Ant-Man’s Michael Douglas Believes The American Political System Has Been “Hijacked”

Jorge Arenas |

Dec 10, 2019

Ant-Man and Hank Pym actor Michael Douglas warns that the American political system has been “hijacked.”

In a video for RepresentUs, Douglas states, “America’s political system has been hikacked to ensure those with power keep it.”

In the ten minute video, the famed actor goes on to point the finger at the two-party system as one of the main problems behind current politics.

Douglas states:

“Our forefathers created a beautiful system and we live in a magical country, how the hell did things get so bad?”

He goes on to list a number poll numbers including Americans trust in elections and Congress’ approval rating.

He then states, “We are angry at the system. At each other. Our country is getting poorer, sicker, more divided, and our families are paying the price. We don’t even talk to each other anymore.”

Douglas then doubles down saying, “America’s political system has been hijacked to ensure those with power keep and for the rest of us, it’s not so good.”

Douglas says the major problem is America’s two major political parties, the Democrats and the Republicans.

Douglas explains, “They control the money, the debates, the primaries. They even draw their own voting districts.”

He adds, “Year after year we choose between the lesser of two evils: Democrats, Republicans, Republicans, Democrats.”

Douglas goes on to state that competition, as seen elsewhere in society improves situations like this: “In any other environment, a new competitor would swoop in to better serve the constituency. You hate your cable company. Here comes streaming.”

The Ant-Man actor points to the lack of bipartisanship between the major parties as a major problem. Claiming that they are becoming more and more divided as time goes by. He goes on to then point, indirectly, at primary races where members of each political party nominate their candidate.

He claims, “Hard-liners are rewarded, collaboration is vilified. Congress is so gridlocked, they can’t even pass the most basic laws to improve the lives of everyday Americans.”

Douglas then details a number of problems America is facing:

“For the first time since the Great Depression life expectancy is the US is actually going down while it goes up in the rest of the world.

We were once ranked top in the world for education. We’ve fallen to 27th. We can’t afford life savings prescriptions, and medical bills are forcing families into bankruptcy. Almost half of American families can’t even afford basic necessities like rent and food. What I want to know is how do we fix it?”

After laying out the problem he and others fear is dividing America, Douglas talks about the efforts led by RepresentUs to combat what they see as corruption.

The group labels itself as a “leading anti-corruption organization that is unrigging America’s broken political system to create clean government.”

They claim they are a non-partisan group that looks to advocate for “commonsense reforms in cities and states across the country that fix our broken elections, stop gerrymandering, and end political corruption.”

Douglas hasn’t been the group’s only A-lister to grace an ad. Earlier this year X-Men actress Jennifer Lawrence cut a video for the group in which she claimed that: “We are witnessing a total political system failure in America.”

She would go on to point toward both political parties and the nature of the political system itself, as the problem:

“If you are anything like me, you may find yourself constantly overwhelmed by everything that is wrong with politics. And when I say politics, I’m not talking about Democrats or Republicans. I’m talking about the flaws that exist in our political system regardless of which party is in power.”

Michael Douglas is currently filming Disney +’s What If…?, where he is slated to reprise his role of Hank Pym. What If…? is expected to go live on the streaming service sometime in 2021.