You would only believe that if you don't actually talk to your neighbors. In the real world (i.e. not the corporate media) most people have more moderate and nuanced viewpoints. Demonizing and alienating those people is not a winning political strategy.
This is, by the way, one reason why the Joe Rogan Experience podcast has been so amazingly popular. The host comes across as a moderate leftist, but he has guests from across the political spectrum and gives them a chance to fully explain their views instead of shouting at them. The corporate media are naturally horrified by this since it undermines their ability to drive ratings by pushing a false "red versus blue" narrative.
Not trying to fit into your red vs blue grouping, but I don’t think anyone considers Joe Rogan to be left at all. He’s generally seen at Dr Oz for 30 year old dudes. I’ve listened to some after hearing him hyped up and generally fitting into the target demographic. Didn’t find much nuance.
Rogan claims to have voted for Barack Obama twice. That's pretty typical for a moderate leftist. He gives his guests a chance to express a lot more nuance than you see in mainstream media channels. Most of the criticism comes from people who haven't actually listened to many episodes all the way through, and just rely on biased takes from critics or short quotes taken out of context. I also used to have a negative opinion until I played some whole episodes with interviews of really interesting people.
Youre skipping the criticism of his guest list. He's had Bernie Sanders on what, once, twice? Then he's had no other major leftist political figures or commentators but has has loads of extreme right wing figures including crackpots like Alex Jones.
Joe Rogan can claim he is a moderate leftist all he wants, but his guest list on JRE does not support that
You're really missing the point. The JRE podcast has very few straight up politicians as guests. But it does frequently have guests who express leftist views as part of a broader conversation about other topics. For example Oliver Stone or Meghan Murphy or Ben Burgis or Andrew Dessler.
This is why the show resonates with a lot of listeners who are themselves moderates and don't buy into the fake news narrative about an irreconcilable political divide.
I don't watch and don't know much about Joe Rogan, but what would be the point of inviting guests that share your viewpoint? You already know what they're going to say, and so do your watchers.
It seems more beneficial to legitimate inquiry to invite moderates with an opposing viewpoint, and more conducive to ratings (drama) to invite polarizing figures of all ilk (Alex/Bernie) but particularly those whose viewpoint differs most from your own.
That is an argument with some merit, but I don’t believe it applies here. Rogan brings on many polarizing guests, they happen to be mostly conservative. It’s not like he’s bringing on only moderates from all branches of politics
If I'm conservative, but my friends are liberal, am I a liberal? Or maybe I'm not a conservative, and they're not liberals: we all hold different nuanced opinions based on our own life and personal experience. Binning someone based on a subset of the company they keep is dismissive at best and purposefully malignant at worst.
I’m binning a talk show host who dabbles in politics into a political bin based on their political guests. Judging them on the people they platform is explicitly what you should do. This isn’t his private life with friends and family I’m judging him on. This is especially in light of the fact that he claims to be moderate because he “has anyone on” while his actions do not show that to be true.
I don’t mean to single you out, so please don’t take the next question as a personal attack but as curiosity. I’ve seen this argument pop up in the past few months that you can’t judge someone by their actions or statements or infer their beliefs based off of them. The reasoning has boiled down to either not taking into account their entire life or not being able to know their thoughts so I couldn’t possibly be able to accurately hold an opinion of them. Where did you get this belief/feeling or am I misinterpreting what you are saying?
I'll bite, but I'd like to preface my response by saying that I'm not particularly a fan of Joe Rogan, even having watched a couple of his shows. The issue with saying that someone is a 'moderate liberal' is that that implies that there is a center to the extremes of the political spectrum somewhere; as the Overton window shifts (especially in the context of, say, hosting a very conservative guest) the relative political leanings of the people involved in the conversation will shift as well. (Thus if Joe Rogan is a moderate conservative who hosts a lot of extreme conservatives, he may come off of as a moderate liberal to his audience).
So with that out of the way, here's my response:
If you're familiar with the issues of Nash equilibriums and Mesa-alignment, you should know that a person's actions will sometimes contradict their inner motivations (e.g. peer pressure), or that people will compromise on their beliefs in the short run in the interest of preserving their beliefs in the long run (e.g. expressing moderate political beliefs when one's convictions run much deeper).
So in one sense, you're right: we can never know the 'true' inner motivations of somebody else. This is why we say "actions speak louder than words" (or thoughts); ultimately, the rubber hits the road we have to equate one's external actions with their internal beliefs.
I would say it's your right to express your opinion about what you think of others. I'm not arguing that 'because we don't know Joe Rogan's inner alignment, we can infer his political leanings at all.' What I am saying, though, is that Joe Rogan is not his podcast, and there are a number of reasons why a liberal talk show host would host more conservatives than liberals. I think it would be fair to say that Joe Rogan is generally in favor of free speech, and surrounding oneself with opinions that contradict one's own beliefs are a good way to refine how you express the beliefs you hold. Belief is ultimately determined by experience, but the same experience may result in different beliefs in different people (again, boils down to inner alignment).
While the people you surround yourself may affect your beliefs and political leanings in the long run, I believe that the guests on Joe Rogan's show vary wildly in their beliefs (e.g. he's hosted both Bernie Sanders and hyperconservatives) and Rogan's role in the podcast is mostly to act as a sounding board to help the other person express their opinions; therefore I feel that Joe Rogan's action of (supposedly) hosting more conservative guests than liberal ones does not imply that Joe Rogan is conservative.
But on top of that, the original spirit of my comment was to point out that the political lines we usually draw completely discard the nuance present in the real world. Some of the beliefs may be perceived as conservative, and others liberal. Projecting someone's complex (often hidden or inferred) political beliefs onto a relative political spectrum (e.g. liberal vs conservative) is a poor measure at best and purposefully tribalistic and reductive at worst.
Perhaps it would make more sense if we identified in the conversation the difference between Joe Rogan the private individual and Joe Rogan the public persona.
I can see the point you make when it comes to a persons personal life, but when it comes to a publicly aired entertainment show the choice of guests and opinions aired _are_ the political leanings of that public persona. He’s cannot just a sounding board as he is making the decisions of who gets air time.
This is, by the way, one reason why the Joe Rogan Experience podcast has been so amazingly popular. The host comes across as a moderate leftist, but he has guests from across the political spectrum and gives them a chance to fully explain their views instead of shouting at them. The corporate media are naturally horrified by this since it undermines their ability to drive ratings by pushing a false "red versus blue" narrative.