Movie star Jeff Daniels (Terms of Endearment, Dumb and Dumber) was born in Georgia and raised in Michigan, where he lives now with his wife of 45 years. So Daniels being a Midwestern family man linked to two swing states doesn’t fit the traditional notion of a Hollywood icon.
Unlike, say, a celebrity such as Barbra Streisand prescribing liberalism from Beverly Hills or Malibu, Daniels strikes a more down-to-earth tone. But the two stars come down on the same side of today’s political bifurcation in America, believing that Donald Trump is a dangerous liar and that the nation’s future is better served by the election of Kamala Harris in November.
The famous Harvard constitutional law professor Laurence Tribe believes Daniels is also credible when he analyzes some of the appeal MAGA has for its true believers, an analysis encapsulated in his speech below, which Tribe amplified to his 1.4 million followers.
Jeff Daniels has his finger on the MAGA pulse in these remarks https://t.co/SOyvAnokcM
— Laurence Tribe (@tribelaw) October 10, 2024
“Jeff Daniels,” Tribe writes, “has his finger on the MAGA pulse in these remarks.”
Daniels’s most incisive point is that a mob — or a Trump rally — is a place where people go to take a break from their “consciences.” A place where individual autonomy — and accountability for behavior — are diluted and sloughed off, allowing the less better instincts of our nature rise and be satisfied. “They get the anonymity,” Daniels asserts, “A conscience can be exhausting. It’ll keep you up at night.”
The actor’s remarks bring to mind a line that another actor, Tommy Lee Jones, utters to Will Smith‘s character in the movie hit Men in Black: “A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals, and you know it.”
Daniels, whose father owned a lumber yard in Michigan, says he knows the people between “the coasts” and that they are “good people” who are vulnerable to this groupthink — and to promises that Trump will bring “my manufacturing job back.”