According to Hollywood screenwriter Aaron Sorkin, whose recent iteration of “To Kill A Mockingbird” completely alters the character Atticus Finch to fit a modern progressive narrative, Trump supporters are unworthy of tolerance in the same way that southern racists were unworthy of tolerance.
Appearing on left-wing filmmaker Michael Moore’s podcast, the Oscar-winning writer of “The Social Network” said that when adapting Harper Lee’s classic novel to the stage, he realized that the character Atticus Finch was an apologist for racists, likening it to modern liberals that are apologists for Trump supporters.
“Upon reading the novel again, it struck that throughout the novel, Atticus is an apologist for racists. Throughout,” he said. “His whole thing about you have to walk a mile in someone’s else’s shoes. You really have to get inside someone’s skin and crawl around before you can really understand them. That was a way of excusing Bob Ewell. ‘Well, you got to understand, he lost his WPA job, and that really brings a man down.’ He excuses his neighbor, Mrs. Henry Dubose. A terrible racist. ‘Well you got to understand, she stopped taking her pain medication, her morphine, that makes people a little crazy.’ He excuses the whole South.”
Sorkin said that this reflection helped him to realize that liberals were being apologists about the tens of millions of people supporting Donald Trump.
“All you had to do, Mike, was look around. We were all saying the same thing about the tens of millions of people supporting Donald Trump,” he said. “I don’t get it. Yeah, we’ve always disagreed, all of us here in America. But we all have eyes and ears, right? We’re looking at the same person. What are you talking about?”
Michael Moore agreed that Trump supporters were all-around bad people and that reaching across the aisle was a fool’s errand.
Since the election of President Trump, Aaron Sorkin has not once responded charitably to the people who supported President Trump. In 2016, shortly after Trump’s upset against Hillary Clinton, he described it as a win for the Ku Klux Klan.
“Well, the world changed last night in a way I couldn’t protect us from,” he wrote in an open letter to his daughter and wife. “I won’t sugarcoat it – this is truly horrible.”
“It’s hardly the first time my candidate didn’t win (in fact it’s the sixth time) but it is the first time a thoroughly incompetent pig with dangerous ideas, a serious psychiatric disorder, no knowledge of the world and no curiosity to learn has,” Sorkin wrote.
“The [Ku Klux] Klan won last night,” he continued. “White nationalists. Sexists, racists and buffoons. Angry young white men who think rap music and Cinco de Mayo are a threat to their way of life (or are the reason for their way of life) have been given cause to celebrate.”
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