Jon Stewart hasn’t changed, and that’s the problem. As far as his comedy, no notes. He’s undeniably funny. But his politics just leave a sour taste. His enlightened centrist voice of reason shtick hits different now.
He’s defended people like Rogan and Chapelle. And I get it, they’re his buddies. He doesn’t see them as public figures, but as flawed individuals. And that’s a valid perspective, just a rarefied one.
His first guest upon his return was the editor of The Economist magazine who gushed about Reaganomics and Thatcherism. She framed the rise of right-wing politics in the West as first and foremost a threat to the neoliberal world order as Jon nodded along. And we all know that progressiveism is just the other side of the horseshoe to people who think this way.
I’ll be watching Stewart, and I really do admire him. But never meet your heroes I guess.
I think in the age of one-liners (Twitter, tik tok, etc) people have gotten so fucking stupid that they have lost their ability to digest a nuanced take. If it takes more than two sentences for a fox news host to say any liberal position is 100% and perfectly undeniably the worst thing in the world, they’re “going woke” (the brain-dead MAGA catch-all for any position they don’t like but can’t actually articulate why). If a liberal merely explains in good faith a right wing position that they’re going to argue against, they’re “enlightened centerists” (the brain dead left wing catch-all for any discussion that isn’t ** immediately** a shrill cry of fascism)
To be extremely clear, Jon is still the smartest guy in the room, and it’s just that you’ve gotten a lot dumber in the last 10 years on your diet of twitter.
A whole lot of people lack critical thinking skills and only half of them vote GOP.
I think the problem isn’t so much nuance but that there is now a small(!) but very angry group of progressives. Reddit used to be, and lemmy still is mostly composed of these. I mean, those slightly to the left of the event horizon of tankianism.
The central fundamental outlook of open minded intelligent people today is that climate change is going to ruin or snuff out billions of lives, and our institutions are structurally incapable to address this, and shit is continuing to trend downwards, any political revolution will be a lie(obama) followed by a counter revolution (trump) and any new technology will be enshittified. There is a quiet voice saying this in the back of our minds: we are in collapse.
This explains why the temperature in all camps is raised so insanely, because we can’t stand to look at the abyss in front of us we double down or become hysterical. The old sticks just don’t work any more.
So the anger is about the systems that led us here, the 70 year of lies and propaganda and framing of issues. Like your example, explaining a right wing position - there ARE no right wing positions relevant in politics any more than CAN be discussed in good faith. Continuing to debate if people deserve basic human rights and dignity with people who constantly lie is worse than stupid. The masks are off now.
So well anyway, yeah you can’t invite someone from “The Economist” on the show and think you’re anything but enlightened centristic.
I agree with pretty much everything you’ve said.
I think where we deviate is on why we examine right wing talking points in good faith: not because they might secretly be right, but so we can genuinely understand what what people believe so that any counter-position that we form can be formed against the version of the argument that they believe.
There is no point in constructing a counter argument against our version of an understanding of a position if it isn’t what thiers is, from their perspective we’re skewing a strawman that doesn’t align with their perception anyways. It’s simply a masterbatory exercise at that point, with no persuasive value.
The responsibility, unfortunately, is on the informed to persuade the ignorant that there are systemic issues that have to be resolved to address the in-progress cataclysm. There, unfortunately, isn’t an alternative in which the world as we’ve come to understand it isn’t destroyed.
In short: we can’t afford to silo ourselves and dunk on the right for the purposes of getting mad props from the people who already know the score. It might be self gratifying, but it doesn’t do anything to resolve the societal issues that are allowing this train wreck to unfold.
For the MAGA crowd, “going woke” = showing empathy… and nothing incites MAGAs derision like empathy. They want an unfair society, and anyone who doesn’t must be a threat.