Matt Damon Betrays Close Friend Howard Zinn by Endorsing Hillary Clinton

(ANTIMEDIA) In the wake of “revolutionary” presidential candidate Bernie Sanders endorsing Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, anti-Clinton voters may be surprised to learn she has also gained the support of an unlikely individual.
In May of this year, former Harvard drop-out and Hollywood actor—most famous for his depiction of Jason Bourne in the Bourne movie franchise—told Town & Country magazine he supported Hillary Clinton.
According to Damon, his main reason for backing her is due to his project to fight for clean drinking water through his website, water.org. As he said:
“Just on this issue of water and sanitation…She understands it from a number of different angles – as a national security issue, as a human rights issue, and obviously, its impact on women and girls.”
Damon further stated:
“That’s absolutely what we need…I’ve never spoken to Hillary about this, but from what she has done and what she has said, if she wins I’d like to believe that we at least would have an understanding ear. We’re not selling snake oil, you know!”
It is a ludicrously ambitious PR stunt on Damon’s part to claim he cares about accessibility to clean drinking water when he works in Hollywood, a notorious polluter of the environment. How much water is wasted on just one Hollywood movie? How much water is wasted through his ownership of lavish mansions?
Furthermore, Matt Damon grew up in the same neighborhood as the late historian and political activist, Howard Zinn, author of A People’s History of the United States. The two were close family friends. Damon even paid tribute to Zinn’s aforementioned bestselling novel by referring to it in his Oscar-winning movie, Good Will Hunting.
Throughout his life, Howard Zinn was a fierce critic of U.S. foreign policy. His famous statement that “there is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people” gives one insight into the underlying principles of Zinn’s philosophies. It is no surprise, therefore, that Zinn’s views toward Clinton were wildly unfavorable. He previously referred to her as a “hawk”:
“He [Obama] showed his subservience to the militarists as soon as he appointed Hillary Clinton as secretary of state and Robert Gates as secretary of defense. By surrounding himself with hawks, he has made it inevitable that he would pursue an aggressive military posture.”
Howard Zinn would never have actively endorsed someone like Hillary Clinton given her failed policies in the Middle East. According to UNICEF, there are two million children out of school in Libya. We have Clinton to thank for that.
Damon’s endorsement of Hillary Clinton is suspiciously contradictory considering his affiliation with Zinn and his previous critique and rejection of Barack Obama’s presidential legacy— one that appeared to be principled and reasoned. In a 2013 interview with Black Entertainment Television (BET), Damon asserted “Obama broke up with me,” questioning policies like the legality of Obama’s drone strike program and the NSA revelations brought to light by whistleblower Edward Snowden.
“So, you know, he’s got some explaining to do, particularly for a constitutional law professor,” Damon cleverly argued.

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Unfortunately, this all changed in 2015, when Damon decided Obama’s performance after the most recent congressional election had “restored his faith.”
“We talked about it, and look, even when I was giving him shit, he’s somebody who thinks so deeply about everything he does…I don’t ever question that it’s coming from the right place with him. He’s a remarkable human being and shockingly easy to be around. He’s incredibly approachable and doesn’t beat you up with his station, though he could.”
Apparently, systematically blowing up women and children was no longer an issue once Damon understood that Obama was an approachable human being. I’m sure Hitler was approachable to actors, too.
Damon’s tribute to Howard Zinn in 2012 when he read Zinn’s famous speech, “Our Problem is Civil Obedience,” isn’t worth the piece of paper it’s written on. The first few words of the speech call for civil disobedience, yet Damon has shredded Zinn’s life’s work in a matter of seconds by endorsing a candidate who laughs like the Joker after assassinating the leader of a sovereign nation and plunging that nation into a realm of perpetual chaos.
Zinn understood these facts about Clinton. Damon either doesn’t understand or simply doesn’t care to. His endorsement of a warmongering fraud like Clinton is an embarrassment to Zinn’s legacy and the principles he lived for:
“We need to decide that we will not go to war, whatever reason is conjured up by the politicians or the media, because war in our time is always indiscriminate, a war against innocents, a war against children.
“War is terrorism, magnified a hundred times.”

This article (Matt Damon Betrays Close Friend Howard Zinn by Endorsing Hillary Clinton) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Darius Shahtahmasebi and theAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11 pm Eastern/8 pm Pacific. Image credit: Nicolas Genin. If you spot a typo, please email the error and name of the article at edits@theantimedia.org.