The Trump Line, and a Quick Note to New Subscribers

People sometimes find this Substack because I wrote about the film industry somewhere. While I often use films of the past to make specific points, this Substack isn’t exactly about film or the Oscars. I do more of that writing over at my website, AwardsDaily.com.

Because we live in such a polarized society and the Left in particular, has lost its mind (I think), I feel it necessary, every so often, to be clear about what this Substack is and what it isn’t.

I started this Substack to escape the grip of the Left. There is no other way to say it. I was part of the blue-check brigade on Twitter through Obama, Hillary Clinton, and eventually Joe Biden. I fought alongside them as a devoted warrior, wasting precious time battling Bernie and Trump supporters. Time none of us has, certainly not me.

The industry I work in, Hollywood is the same organism as the Democratic Party. Like nearly every aspect of our culture the Left controls, they have been sucked into a fundamentalist cult. The only way to find anything worthwhile anymore to crawl out of their fear bunker and experience life outside of it.

I have always been more comfortable as an outsider among the discarded people. I was a drama geek in high school, but mainly because the “drama club” was a catch-all for the misfits and the outsiders. Our culture online, driven by social media hiveminds, has become like high school — worse, like 1984.

But you should be warned, any of you who come from the Left or the Never Trump sphere, that this Substack is welcoming to Trump supporters. And Trump himself. I do not join my friends and family in their Trump pathology. This comes from my own personal experience of getting to know him and his world to figure out what was true and what wasn’t.

But doing that was like trying to explain to the people of Salem that those girls freaking out about Goody Proctor flying at night to bite them while they slept was the rantings of people caught up in mass hysteria. The Rob Reiner freaks-outs on a daily basis are about a phantom that doesn’t exist.

What Reiner doesn’t do, what he’ll never do, is look at the other side for a minute. He is too invested in, and too consumed by, his pathological hatred of Trump. This is what I escaped. I can’t be a part of one group systematically dehumanizing another through ignorance, media, and algorithm manipulation.

I can’t not tell the truth I know, or the truth I chase. I can’t cower in fear of screeching banshees like Rob Reiner.

I know Twitter does weird things to our brains. The dopamine hits he must get from sitting around his insular bubble of wealth with nothing to do and no singular purpose in life drives him to get those likes and RTs. I understand he needs to feel that power - I used to be like him. I used to crave that kind of validation too. It made me feel important.

But it’s an illusion.

Those who pretend to believe in Democracy don’t actually. They never accepted that Democracy got Trump elected. They hate it that Democracy means his supporters have a voice and the same rights as they do. They hate it that Trump might get the nomination again and win again. They can’t abide that voters might choose Trump instead.

The best way to stop Trump is to offer something better. Instead, the Left is destroying everything that matters. EVERYTHING. From film to comedy to science, journalism, art to history. The only reason they’re in power at all is because of Trump. He is their Golden Goose.

They want him around so they can keep up with their ‘extreme MAGA Republicans’ to scare voters to the polls. Otherwise, voters must deal with the bland bowl of oatmeal that is not just Joe Biden but all of their candidates. ALL OF THEM. Even AOC. They all must go along to get along, as one does in a cult.

I was listening to a Quillette podcast recently. They were reporting on Dave Rubin, and how he went to the “dark side,” meaning he was now someone on what they call the “far right.” That just means, to me, he’s a populist. When I was having a hard time in 2020 wanting to leave the Left, I found Don’t Burn This Book: Thinking for Yourself in an Age of Unreason, and honestly, it was, to me, a revelation. It was an oasis of sanity from insanity.

Yet, to them, supposedly heterodox folks, his ultimate fate has been deemed “tragic,” as I’m sure it is among my friends. Escaping the Left is like escaping a cult, even when it comes to middle-ground neutrals like Quillette.

But Rubin was a Trump supporter. He’d been a Bernie Sanders supporter, but the same thing happened to me. He just couldn’t deal with the craziness anymore. The Quillette folks were pearl-clutching over his political shift, as do other voices I listen to.

I love and listen to both Meghan Daum and Andrew Doyle. At one point, both followed me back on Twitter. But my feed was likely too full of populist messaging for them, and they quickly unfollowed me. It could just be that I was too annoying; that’s also possible. But I assumed they thought I was a “Trump supporter,” and thus, they had to draw the line.

What they want is what we used to have, what the Left used to be like. They just don’t yet realize that it is never coming back. This is a Fourth Turning, a pendulum shift. That neutral zone won’t move the needle in any direction.

And by the way, even folks like Daum and Doyle and others who draw the Trump line are still called “right-wing” and sometimes “far right” by the crazies on the Left.

That’s the game, friends. The game I don’t play. Most of us are just people, even Trump, battling with our better angels every day.

Voting on issues, I understand. There is a clear dividing line now between Left and Right on issues like abortion, LGBTQIA rights, the border, and climate change. But the accusation of “white supremacy” and racism being a characteristic of the MAGA movement is false.

To me, it’s all the same thing, the same mass hysteria witch hunt. They just draw their line in a different place.

The more helpless people feel, the less likely they will hover in the middle. They will be looking for hard-liners, those willing to take a tough stand. That’s what makes this moment in history precarious.

Ultimately, though, I don’t draw the Trump line because when I took the time in the dark days of 2020 to watch Trump’s rallies (all five a day) and get to know his supporters, I found them to be kind, open-hearted people. Are there mean ones? Sure, of course. They exist everywhere. But overall, they were the side I recognized as the humans I used to know.

I just wanted new subscribers to get where I was coming from so I didn’t blindside you. Otherwise, welcome.