.

Now it’s reversed itself. It’s the WASP that, according to the Left, is “dangerous” because Barack Obama is still the leader of the Left, American culture and the Democratic Party. Trump threatened him and thus threatened the empire.

I will not be surprised if Kamala Harris wins that they don’t build some kind of detention centers or re-education camps or some such in order to really separate the “good” Americans from the “bad” Americans. Harris says she won’t do that but how can she not when all are in support of it?

You might not know what it feels like unless you’ve become an “other” in our culture as I have. It is surreal, I can tell you that. It’s not like anything I could have ever imagined. But it helps when I understand that, to them, this is existential.  In that case, anything is justified.

Politics is Killing Hollywood

When you have an alignment of government and culture as we do now and as we had in the 1950s during the Cold War, art becomes suffocating and stagnate. It’s not a surprise that there was a crisis at the box office in the 1950s too. Television could give people what they got at the movies (just like now) because it, too, was regulated by the government and the Hays Code and it, too, had to reflect the same “safe” ideology—just like now.

So what happened? Foreign films happened. They were so exciting people went out to see them in movie theaters. That forced Hollywood to loosen its grip and offer people something they can’t get at home. So far, we don’t have realization yet. Not even close. In fact, we have Hollywood absolutely doubling down on this idea that there is a wall between them and “us.” And by “us,” I mean anyone not fully on board with the new religion.

And the bigger problem is that they don’t listen to the box office anymore because they don’t really care what the people think anymore. They are fine with “international” voters because, perhaps, they seem them as more ideologically aligned than the majority in this country.

And the even bigger problem is that, in so doing, they rob our country of culture that everyone needs.

I was thinking about a few movies today. One is Breaking Away, the film about working class kids in Indiana whose lives are going nowhere and who win a bike ride against all odds.

Now imagine you’re someone stuck in the sticks and you see this movie. Might it not give you hope? Of course it would. But today’s Hollywood would never make Breaking Away because everything is about power as it relates to race and gender. So to them, they would see it as a movie about white men, so who cares? And, unfortunately, white people are still the majority, and yet they are underrepresented in Hollywood because they all need to project the image of “goodness” and intersectionality.

That is why the Kamala Harris presidency matters to so many of them and why it was a good move for the oligarchy. They know that their voters need to FEEL like they are doing something that matters to WHO THEY ARE. That was harder with an old white guy like Biden. So now you have someone like Kyle Buchanan reflecting the themes of Conclave, which very much mirror what the Democrats want you to think the election is really about (identity):

And when you see Conclave, you’ll understand why. That very much reflects Hollywood of today. It is existential to them. It is WHO they ARE rather than what they believe.

At the same time, it is such a narrow scope of a shrinking minority ruling class that there is no road back to what Hollywood used to be as long as they adhere to this separation between church (them) and state (all of us).

I don’t know who is going to win. I know that the firehose of hate against me hasn’t stopped for four years and won’t stop after this. If Harris wins, they’ll want to drive in the spike to make people like me suffer because that is also who they are. I won’t do that to them if Trump wins, however. I care too much about most of them (not all of them).

My suggestion is to stay off the internet if your side loses. Spend some time cleaning, doing laundry, or taking a walk. It will be fine either way. This is not a threat against WHO YOU ARE, I promise. It is simply an election. Don’t let the fearmongers make you more crazy than we all already are.