It can be very depressing watching the news lately, and many artists are using their platform to speak up. Nine Inch Nails' Trent Reznor has had no problem using his position to talk about his distaste for President Donald Trump.
In the past, Reznor has called Trump "a complete fucking moron" adding that Trump is "this vulgar, grotesque dope, everything I hate in people." Today, Reznor is speaking up once more, but this time targeting other people with platforms who are choosing to remain silent, regardless of their viewpoint.
Here's what he said in a new interview with the New York Times:
“I was doing press with somebody in the mid-90s, and they made an argument that stayed with me: that I have influence, and that it’s my job to call out whatever needs to be called out, because there are people who feel the same way but need someone to articulate it,” Reznor responded. “And I think about that today, because it seemed like it was a lot easier to just keep your mouth shut and let it go back then.”
He then proceeded to call out “the Taylor Swifts of the world, and top-tier, needle-moving cultural youth,” who stay silent “because they are concerned about their brand, their demographic and their success and career and whatnot.”
“It’s not the conservative agenda, it’s not a question of religious preference, it’s not a question of should government be big or small. I don’t have any problem with those topics,” Reznor added. “But the disregard for decency and truth and civility is what’s really disheartening. It feels like a country that celebrates stupidity is really taking it up a notch.”
Reznor also talked about how his experience scoring Ken Burns' documentary Vietnam helped form his opinion on the current regime:
“I realized that I naïvely had faith that the government must know what they’re doing. There are conversations in the footage for the documentary where you realize they’re winging it: ‘Can’t let the public know this, I’ll never get re-elected.’ And that call costs so many lives. It’s worrying. And yet I would tend to think the people in charge then were significantly more enlightened or worthy of their positions than the crew we’ve got in there right now.”
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[via Consequence of Sound]
