If we're assuming that "the left" in this case means favoring a major party alternative, then the Democratic Party is all there is. Perhaps the main reason that the Democrats aren't able to build an equivalent to Rogan is because he's an independent, and that's anathema to the present-day Democratic Party. There's no way for anyone to try and claim an authentically independent space as a Trump opponent without also going after the big-budge Establishment Prestige Legacy media alliance that has shown time and again that they're a united front of #Kneejerk Resistance, and in the tank for the hidebound Democratic Party establishment. That's a challenging balancing act.
I initially gave the Liberal Media every benefit of the doubt on this, but they haven't bothered to hide their bias. The most they can do when challenged is to 1) point to Fox News--I never thought I'd see the day when Fox allowed the most diversity of opinion of all the large commercial media outlets, but there it is--and 2) defend their bias as justified by the Constitutional Crisis and downward spiral into Fascism represented by the existence of Donald Trump. They have zero insight into how bad they sound to anyone who doesn't share their partisan extremism.
Doesn't that position own enough air time as it is? Furthermore, that monomania has sucked all of the air out of the room. How is anyone to chart a course of Trump opposition from the left that isn't fatally hindered by the avalanche of top-volume hyperbole from 24/7 TV networks?
Finally--and this is perhaps the real undoing of the "find the Rogan of the Left" project--who says Joe Rogan is all that Right Wing, ideologically? I realize that he gave a late-breaking endorsement to Trump, but Kamala Harris literally wouldn't give him a chance to hear out her views face to face, after he invited her. The #Resistance insists on jacketing Rogan as the new Rush Limbaugh, and that's just calumny. I was listening to Limbaugh in 1990, and I always knew where he was going to land on a given issue; the narrow ideological spectrum of his guests; his self-satisfied status quo pomposity; his cheapshot vaudeville stereotypes; his closed mind. Joe Rogan is just not the same kind of person. But if the #Resistance admits that, their whole game falls apart.
I'm in my usual place between an election and and the inauguration of a newly installed President: the new administration hasn't done anything yet. Trump hasn't given me anything to either oppose or support. I'll be keeping tabs on the appointments. But there really isn't much else to say.
You hit the nail on the head. There was a reason for all that censorship on pre-Elon Twitter and the Biden administration's attempt to create a 'Misinformation Governance Board." With free speech and free elections, far-left political parties cannot stay in power.
Good media comes from a place of truth and authenticity. Bad media comes from a place of manipulation and obfuscation. In a free marketplace, one of those models will thrive, the other withers and dies.
I meant liberal (“creating”a media arm does imply a major party backing) but the point could still stand for the left in terms of even just grassroots influence or independent progressives/leftists. I can’t think of many prominent voices on the left in the last 4 years, and would invite recommendations if you know of any.
I like Democracy Now, the Pacifica network news show. Always have, even though I don't have Amy Goodman's ideological allegiance. Amy's a real Leftist, an old-school Marxist socialist. (Left of Bernie Sanders, who is in fact pretty much a socialist ideologue in his own right, only affiliated with the Democratic Establishment because they aren't the Republicans.) It's a bias that sometimes gets me to roll my eyes. Sometimes it's just wrong. But for many stories, the reportage is invaluable: competent, historically rigorous, and well-researched. The ideological bias is tolerable, because it rarely descends into outright dishonesty, lying from beginning to end. I can follow the logic of the Marxist social diagnosis; I often find merit in it. More often, it's the proposed solutions that raise my hackles. I'm non-ideological. I take my policy positions on a case by case basis. A poor fit with broad ideological templates that imply that their blueprint uses more or less the same gloss to provide a solution for Everything.
The American "left" is connected at the hip and shoulders to American left-liberalism and so long as this Siamese twinship continues, the bigger twin (we're talking King Kong connected to a Barbie doll) will drag that little puppet all over the map.
The two terms have such elastic meanings--and peculiarly idiosyncratic features, as defined in the US--that it's very difficult to write about them in a way that isn't confusing. Hence the extensive revisions to my first post.
