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.
Is this cuz he talked about Biden being old?
Or is this really about Jon Stewart?
Be careful, I heard there is a new rule change in c/PoliticalMemes where questioning the establishment’s narrative about Biden abilities is encouraging people to not vote, and could be considered hate speech. source
Oh pipe down with the nonsense.
Did you not read my source? Maybe the mod who wants to implement it @tenthrow could chime in, because right now your discrediting what I am saying as if I made it up.
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.
If a liberal merely explains in good faith a right wing position that they’re going to argue against, they’re “enlightened centerists”
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.
Could it be more that you’ve changed over the years? And the more you get to know Stewart’s politics, the less you agree with them; because you are now in a different place politically?
So it’s not that Stewart is out of touch or a centrist, or whatever; it’s that you’ve grown up and learned new things that make you think differently than he does. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. It’s life. People go in different directions all the time.
Two things can be true and Jon Stewart is most certainly a centrist hack these days.
