Just for my own sanity (sic), I'm choosing to give up on the national stage; it's a corrupt shit-show and we can see very clearly where it's headed.
Also this is by no means whatsoever new. Maybe you do remember this fellow here below - referring to the actor and not the role?
Anyway Larry Hagman had an interview in 2002 with a big German newspaper, the Süddeutsche Zeitung. Per my knowledge it was not published in English, so chances are high that it is widely unknown in America. So here is the transcript of it in the published language, German -
Interview mit Larry Hagman .
Hagman was in the 1960s against the war in Vietnam; that's the starting point, and some excerpts:
Q: Your public image is different [that of a hardliner]. At the beginning of the 80s there were two American actors, who spread fear amongst the world: one named Reagan, the other one was you.
A: In reality nobody had to fear Larry Hagman contrary to Reagan. The people had good reasons to fear him.
Q: Why?
A: Reagan was a corrupt politician incarnate. He was owned by General Electric. Reagan was a total idiot.
Q: What? Is that really the way to talk as an American, even more so coming from Texas?
A: Of course when getting asked; it's just that I am not getting asked this often.
Q: I thought that you were a republican.
A: Everybody thinks that I am a republican. I've played an oil magnate over a decade long, I am wearing a stetson when I like to and I am from Texas. That's all about it. I am still getting letters by the GOP asking if I don't want to make commercials for them. I am telling them every time: "Leave me alone with your god damn bullshit!" The republicans were and are responsible for the rich getting richer and poor getting poorer. They are responsible for the destruction of social balance in America. Maybe we should talk a little about the religious fanatism they are spreading throughout the country?
Q: Even many democrats in retrospect do think about Reagan as a strong president.
A: Look, he was a really dangerous man. He brainwashed himself. He really believed that his lifestyle was the "absolute one and only way of life." He was good at telling jokes, delivering speeches and misleading people. He was quite intelligent. But already back then when he was the president of the actor's union in Hollywood he sided with the companies, not the actors. As president he then sided with the oil and electrical power companies, but not the normal people.
Q: If you want, but we still should...
A: While the idiot Reagan was dangerous, but not dumb, the idiot George W. Bush is a different affair: our country is governed today by a president who is dangerous and dumb. George W. Bush is completely out of the window what you and I would consider a normal human being. He cannot deliver speeches. He cannot read. He's legasthenic. And now for the best part of it: he's our president.
Q: Are you living in a hysterical country?
A: What a jolly good question: of course I do! It really started with the Clinton-Lewinsky thing. Big entertainment for the religious right. People played judge who really are in no position to do so. And since 9/11 America became in terms of ideology and brainwashing of the masses a country, which bears astonishing similarities to the begone USSR.
Q:: What does that exactly mean?
A: They have taken away almost all rights from the people, while the police in exchange got so much power and freedom to do as they wish, that's it is completely insane. Also the thought control of the religious right in America is a topic which you Europeans often do not recognize for its full potential. They are everywhere, in the companies, schools, everywhere. You might think that I am paranoic. But there are many clear-thinking people in America who do fear what the religious right is doing to our country.