A more shorthand way of saying what I was getting at is "how does any podcaster express their opposition to policies of the Trump administration without sounding as knee-jerk unhinged as Rachel Maddow?" The failed #RabidResistance effort has poisoned the entire media atmosphere, and made it extremely difficult for new voices to emerge as Trump critics. Although I have to say that I've found no evidence that Joe Rogan himself is in the tank for Trump, and therefore every policy goal of his administration. That's a #RabidResistance partisan frame. Political partisans are unable to process any dissent from their views as anything other than as opposition sustained by a similarly partisan motivation.
Furthermore, the only people making grand sweeping predictions about the policy priorities and goals of the new administration are the extreme fringe of wishful thinkers on the pro-Trump side and the #RabidResistance Trump haters, mostly the latter. Most Americans appear to be taking a wait and see approach. The sensible approach.
Hey I'm new here. Can I get your definitions of "liberal" and "left", and which one you are? Without them I can't grok what you're point of view is. (Not trolling or being snarky, I just really don't know.)
Before the switch, Republicans sounded like Wall Street. Romney lost in 2012 because he IS a billionaire and couldn't think or talk outside the aristocrat circle. Obama was equally tied but didn't SOUND like it. He served Wall Street loyally, approving TARP and approving Romneycare.
It's the same this time with reversed brands. Harris sounds like billionaires and Trump doesn't. Trump won, but he's even MORE firmly in the Wall Street and tech tyrant circle. In 2020 he served the billionaires flawlessly, giving them 10 trillion free dollars and shutting down ALL small businesses. Wet dream for Wall Street. Now he's conjoined to Elon, the transhumanist nightmare.
Biden's administration did some good things, genuinely restricting the Wall Street and tech tyrants and blocking many predatory mergers. But lthe Dems NEVER tallked about their real service to the working class. Instead they just kept shouting the meaningless word "democracy" which doesn't pay the rent.
Yes! Taylor Lorenz’s substack also talks about this, how the left does not have a substantive media arm at all and won’t create one.
If we're assuming that "the left" in this case means favoring a major party alternative, then the Democratic Party is all there is. Perhaps the main reason that the Democrats aren't able to build an equivalent to Rogan is because he's an independent, and that's anathema to the present-day Democratic Party. There's no way for anyone to try and claim an authentically independent space as a Trump opponent without also going after the big-budge Establishment Prestige Legacy media alliance that has shown time and again that they're a united front of #Kneejerk Resistance, and in the tank for the hidebound Democratic Party establishment. That's a challenging balancing act.
I initially gave the Liberal Media every benefit of the doubt on this, but they haven't bothered to hide their bias. The most they can do when challenged is to 1) point to Fox News--I never thought I'd see the day when Fox allowed the most diversity of opinion of all the large commercial media outlets, but there it is--and 2) defend their bias as justified by the Constitutional Crisis and downward spiral into Fascism represented by the existence of Donald Trump. They have zero insight into how bad they sound to anyone who doesn't share their partisan extremism.
Doesn't that position own enough air time as it is? Furthermore, that monomania has sucked all of the air out of the room. How is anyone to chart a course of Trump opposition from the left that isn't fatally hindered by the avalanche of top-volume hyperbole from 24/7 TV networks?
Finally--and this is perhaps the real undoing of the "find the Rogan of the Left" project--who says Joe Rogan is all that Right Wing, ideologically? I realize that he gave a late-breaking endorsement to Trump, but Kamala Harris literally wouldn't give him a chance to hear out her views face to face, after he invited her. The #Resistance insists on jacketing Rogan as the new Rush Limbaugh, and that's just calumny. I was listening to Limbaugh in 1990, and I always knew where he was going to land on a given issue; the narrow ideological spectrum of his guests; his self-satisfied status quo pomposity; his cheapshot vaudeville stereotypes; his closed mind. Joe Rogan is just not the same kind of person. But if the #Resistance admits that, their whole game falls apart.
I'm in my usual place between an election and and the inauguration of a newly installed President: the new administration hasn't done anything yet. Trump hasn't given me anything to either oppose or support. I'll be keeping tabs on the appointments. But there really isn't much else to say.
