'The game is rigged:' Matt Damon says he's done with 'fixed' Washington politics

'The game is rigged:' Matt Damon says he's done with 'fixed' Washington politics

Matt Damon says he's giving up on politics. 
The actor told Playboy magazine that he feels 'the fix is in, the game is rigged and no matter how hard you work to change things, it just doesn't matter.'
Damon bemoaned the state of Washington as he completes a media circuit for the release of his new movie, 'Promised Land' which - coincidentally - deals with the high politicized issue of fracking, or drilling for natural gas.
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Matt Damon says when it comes to politics, he feels 'the fix is in, the game is rigged and no matter how hard you work to change things, it just doesn't matter'

Damon said he lost hope that the movie might have some impact in Washington.
'We’re at a point where politicians don’t really get any benefit from engaging with long-term issues,' he said, according toPolitico. 'Instead, it’s all about the next election cycle. Those guys in the House don’t do anything now but run for office. So unless they can find some little thing that zips them up a couple of points in the polls, they’re not interested.'
Damon's soured attitude toward the American political system has been a couple years in the making.

 

He made headlines last year when he famously criticized Obama's first term, even though Damon is a Democrat and supported Obama in 2008. 
'I’ve talked to a lot of people who worked for Obama at the grassroots level. One of them said to me, "Never again. I will never be fooled again by a politician,"' Damon said in 2011. 'You know, a one-term president with some balls who actually got stuff done would have been, in the long run of the country, much better.'

Damon's soured attitude toward the American political system has been a couple years in the making

But Damon told Playboy that he voted for Obama in November, despite his criticisms of the president. 
'I assume there will be some Supreme Court appointments in this next term; that alone was reason to vote for him,' he said. 
Damon was also asked about Clint Eastwood's performance at the Republican National Convention.
'I heard the backlash, but I never saw the whole thing because I just didn’t want to see my friend … you know,' he said. 'Look, his knowledge of filmmaking is so vast and deep that he can wing it beautifully on the set. What he did at the RNC was an unrehearsed bit he decided to do at the last minute. You can’t go onstage and do 12 minutes of stand-up completely unrehearsed. But I agree with what Bill Maher said — Clint killed it at the convention for 12 minutes, and the audience loved him. I wouldn’t do that unless I spent a month rehearsing.'
Asked what politics were behind his new movie, he said, 'We went to the studio saying, "Who f**king wants to go see an anti-fracking movie?" and were all in agreement. When we were working on the script, it was about wind farms, but we changed it to fracking — a good issue because the stakes are so high. That sh*t is real. They’re debating about letting it happen in New York now. To us, the movie was really about American identity. We loved the characters because they felt like real people making the kinds of compromises you have to just to live your life.'