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Culture War Roundup for the week of June 2, 2025

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If I can quote Shoe on head -

"oh my God we need a liberal Joe Rogan" You had a liberal Joe Rogan his name was Joe Rogan but he was too edgy too problematic

Most ironically, he was too liberal. This was the characteristic of Joe Rogan that was damning to them and that elicted the reaction that was damning of them. He may never have been too immoderate for them in the modern sense of "liberal"=="leftist", but he was far too much for them in the older sense of "liberal"=="open minded". While the modern left was discovering the delicious joys of shunning and deplatforming, Rogan was still stubbornly letting any idiot with any wacky or problematic ideology come to him and make a case for it to him and his audience. The last straw for them in 2024 may have been that, when he offered to let their idiot take advantage of his liberalism, at a point where she clearly needed it, she simply chose not to accept!

It's possible that she was doomed either way, that she had good reason for insisting on an hour interview surrounded by her staff rather than multiple hours one-on-one in his studio like all his other interviewees, but if that's the case then what they needed instead wasn't a liberal version of Joe Rogan, it was a didn't-finish-at-the-bottom-of-the-Democratic-primaries version of Kamala Harris.

Kamala can't string a full sentence from start to end without reading a teleprompter, that's why they didn't let her get on Joe Rogan's podcast.

He wasn't too liberal. He is a living fossil, him with his open mind and willingness to talk to people.

Today liberalism stands for western guilt, feelings and self expression over rationality, safety over openness, faith in solving social issues through social engineering, despite half a century of total failure of such efforts.