Just how much do many Hollywood liberals hate conservatives?
In an interview with Playboy, Ben Affleck said, "When I watch a guy [on film] I know is a big Republican, part of me thinks, I probably wouldn’t like this person if I met him":
PLAYBOY: You developed a political profile campaigning for presidential candidates Al Gore, John Kerry and Barack Obama. How did that come about?
AFFLECK: I grew up in a house with a mother who was a teacher and a Freedom Rider—very left-wing Democrats living in a heterogeneous working-class neighborhood. I picked up a lot of those values there, and I brought them with me when I showed up in Hollywood. In 2000 the Gore campaign said, “Hey, would you come do this with us?” And I did. I thought I had a responsibility, so I campaigned for Gore. Kerry was a Boston guy, and I felt an organic connection. And then Obama in 2008. Over time I became disillusioned, mostly with the pernicious effect of money in politics. I realized it was about raising $56,000 through a couple of dinners and those bundlers who bring in $1 million or $2 million. Those people are dedicated, and they believe in what they’re doing. I believe in why many of them are doing it. What I don’t believe in is that we now have the need to do it. And for me personally, it started to feel gross.
PLAYBOY: What part?
AFFLECK: Being used as a prop to schmooze people and try to milk the teat of the donor for money. We’d do it sparingly. Matt and I did a thing for Elizabeth Warren, whom we like and who won. We did a fund-raiser for Cory Booker, whom we also like. People now know me as a Democrat, and that will always be the case to some extent.
PLAYBOY: Does that polarize viewers?
AFFLECK: It does, and you can bifurcate your audience. When I watch a guy I know is a big Republican, part of me thinks, I probably wouldn’t like this person if I met him, or we would have different opinions. That shit fogs the mind when you should be paying attention and be swept into the illusion.
PLAYBOY: Still, won’t that happen whether you take positions on candidates or causes?
AFFLECK: I have misgivings about it, counterbalanced with the larger things I care about. I don’t blindly do this stuff when it makes it harder to do my own job. And there’s an awful lot of gross money-raising going on that has made me want to pull back a bit from pure electoral politics. [...]
PLAYBOY: Will you campaign for Hillary Clinton in 2016?
AFFLECK: I haven’t abandoned it, but I look at working in politics again with a more jaundiced eye. Hillary does excite me, in the same way the potent symbolism of the first African American president was what thrilled people about Obama. It’s similar with Hillary and gender equality. The idea that 100 years after women got the right to vote, to have a woman president would be exciting.
Imagine not liking someone just because you don't agree with his or her political views.
Yet this is where the Left is in our nation today: openly hostile to everyone they disagree with.
Sadly, this does indeed permeate the media and end up being disseminated by it.
The more folks such as Affleck, people on MSNBC, and newspaper editorial boards condemn Republicans for merely having a different political viewpoint, the more divided the nation becomes.
Ironically, these same people complain about this division as well as the caustic tone of today's politics without any awareness that they're the ones responsible for it.
Convenient, isn't it?