You hit the nail on the head. There was a reason for all that censorship on pre-Elon Twitter and the Biden administration's attempt to create a 'Misinformation Governance Board." With free speech and free elections, far-left political parties cannot stay in power.
Good media comes from a place of truth and authenticity. Bad media comes from a place of manipulation and obfuscation. In a free marketplace, one of those models will thrive, the other withers and dies.
I meant liberal (“creating”a media arm does imply a major party backing) but the point could still stand for the left in terms of even just grassroots influence or independent progressives/leftists. I can’t think of many prominent voices on the left in the last 4 years, and would invite recommendations if you know of any.
I like Democracy Now, the Pacifica network news show. Always have, even though I don't have Amy Goodman's ideological allegiance. Amy's a real Leftist, an old-school Marxist socialist. (Left of Bernie Sanders, who is in fact pretty much a socialist ideologue in his own right, only affiliated with the Democratic Establishment because they aren't the Republicans.) It's a bias that sometimes gets me to roll my eyes. Sometimes it's just wrong. But for many stories, the reportage is invaluable: competent, historically rigorous, and well-researched. The ideological bias is tolerable, because it rarely descends into outright dishonesty, lying from beginning to end. I can follow the logic of the Marxist social diagnosis; I often find merit in it. More often, it's the proposed solutions that raise my hackles. I'm non-ideological. I take my policy positions on a case by case basis. A poor fit with broad ideological templates that imply that their blueprint uses more or less the same gloss to provide a solution for Everything.
Liberal not left. Ugh please do not confuse us with them :)
The American "left" is connected at the hip and shoulders to American left-liberalism and so long as this Siamese twinship continues, the bigger twin (we're talking King Kong connected to a Barbie doll) will drag that little puppet all over the map.
The two terms have such elastic meanings--and peculiarly idiosyncratic features, as defined in the US--that it's very difficult to write about them in a way that isn't confusing. Hence the extensive revisions to my first post.
A more shorthand way of saying what I was getting at is "how does any podcaster express their opposition to policies of the Trump administration without sounding as knee-jerk unhinged as Rachel Maddow?" The failed #RabidResistance effort has poisoned the entire media atmosphere, and made it extremely difficult for new voices to emerge as Trump critics. Although I have to say that I've found no evidence that Joe Rogan himself is in the tank for Trump, and therefore every policy goal of his administration. That's a #RabidResistance partisan frame. Political partisans are unable to process any dissent from their views as anything other than as opposition sustained by a similarly partisan motivation.
Furthermore, the only people making grand sweeping predictions about the policy priorities and goals of the new administration are the extreme fringe of wishful thinkers on the pro-Trump side and the #RabidResistance Trump haters, mostly the latter. Most Americans appear to be taking a wait and see approach. The sensible approach.
Hey I'm new here. Can I get your definitions of "liberal" and "left", and which one you are? Without them I can't grok what you're point of view is. (Not trolling or being snarky, I just really don't know.)
Sounding like an aristocrat always loses.
Before the switch, Republicans sounded like Wall Street. Romney lost in 2012 because he IS a billionaire and couldn't think or talk outside the aristocrat circle. Obama was equally tied but didn't SOUND like it. He served Wall Street loyally, approving TARP and approving Romneycare.
It's the same this time with reversed brands. Harris sounds like billionaires and Trump doesn't. Trump won, but he's even MORE firmly in the Wall Street and tech tyrant circle. In 2020 he served the billionaires flawlessly, giving them 10 trillion free dollars and shutting down ALL small businesses. Wet dream for Wall Street. Now he's conjoined to Elon, the transhumanist nightmare.
Biden's administration did some good things, genuinely restricting the Wall Street and tech tyrants and blocking many predatory mergers. But lthe Dems NEVER tallked about their real service to the working class. Instead they just kept shouting the meaningless word "democracy" which doesn't pay the rent.
"when the liberal media spoke truth to power as opposed to speaking power to truth"
Brilliant. "Why are they voting against their own interests?" they ask.
Keep digging Mo ! 😎👍🍻