Trent Reznor has gone so mainstream, and yet it doesn’t feel like selling out at all, right? Reznor is more famous these days for his film scores rather than Nine Inch Nails, and it’s fine. It’s even welcome! Reznor won an Oscar for his score for The Social Network, and he continues to find consistent scoring work. He chatted with the Daily Beast to promote his scoring work on Before the Flood, the documentary about climate change directed by Fisher Stevens and produced by Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio. Reznor comes across very well in this interview – he’s mature, he’s thoughtful and he’s pragmatic. He even admits that he enjoyed the GOP debates because he loved seeing them destroy each other, but like most of us, he knows it stopped being funny a while back. I would suggest reading the full piece, but here are some of the best excerpts:

He cares about climate change: “It being so politicized—and the repulsive climate that’s emerged the last however many years over whether you’re choosing to believe or not in facts—is absurd. In an environment where a Trump can rise to create as much chaos as he has, it’s alarming to see society devolve in a lot of ways. I have my own theories of what’s behind a lot of that—the dumbing-down and anti-intellectualism that’s taking place.”

No one believes in facts anymore: “With the distracted culture that we live in where we’re bombarded with entertainment options, 24-hour news, and the death of journalism through clickbait being the business model, and lots of people getting their news on Facebook, where it sure feels like a high percentage of it is false, and I can choose what version of reality I want to live in by what channel I watch my news on or whatever source I get that from. It’s functioning as entertainment masquerading as news. That climate has made it so we’re somehow arguing about facts.”

On the rise of Trump: “It is surreal. I’ll admit that I was entertained during the Republican debates and the whole process of whittling them down. It’s kind of fun to see a grenade go off and see these guys—I hate every one of them—be eliminated and humiliated. But it stopped being funny months ago. It’s sad to see the discourse be dragged this low. It’s absurd that this is even happening.”

He worries that it will be worse once Hillary Clinton is elected: “I’m absolutely terrified about that. Hopefully Trump will flame out any minute now, but the effect of him—or he himself—is not going to go away, and there’s going to be an awful lot of very energized followers. We all know they’re not going to say, “Well, let’s support Hillary because she’s the president now.” She’s walking into a terrible situation.”

What Hillary Clinton had to put up with in the second debate: “Oh, it was terrible. And you think, “Who would want that job?” What a humiliating and terrible ordeal to have to even put up with. Since it’s down to two people, there’s no question that 100 percent of my support is going towards her. I’ll admit that I was more enthused about Bernie in terms of the sense of upheaval and revolution. I’m not saying anything that isn’t very obvious here, but that passion and that ignition of feelings—of wow, we could affect change—is the same way I felt before Obama got in. I feel less passionate about Clinton, personally. It feels establishment and generally I think that turns people off.

[From The Daily Beast]

“I’ll admit that I was entertained during the Republican debates and the whole process of whittling them down. It’s kind of fun to see a grenade go off and see these guys—I hate every one of them—be eliminated and humiliated.” See, that’s sort of how I felt too. I felt a little bit sorry for poor Jeb! Bush (only a little bit) but the rest of those dudes can rot, and it was fascinating to watch how easily Donald Trump disposed of them. But past the primaries, yes, it stopped being interesting/amusing. Don’t get me wrong, the GOP is still devouring itself and there will be some kind of God-awful reckoning/blood-letting within the party, but everything past, say, April of this year has just been appalling/deplorable.

And it doesn’t surprise me that Reznor was more for Bernie, but I do have to point out… like, Trent Reznor is part of the establishment. He probably doesn’t want to say that, but dude, you ARE establishment.

Photos courtesy of WENN.