Michael Sheen is so disturbed by the rise of far-right populism he is quitting acting to become an activist, and says he does not know if his relationship with Sarah Silverman will survive.
Sheen will leave Silverman, his partner of two years, and family in Los Angeles and move to Port Talbot in south Wales to combat the wave of “demagogic, fascistic” politics he believes has engulfed the West in the past decade.
He told The Times: “In the same way as the Nazis had to be stopped in Germany in the Thirties, this thing that is on the rise has to be stopped.
“It’s not going to look like this in 10 years’ time. Everything has shifted. The dice are being rolled again.”
His steel-making hometown, population 37,000, voted for Brexit and the Welsh actor says his frustration at this has formed, in part, the impetus for his decision to begin his activism back where he began. His fears were exacerbated by the ascension of Donald Trump and the tensions stoked by his divisive rhetoric.
You know I would like to think that the hours that I put in on this blog have some meaning, and that I am doing my part to fight the good fight and push back on the fascism that we see invading our country. (And let's not bother lying to ourselves to say that fascism is not coming, because we are already seeing it in North Carolina.)
But truth be told I am not sacrificing nearly as much as I should, and neither are most of us.
Make no mistake, despite interference by James Comey, and hacking by the Russians, American voters are ultimately responsible for casting the votes that helped Trump win the electoral college.
Even if we assume that some voting machines were hacked the election still has to be close enough for that to matter.
So We the People are ultimately responsible for helping to usher in fascism and for defying the will of the Founding Fathers.
To rectify that, to save what is left of our republic, we need to rise up and fight.
No, I am not suggesting that we start shooting each other in the streets, or plan assaults against Washington, I am suggesting that we fight back with the same tools used to cripple us in the first place.
If fake news and Right Wing propaganda got us here in 2016 then real information and Left Wing fact checkers can steer us back to where we need to be in 2017.
For starters if you are a Facebook fan of this blog then promote it to all of your friends and family every single day. Or if you are more comfortable with Twitter than by all means use that.
And no not just this blog, but every blog and news site that is working to get information out to the masses.
If we want to make real change, if we want to rescue this nation that we love so much, we must be ready to irritate, frustrate, and ultimately educate the people we love until they see the reality of what is happening in the world.
We should present a deafening roar of facts and figures, a cacophony containing compilations of vital statistics, a constant drumbeat that shatters any illusion that this is business as usual and awakens people to the danger we face as a nation.
I know we cannot all just up and quit our jobs to make activism a full time occupation, but I also know we can always do more.
And truly what ultimately is more important than our future, the future of our families, and the future of this great country?
Source http://ift.tt/2hLmgeW
