Sometimes—ok, most of the time—it feels like our country has gone insane. Radical woke ideologues push Critical Race Theory in our schools, transgender activists deny science and encourage teenagers to mutilate their bodies, and parents are investigated by the FBI for questioning leftist orthodoxy. All of this is real, and it’s terribly concerning, but Joe Rogan, Dave Chappelle, and Bari Weiss give me hope. I’m not a regular listener of either Rogan’s or Weiss’s podcasts, and Chappelle’s standup is so vulgar that I personally can’t recommend it. However, all three personalities have built some of the most popular and lucrative platforms in the nation, and they’ve done it while directly attacking the woke ideology of the left. Joe Rogan is a constant source of frustration for those who seek to conform all Americans to a progressive agenda. He regularly and openly questions transgender ideology, and has hosted transgender critic, Abigail Shrier, on his podcast. On an episode in March of this year, he pointed out that transgender people receive unequivocal praise for their “transition,” and trans-rights ideologues are unable to have an open and honest discussion about the topic. “They’re indoctrinated into an ideology that demands that you comply,” Rogan said. His comments have been so forceful that Spotify employees were “outraged” that the platform planned to host Rogan’s show. SEE ALSO: Americans Are Terrified of the Other Side of the Aisle… They Should Be Rogan hasn’t stopped there. He’s also been an active critic of the COVID-19 orthodoxy, and encourages his listeners to get healthy to boost their immune systems rather than rely on the vaccine. In addition, he’s given a platform to doctors who want to investigate alternative therapies, like these doctors who have looked at the research on Ivermectin. Bari Weiss is a little more mainstream, but she famously left the New York Times after running afoul of the woke ideologues in her own newsroom. The Jewish columnist was called a “Nazi” and a “racist,” and she accused the Times (correctly) of molding their stories “to fit the needs of a predetermined narrative.” Like Rogan, she launched her own podcast (called “Honestly”), and she writes regular columns on her subscription-based Substack. She frequently hosts guests that question the leftist orthodoxy, such as African-American academic Glenn C. Loury and professor Peter Boghossian. The Boghossian interview is especially worth a listen. The professor famously published fake articles in academic journals to demonstrate the insanity of woke scholarship, and he slammed leftist academia as fake, unserious, and ultimately harmful to students and universities. SEE ALSO: Cleaning House: Out With The Old, In With The Compliant On the other end of the academic spectrum, Dave Chappelle recently released another standup comedy special in which he refused to conform to Democratic talking points on gender and sex. “Gender is a fact,” he said, and questioned whether men who become women are really women. I would include some direct quotes from his material, but again, he’s usually too vulgar to print. That vulgarity didn’t make him immune from leftist criticism, of course. He was slammed as a “transphobic” and accused of not “crafting actual humor,” according to The Daily Wire. None of this is to endorse any of these performers and journalists. I probably disagree with all of them on a wide variety of things. But unlike many of their peers, they’re willing to question the radicalism of their own side of the aisle, and millions of Americans agree with them. Rogan’s podcast consistently leads Spotify’s podcast chart, which makes it the most popular podcast in the country, if not the world. MarketWatch called Bari Weiss’s new enterprise a “mint,” and pointed out that she’s bringing in $800,000 per year on her newsletter alone (not counting her revenue from advertisers). Chappelle is, of course, a comedic legend, and Netflix reportedly pays him millions of dollars for each standup special. In other words, millions of Americans—perhaps a majority of Americans—are more than happy to pay good money to listen to Rogan, Weiss, and Chappelle slam the woke left. If that’s not encouraging, I don’t know what is.
