Golden Globes, Meryl Streep, and (Unfortunately) Donald Trump

Golden Globes, Meryl Streep, and (Unfortunately) Donald Trump
This image released by NBC shows Meryl Streep accepting the Cecil B. DeMille Award at the 74th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 8, 2017. (Paul Drinkwater/NBC via AP)

This image released by NBC shows Meryl Streep accepting the Cecil B. DeMille Award at the 74th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Sunday, Jan. 8, 2017. (Paul Drinkwater/NBC via AP)

Four years. That’s what we are in for. Four years of a president whose skin is so thin, he lashes out on a Twitter account someone definitely should have reigned in by now.

More than we’ve ever been before, America is a mockery of what it should be, and the whole world is watching as we fall. It may seem a bit unfair to say we’ve fallen already, but we’re headed for a commander-in-chief whose self-control is so limited, he’s actually incapable of keeping his stupid words about Fortune 500 companies off the internet, already tanking a few stocks like he was shooting clay pigeons.

Originally, this article was just going to be coverage of the Golden Globes. My usual retrospective look back at the winners of the year and some of the best performances. This year, simply put, I hadn’t seen even a third of the content awarded last night. So while I’d love to talk about the relative sweep carried out by “La La Land,” I’m too divorced from the source material to honestly assess whether or not the winners were deserving of the awards. Plus Deadpool didn’t win for writing, which is just a sad, sad crime against man and art.

One part of the award show that I do feel perfectly qualified to talk about is Meryl Streep’s taking of the Cecil B. DeMille Lifetime Achievement Award. An old and honorary award, it’s (somewhat obviously) not given for any specific performance, but to mark an actor of accomplishment, poise, and grace. In that, there really isn’t anyone more deserving than Meryl Streep.

For 42 years, Streep has been a near-constant screen presence, always bringing her best to whatever role she found herself in. She is a gracious, and by all accounts, fantastic person, someone the CBD award was tailor made for.

Streep has never been one to shy away from the political scene, and her acceptance speech last night sealed that. Nowhere did she call out Trump directly by name, though to be fair, you’d have to be a special kind of thick to miss the point. Streep simply addressed a troubling part of the Trump campaign performance, an occasion during which he openly mocked a reporter with a disability with all the skill of a 7-year-old; by flapping his arms and making a stupid face.

Trump was, of course, quick to respond, quickly tweeting out how over-rated Meryl Streep is, how she supported Hillary, how he just knew the Hollywood elite would come after him at some point. Oh, and of course, the dishonest media. We can’t forget that.

All of this would mean next to nothing if the person acting like a kid with a Twitter account and a shitty attitude wasn’t poised to take the highest office in the world in a couple of weeks. I’ve talked about why it’s terrifying that he’s carrying his ‘speak your mind’ to this level, praising dictators past and present, and generally carrying his power much like his totally real hair: wildly out of control and just ugly.

We’re more splintered than I think we’ve ever been as a nation, and I’m definitely including the 1860s there. We may have been literally divided during the civil war, but there weren’t 50 states and some 325 million people within our borders at the time. There weren’t equal rights or treatment for anyone who wasn’t white and male. We’ve come so far, and so many have fought so hard that seeing us this fractured is honestly heart-breaking.

What can we do, though? I’m not going to excuse a nazi, it’s just not going to happen. The “alt-right” are nazis, they are white-supremacists, they are fascists, and they have zero place in the American government. Fortunately for them, they still have the right to live here, in this nation, and be as hate-mongery and ignorantly horrid as they like. But they have no place on capital hill. The people decidedly did not vote for this pumpkin-colored führer, but the people literally ‘zeig heil’ing him, shouting “HEIL TRUMP!” and painting swastikas on Jewish graves? They did vote for him, and their profound lack of understanding on how things like math works means they think they’re the majority now. They think hate won out. Don’t let them and our Neon Emperor change the fabric of this nation, because for all the crazy that happens, it’s actually an incredible country to live in. The diversity and culture here is like nowhere else on the planet. Don’t let them change that.

And please God, don’t let Trump provoke nuclear war on Twitter.

Categories: Commentary