A brief note on the left's Joe Rogan problem
From squishy Dems to extreme socialists, the modern left is terminally incapable of appealing to anyone
When people talk about the Dems getting their own version of Joe Rogan what they mean is that they want to build up an organically appealing media ecosystem that will draw otherwise apolitical people into their midst.
They are absolutely, utterly incapable of doing this, and they probably never will be.
Left wing gatekeepers are extremely intolerant. They demand absolute fealty to the party. You must repeat the party’s contradictions without acknowledging them. You must lie when called upon to do so, and feign a combination of ignorance and bewilderment whenever faced with manifest evidence of your side’s incompetence. You must never, under any circumstances, express any skepticism or otherwise enunciate a thought that has not properly vetted.
Plus, well, they just have an affinity for stuff that most normal people find deeply unappealing. Bereft of any substantive discourse, they’ve come to confuse aesthetics with ideology, and those aesthetics are policed with a vengeance. In order to remain in good standing on the left, your language must be antiseptic. Your jokes must be edgeless. You must speak about privileged identity groups only in sanctified terms.
Men within Democrat media have to perpetually demonstrate an awareness of the fact that they can be cancelled at any time, for any reason, if they run afoul of someone who outranks them on the Intersectionality totem poll. They must be meek and apologetic—even if they’re appearing in an audio-only format, listeners should be able to sense that they’re sloping their shoulders like a dog that was just caught stealing people food, only speaking or making eye contact when they’re 100% certain they’re allowed to. They must never say say a naughty word or talk over a lady co-host (oh, and their must be a lady co-host). They must apologize for their own existence as often and as loudly as possible and can never exhibit the slightest bit of aggression or heterosexuality.
Women can be as loud or frumpy or moronically dressed as they please, but they still must abide by certain rules of decorum. Regardless of their level of conventional attractiveness, their aesthetic should exude a sense of judgmental meanness. They have to be wildly overconfident in all of their abilities and openly disdainful of anyone they regard as beneath those abilities. They must consider themselves one of smartest and funniest people they’ve ever met. They must have the worst taste imaginable in regards to music and literature. They must never criticize any other woman who is not a confirmed Republican.
These are the rules of left-liberal discourse. And, since the left is currently so rules-obsessed, the entirety of left-liberal discourse amounts to a combination of the policing of these rules and a performative demonstration of one’s ability to abide by these rules. No Rogan shall come of this.