Matthew McConaughey and the myth of 'bothsidesisms'

The Hollywood star contemplating a run for Texas governor wants us to believe that we just need to rise above our political differences to heal the national soul. He's wrong.

Actor Matthew McConaughey broke his silence this week about the growing speculation that he will make a run for governor of Texas next year in a podcast interview with The New York Times’ Kara Swisher. As anyone familiar with the quirky actor might guess, the interview was heavy on philosophical waxing and waning and oddball statements (including about his late parents’ sexual habits) and light on anything actually having to do with the issues that define politics (he did go as far as calling the Texas abortion law “juvenile” in its construction).
That’s because in flirting with his political run, McConaughey wants us to believe that rising above politics is the answer to overcoming what divides us as a nation. Both parties are too extreme, he says. They’re too wrapped up in their ideologies and agendas instead of thinking about how to bring Americans together and making us one happy, united national family. Basically, the extremists on the left and right alike are poisoning our national life, and the solution is to be found in the great center lane (populated by a herd of armadillos, in the analogy he gave to Swisher). They’re “a bag of rats,” he said.
Sorry, Matthew, you couldn’t be more wrong. There was a time when “they’re all the same” and “bothsidesisms” might have carried the day, but that myth was exposed on Jan. 6, 2021, when one political movement, ruled by one man, did something that has never happened in our 250-year history: They tried to overthrow an election and topple our democracy.
Perhaps smartly for someone thinking of running in a red state (though growing more purple by the day) like Texas, McConaughey had nothing to say about Donald Trump and the four years of lies and corruption that led to the horrific events of Jan. 6. But that is exactly the reason that the type of “bothsidesisms” that was once employed effectively and innocuously by the likes of Ross Perot and Arnold Schwarzenegger is so misguided and so dangerous in 2021.
Only one political movement in America today operates in an alternate universe of reality where gaining and maintaining power is the only thing that matters. Only one political movement in America today is capable of embracing the “Big Lie” that threatens the sanctity of our elections and our democracy, or passing draconian voter suppression laws that make it harder to vote and easier to overturn the results of those who do. Only one political movement is willing to launch an insurrection against its own government and topple the will of the voters. That is the movement led by Donald Trump and the large faction of the Republican Party that he controls.
There is plenty in the Democratic Party that is worthy of criticism and scrutiny, and Lord knows I’ve had my share of heated arguments with members of the left flank of my party. Ideological rigidity and extremism can be poisonous on both the left and the right. But Hillary Clinton and her supporters never thought for a moment of trying to do in 2016 what Donald Trump and his tried to do in 2020. Clinton accepted her excruciatingly close loss with dignity, the same way Al Gore had done 16 years earler, because they and their party respect democracy and respect the integrity of our electoral process. And they have a basic respect for the truth and facts.
Even if the Republican Party hadn’t become unhinged under Trump and a threat to our very democracy, McConaughey is naive at best, dishonest at worst, with his folksy, philosophical musings about how policy differences aren’t all that important in the grand scheme of things. He wants us to believe that she should all just agree to transcend our ideological differences and put unity and harmony first.
Maybe that sentiment would have been plausible during, say, the Eisenhower years when, for better or worst, there wasn’t a whole lot of ideological space between the mainstream of the two parties and they both largely shared the same goals (win the Cold War, go to the Moon, kick the problem of racism and segregation under the rug for as long as possible). But things are much different in 2021. The two parties are galaxies apart in their views on everything from climate change to gun violence to racism to to abortion to health care to immigration. All the signature “alright, alright, alrights” in the world by McConaughney will never close that chasm. Walking shirtless on the beach may make everyone feel better in a romcom, but in the real world, the survival of the planet, and basic human rights, are at stake, and there’s no way to gently put those stark differences aside and have the American people join hands and sing kumbaya, without reckoning with these deep and polarizing issues in a way that honors facts and science.
It is true that that the majority of Americans have a range of beliefs that don’t fit neatly into the rigid agendas of either major political party. But at the end of the day, we live in a two-party system whether we like it or not, and we have to decide which candidates from which party best reflect our values across the spectrum, even if we don’t see eye to eye on every single thing.
The sad truth is that one one political party in America today has a basic respect for science, facts, truth and democracy, even if it is far from perfect and at times fails to live up to the principles it espouses. If McConaughey doesn’t get that, and thinks that his folksy charm and sly wit will magically bring us together and stop millions of Americans from believing that the 2020 election was stolen, that climate change is a hoax, that racism is a thing of the past, and that gun violence has nothing at all to do with guns, he should start making plans for “Interstellar II” rather than a run for governor. The plot of the movie is more realistic than the political philosophy he laid out in the podcast interview.