No, he doesn't. He doesn't care about the damn status quo.

He wants to feel important and he wants an easy life. That's it. He has no political or social motivations beyond

"I don't wanna remember a thing, and I want to be someone important... like an actor."

Cypher is the worst kind of asshole: One who doesn't care about a damn thing besides his own personal gain.

Things weren't just as polarized. You are intentionally leaving out a HUGE culture shift in the people between The Matrix and the Dixie Chicks being canceled. And if you didn't understand that the world WAS different, even though there was just a few years apart, then you are DEFINITELY a child lying about their age.

No one who was alive for both those incidents think they occurred in the same vein of history.

Dixie chicks were post 9/11, if you're going to leave out that VERY important detail when talking about the times, then you don't understand how that day was basically the beginning of the shitstorm we have today.

Matrix was before all that. And yes... things can seriously change within just a couple years.