Joe Rogan As The Median Voter

He's just a dude

In the left wing circles in which I usually hang out, Joe Rogan comes up occasionally, but people seem to understand Rogan about as well as he understands the simulation argument. Over lunch recently, someone asked if he was “that ultra right wing podcaster guy.” Those who don’t know Rogan treat him as a deeply political extremist with an ideologically-driven right-wing policy agenda. This is a severe misdiagnosis, on the level of seeing a man who just had all his arms and legs cut off and immediately diagnosing him with the flu, or thinking that Sarah Palin is a genius policy wonk. It represents, in a major way, the growing divide between Democrats and the average voter. Rogan is, to use a phrase from Glenn, the most least remarkable person on the internet. He became influential not as a visionary, but just as an average guy.

Joe Rogan didn’t get famous through podcasting or politics, but instead from UFC commenting and doing stand-up. His career came about because he’s amusing and conversational, asking the sorts of things that the median listener might ask. He’ll have famous people on and just casually chat with them, asking them the sorts of questions that your uncle might ask.

Your uncle would be confused about the simulation argument? So is Joe! When he had the world famous philosopher Nick Bostrom on, they went around in circles for about half an hour because Joe couldn’t get the argument. He would proceed to agree with every premise of the argument, but then disagree with the conclusion—a subtle technique that philosophers call “not getting what the hell is going on.” He doesn’t pretend to be some genius or intellectual; he just finds things interesting and has people on to chat about them.

When asked if infinite monkeys banging on type-writers would eventually, by chance, write out the complete works of Shakespeare, Rogan replied that he’d seen no evidence that a monkey could do that. He hasn’t even seen a monkey write out a single sentence of Shakespeare, much less the entire works! (Compare: my phone number can’t be somewhere in the digits of pi—I haven’t even seen half of my phone number in pi). This is the sort of guy Rogan is; he has the sort of views that your perpetually high classmate from high school might have, mostly weakly held and arrived at without careful thought or investigation.

Joe is vaguely conspiratorial across the board but not very informed (or at least, that’s what they wan you to think—them being the illuminati). He’s sympathetic to all sorts of conspiracies; he thinks the moon landing may have been faked, for instance, and that vaccines are bad. He doesn’t think very hard about these things—he just speaks with people and comes away with impressions. He also isn’t that political, having had on numerous left-wingers like Adam Conover, David Pakman, Kyle Kulinski, and even Bernie Sanders.

Rogan also doesn’t have a particularly coherent political ideology. He’s vaguely anti-establishment and economically populist, yet also quite supportive of action on climate change (here’s him arguing with Candace Owens on the subject). His views aren’t very stable over time; when he’s talking to a Democrat, he sounds like a Democrat, while when he’s talking to a Republican, he sounds like a Republican. He supported Trump and Bernie, while also liking Tulsi Gabbard and most of the other anti-establishment candidates.

Rogan recently suggested that Israel’s actions in Gaza constitute a genocide but also that the students protestors are extreme anti-semites who are probably funded by Russia and China. While not a full-out contradiction, as a friend of mine has noted, it is amusing to think that a full-scale genocide is going on but the only reason people are concerned about it is anti-semitism and influence by Russia and China.

You see, dear reader, those of you who read this blog mostly take ideas seriously (either that or are charmed by my extreme good looks). You have a relatively coherent set of political views and you think hard about ideas. If you read this blog, you’re at least willing to put up with my weird articles about the horrors of factory farming, anthropics, God, and more. You care about arguments for things and think seriously about ideas.

Most people, however, do not do this. Most people don’t have a set of stable political values that are consistent across time. Their political views are largely dependent on tribal affiliation, how things are going at the moment, and things they’ve heard recently. Most people are like someone I will leave unnamed, who I love to death, but will not eat soy because she read an article about it being bad in 1980—even though the study it was based on was subsequently completely debunked.

The American people are mostly not political supergeniuses. When times get rough, they vote against the incumbent. They don’t spend time reading about politics or carefully investigating issues—instead, they largely go based on vibes and things they’ve heard. They, like Rogan, probably think some things Democrats find objectionable (as do I).

Unfortunately, the Democrats have stopped being a party that a guy like Rogan would support. They’ve become, to an unhealthy degree, a party fixated on race, gender, and LGBTQ issues, willing to shun anyone lacking progressive views on those subjects. They’ve come to see having bad ideas as a reason to not engage with a person, rather than a reason to engage so as to bring about reform. They explicitly advocated shunning Rogan for years, and even tried to kick him off Spotify.

Rogan for years agreed with Democrats more than Republicans and likely still does. But many Democrats treated the fact that he had some bad opinions as a reason to make him the enemy. Doing so is bad from a strategy perspective and bad from a moral perspective. If 90% of voters had political podcasts with millions of views, they, like Rogan, would say numerous things that run afoul of liberal norms. When Democrats abandoned Rogan, Rogan abandoned Democrats.

The Democrats treated the set of beliefs of the median voter as wildly outside the overton window—making the median voter out to be an extremist rather than a moderate. Instead, they pandered to woke radicals with fringe views on issues of race, gender, and sexuality. Consequently, the Democrats came to be the party of educated elites, of institutional power and advocacy for DEI trainings (originally I had a typo and this read DIE trainings). They called Trump voters deplorables and ignorant rubes.

If the Democrats want to win, they need to regain the Rogan vote. Rogan is just a normal dude—one who happened to be famous and influential. If you treat him as the enemy, you treat America as the enemy.