Robert DeNiro is my new spirit animal.

Courtesy of Indie Wire: 

Robert De Niro has made no secret of his disdain for Donald Trump. The actor made headlines a month before the 2016 election by declaring that he’d like to punch the future president in the face, and during a speech at the National Board of Review’s gala in January, he declared, “this fucking idiot is our president.” Now, as De Niro gears up for the 2018 edition of Tribeca Film Festival, which he co-founded in 2002, he has found some semblance of progress in one area of the political landscape — the debate about gun control.

“The people that I care about are those young people who demonstrated,” he said, in an interview with IndieWire at his Tribeca office with festival co-founder Jane Rosenthal, referencing the survivors of the mass shooting in Parkland, Florida and other high school students who marched in Washington last month. “They’re the future. They know. They say, ‘We’ll remember in November.’ They’re the ones that feel the way we do, not the way the gun lovers and the NRA do, with all that idiocy to the point of absurdity.”

.....

Asked about the ratings win for “Roseanne” among working class viewers and the conversations it has started about reaching audiences that support Trump, he didn’t mince words. 

“I’ve never seen her show before, I didn’t know she was supporting Trump, but I have no interest in that,” he said. “We’re at a point with all of us this where it’s beyond trying to see another person’s point of view. There are ways you can talk about that, but we’re at a point where the things that are happening in our country are so bad and it comes from Trump. There are so many people who have left his administration. It’s a serious thing. So I don’t care about Roseanne. They want that thing, fine. We have real issues in this country.”

“We’re at a point with all of us this where it’s beyond trying to see another person’s point of view."

That is PRECISELY my opinion as well.

I know that the Russian plan was to spread divisiveness in this country, and that conventional wisdom is that we are supposed to fight that by keeping the lines of communication open and not ostracizing those on the other side of the ideological aisle.

But the facts are that it is all but impossible to communicate rationally with people you simply do not respect.

And I have not one ounce of respect for anybody dumb enough to have voted for Donald Trump.

But trust me I have similar disdain for anybody on the Left who allowed the Russians to manipulate them as well.

If you remain somebody convinced that Hillary Clinton stole the nomination from Bernie Sanders, despite all evidence to the contrary, then trust that you are off my Christmas list as well.

We need to move forward with eyes wide open, and people who continue to allow themselves to be manipulated by Russian propaganda, are simply in the way of this country's progress.