Republican “it” boy Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas) recently appeared on the “Joe Rogan Experience” podcast in an episode that lasted nearly three hours.
Crenshaw garnered a lot of media attention when “Saturday Night Live’s” Pete Davidson mocked Crenshaw’s eyepatch, an accessory he’s worn since losing an eye in combat on behalf of the United States. Crenshaw handled the remarks with dignity and grace, even appearing on SNL to joke with Davidson and bring to light his ultimate message — civil political discourse.
During Crenshaw’s three-hour discussion with Rogan, he talked about how civil political discourse has been lost in social media and woke culture. He discussed how the culture has become so polarized because social media has increased the space in which people can knock down others.
While Crenshaw partially blames social media companies, he also blames the people who take to social media to discuss political issues. Rogan and Crenshaw then redirected the conversation to “woke culture” and intersectionality.
Crenshaw’s breakdown of the political and social state of the country, points out the most intense problems we see today, but he also points out a very easy solution. Here’s a segment of their conversation.
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Dan Crenshaw (DC): Maybe they should recognize that [these algorithms are] extenuating that anger, quite a bit. And, you have to ask yourself at a certain point, well why? Why encourage that? It’s not helpful.
Joe Rogan (JR): No, it isn’t helpful and it seems like it’s only for profit. The reason why they do it is because the more people click on things the more advertising revenue they’re going to generate. I mean, it’s not a malicious idea. It’s just the algorithms have figured out, what’s the best way to keep people engaged. And that’s through outrage, it’s not through cuteness. Or adorable memes.
DC: It’s frustrating. You know what tweet is gonna get 50,000 plus likes. It’s gotta be hard-hitting. It’s gotta be punchy. It’s not gonna be like your nuanced, thoughtful take on issue “x.” That’s not gonna get a ton of traction. So there’s an incentive there. And it’s not totally the social media companies’ fault. Like, we always have to look to ourselves as a culture, I think. And be a little introspective. And just ask ourselves, why am I reacting… do I want to be this way? Do I want to be that person that reacts so angrily? That posts comments to somebody that I would never have the guts to say to their face? Do you really want to be that person? We have to ask ourselves as a culture about that. It’s a lot of what I wrote about after the “Saturday Night Live” thing.
We have to get to this point, and it’s a pretty low standard. Where we’re attacking ideas and not people. And, it’s a low standard, frankly, as far as political discourse. But it’s a good place to start.
JR: It is a problem. And there is a problem with the gatekeepers of social media. That these companies are all left with their policies. And they might be right with their business practices. And David Packman came on here and argued that, and it actually makes a lot of sense. In terms of how they still shuffle money overseas and avoid taxes. It’s a lot of right-wing business practices, but my thought on that is it’s probably just compartmentalization and you’re dealing with business people that have taken over some multi-billion-dollar corporation. This is the business aspect of it, and then you’ve got your social engineering aspect of it.
The social engineering aspect of it is very problematic for me. There was an article that was written recently. And one of the guys, was saying something about me and that, no, silencing white nationalists and keeping them off your platform is not censorship. Which is the dumbest way to sort of boil down my position on censorship and ignore the real problem of other people deciding what someone can or can’t say. And what is or isn’t offensive. And one of the best examples is a woman named Megan Murphy. She’s what’s called a trans-exclusionary, radical feminist.
She was in a debate with people about whether or not trans women should be able to invade feminist women spaces. So, a person who is biologically male, who becomes a female later in life, should be able to make decisions in feminist spaces.
DC: Like in their sports and all that.
JR: Yes, the sports is a big one for me. She says, but a man is never a woman. This is what she says. Twitter asks her to take it down. So, she takes it down, takes a screenshot of it, and reposts it. Like f-ck you, I’m gonna put it up this way. They ban her for life. You know who’s on Twitter for life? O.J. Simpson. O.J. Simpson murdered two people, he went to jail for armed kidnapping. He’s on everyday.
DC: Hamas, among other things.
JR: Megan Murphy, she says a man is not a woman. She’s correct biologically. I mean, if we want to decide socially and culturally that we’re going to accept this woman as a man is a completely different discussion. But she’s right. She’s biologically correct.
But it’s woke culture in its most boiled down form. It has nothing to do with white nationalism. It has nothing to do with race. It has nothing to do with a person that feels like their own particular protected group, being a feminist, being a woman, and trying to like carve out rules where women are protected. And she’s saying, ‘Well I don’t like the fact that these trans women are entering into this space and dominating it in certain aspects.’
DC: It’s an example of this intersectional coalition they’ve created. It’s coming to terms with itself. And, a lot of feminist groups aligned with us against the “Equality Act.” Because the “Equality Act” would have put into place biological men getting into women’s sports. Among other things, by the way. A lot of feminist groups were coming out and saying, ‘No this is not correct, we’re a feminist group, so let’s protect women.’ Which I fully agree with.
On a deeper level, it’s interesting to watch that intersectional coalition just implode. And it stems from their desire to divide everyone up into three categories, oppressed, oppressors, and then the champions of the oppressed.
