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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 21, 2024

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I watched the whole thing. The first hour was a bit hard to get through due to Trump being Trump and 'weaving' some long monologues or rehashing the same tired material we've heard before.

After that though, there were quite a few pieces that I found interesting.

  1. I really liked when Trump would bring up something that he was clearly knowledgeable about such as regulations and their effects on businesses. His explanation about how environmental consultants (and some lawyers) are incentivized to drag out Environmental Impact Statements and the like, reflects what I've seen about some of this in the real world.

  2. He seemed to be pro-nuclear and particularly pushing for Small Modular Reactors over (more complex) Large Nuclear Reactors.

  3. He's clearly got a Principal level understanding of the building industry. Actually it was his aside into how building commissioners would ask him to tear something down if it wasn't built to spec that did this (as well as how he stopped himself going into detail about modern construction materials like reinforced concrete). All this knowledge is great when you want new infrastructure to be built. He can sniff out bullshit when people tell him what can and can't be done.

  4. I found it amazing that Trump was really nonplussed when Rogan emphatically described how the media and deep state elements had unfairly crucified him. He reacted like he'd been told the sky is blue. He really must just have that baked into his world view by now.

  5. He really doesn't care about aliens. At all. He seemed to find them so boring it was palpable, while Rogan was wild eyed talking about them.

  6. It was hilarious how they pretended they haven't been trash talking each other in the past. Bridges have been mended it seems.

  7. The message is the medium. I mean that in the sense that Trumps ability to do an unscripted 3hr conversation will stand well in comparison to Harris who couldn't do Rogan due to 'scheduling conflicts'.

  8. I don't know how many new voters this will win over. To be honest I can't see a lot of normies making it through the full 3 hours. The bite sized clips of the interesting parts (JRE clips) will likely be a lot more influential.

After the McDonalds something-burger (heh), this podcast and Kamala's recent lackluster performance, I'm predicting a Trump win at around 55-60% certainty.

you might have the meaning of nonplussed backward - if so its a common mistake no biggie just wanted to mention in the spirit of being helpful

edit: oh no apparently now the dictionary says that in "north america" it can informally mean its opposite now. i guess i'm too late.

Wait, what? When did that change happen? The parent comment to this one is the first time I can remember seeing it used in the informal North American sense, and until reading your edit, I assumed CertainlyWorse got it wrong as well.

i think people who learn it by osmosis through reading often think it means something like unphased, and now enough have used it that way that it's officially a definition. i think i'm fine with it, not a linguistic prescriptionist

it means something like unphased

I think you mean unfazed here.

unphased

ha you're right, bit of an ironic blunder there

nonplussed

Interesting. I've always used it in the North American sense, which is weird because I'm usually a stickler for using the Queen's English.

the Queen's English

I’ve got some bad news for ya bud…

(Well I suppose you didn’t specify the Queen Regnant’s English so…)

Old habits die hard. Elizabeth was much more likeable.

Hasn’t every King Charles dissolved parliament? I’d be rather disappointed if this Charles breaks tradition.

Even if normies can only get through 15-20 minutes, for a voter who gets their information about only the most outrageous and bifurcating statements, any exposure to humanize himself is an incredibly positive move. Going on the podcast circuit was a genius idea supposedly pushed by Baron, and this type of forward thinking really sets himself as a trendsetter instead of an evil bogeyman. It's much harder for the media to discredit his personality when there's a 3-hour long form podcast, even if the interview is fairly benign compared to the interviews by legacy media.

I slightly agree with number 8, at this point the battlelines are largely drawn. I voted before the interview even came out.

Also, I'd like to point that the 18 million views with Rogan is just on Youtube. This doesn't include Spotify or any other media platform where this interview may have been shared.

I actually think 2 - 3 hours of Rogan (or day-time tv) is the "normie" attention span as evidenced by his podcast's reach as well as that of others like the Kelce brothers. 2 -3 hours is also the typical run-time of football or baseball game.

IMO, the extremely-online trying to dunk on "normies" for an alleged lack of attention-span reads more like projection than anything else.