It’s no longer a question of curiosity. It’s complicity.

Joe Rogan, once a meathead philosopher whose podcast flirted with the conspiratorial fringes, has now blown past the boundary into something far darker: a pipeline for antisemitism, medical disinformation, and revisionist history masquerading as “free thought.” And he’s doing it with a smirk, a shrug, and a platform bigger than any news network in America.

Fifteen million Spotify followers. Hundreds of millions of monthly downloads. And lately, a guest list pulled straight from the sewers of the internet.

Let’s start with Ian Carroll. Presented as a “narrative analyst,” Carroll used his Joe Rogan Experience appearance to claim Jeffrey Epstein was part of a global Jewish crime syndicate, that Israel was founded by mobsters, and—without evidence—that it helped orchestrate 9/11. Rogan didn’t push back. He leaned in.

Then came Darryl Cooper, known to Twitter as @MartyrMade. Cooper isn’t just a conspiracy theorist. He’s a Holocaust revisionist. He paints Hitler as misunderstood, suggests Kristallnacht was a false flag, and frames Nazi antisemitism as a response to Jewish manipulation. On Rogan’s show, Cooper recited this garbage in long, uninterrupted stretches. Rogan listened, nodded, and changed the subject.

As if that wasn’t enough, Rogan gave a two-hour platform to Dr. Suzanne Humphries, a discredited vaccine denialist who argues the polio vaccine caused more harm than the disease itself. Again, no real challenge. Just “fascinating stuff.”

And then Douglas Murray sat across from Rogan last week and called him out—gently. Murray, a conservative British intellectual, warned Rogan he was laundering extremism under the guise of balance. Rogan deflected, of course. He always does. “Just letting people talk,” he says.

But when “just talking” includes giving airtime to people who deny the Holocaust, spread vaccine lies, and blame Jews for global crises, it’s not discourse. It’s propaganda.

Rogan is no longer the stoner Socrates he once pretended to be. He’s a culture-shaping megaphone for disinformation, and he’s playing footsie with fascism while raking in Spotify cash.

This is how rot spreads: not with a bang, but with a bro. With a laugh. With plausible deniability and a Spotify exclusive.

No one man should have this mic if he’s going to use it to whisper poison into millions of ears. But here we are. And he’s only getting louder.

They suck at everything but sticking together.

Republicans, once the party of Lincoln and liberty, now operate more like a grief cult in denial, lamenting an America that never was and torching the one that is.

They have weaponized nostalgia, fused it with grievance, and packaged it into a brand that sells fear of the future as patriotism—flags on trucks, guns in churches, and the gall to call it freedom.

This is not the Grand Old Party; this is the party of the perpetually pissed, who view compassion as weakness and cruelty as governance.

From climate change to healthcare, education to infrastructure, they have no platform beyond the negation of whatever the Democrats propose, like toddlers smearing crayon across the wallpaper because someone else dared to decorate.

Their economic policy is a Ponzi scheme for the rich, their social policy a theological cosplay, and their immigration stance a rotating panic button pushed every election year like clockwork.

They traffic in a politics of bad faith—literally and metaphorically—where truth is optional but obedience is mandatory.

Their recent flirtation with fascism isn’t a bug, it’s a beta test, and the results are in: the base loves it.

They scream about freedom while banning books, cheer on small government while stuffing it into your uterus, and whine about cancel culture while trying to disappear drag queens, diversity, and dissent.

At the state level, they gerrymander democracy into submission, and at the federal level, they hold the nation hostage with the finesse of a drunk uncle waving a steak knife at Thanksgiving.

And through it all—through the insurrections, impeachments, and indictments—there remains a stubborn refusal among “reasonable Republicans” to call any of it what it is: shameful, dangerous, un-American.

Anti-science; anti-intellectualism; ant-choice. If Democrats lack spine, Republicans lack soul.

They are not conservatives; they are regressives cosplaying as revolutionaries, hellbent on dragging the country back to a past where only a few had rights and the rest knew their place.

And their singular success—perhaps their only one—is convincing half the country that spite is a strategy and cruelty is a cure.

History may not judge them kindly, but cruelty doesn’t worry about history.

It votes.

It gerrymanders.

And it always shows up wearing a red hat.

Pain is the point.

That’s the animating force behind Trump’s base in 2025. Not prosperity. Not policy. Not some grand vision for the future. Just pain—administered downward and in bulk.

The country is a mess. Stocks are sliding. Groceries are up. Federal workers are being laid off. Immigration raids are plucking students off sidewalks. Stability is gone.

Yet somehow, the people who put Donald Trump back in the White House feel no regret. No doubt. No second thoughts about electing a man with six bankruptcies, two impeachments, and one felony conviction.

Why? Because in Trump’s America, success is relative. And the only thing better than getting ahead is making sure someone else falls behind.

Psychologists call it downward social comparison. When your own situation feels bleak, you look down, not up. You don’t have to feel good—you just have to feel better than.

That’s the fuel of modern Trumpism. Not belief in him, but belief that he’s making the right enemies suffer.

Trump didn’t promise to save his voters. He promised to punish their enemies. And in that, he’s been wildly effective.

Wages are stagnant, but liberals are losing teaching jobs. Your health insurance sucks, but immigrants are being deported. Your cousin’s factory closed, but your old Facebook enemy’s pronouns got mocked on national TV. The border’s a disaster, but at least someone darker-skinned got roughed up in the process.

It’s emotional math: I’m hurting, but if you’re hurting more, I’m winning.

So when chaos breaks loose, the base doesn’t flinch. They cheer. Federal layoffs? That’s draining the swamp. ICE raids? That’s taking our country back. Book bans? That’s sticking it to the smug elites. It doesn’t matter if it fixes anything. It matters that it feels like payback.

This isn’t a conservative movement anymore. It’s a retribution cult. And it doesn’t hide it. The cruelty isn’t collateral—it’s the message. Trump doesn’t offer leadership. He offers vengeance. And that’s a hell of a drug for a country built on grievance.

So how do you fight that?

Maybe you don’t. Not with optimism. Not with kumbaya coalitions or Sunday morning sermonizing. Trumpism isn’t a misunderstanding—it’s a demand. The base doesn’t want change. They want the scoreboard to show their enemies are bleeding.

We need to stop looking for regret. There is none. Democrats need to stop waiting for a tide to turn. It won’t. This isn’t about finding common ground. It’s about recognizing there’s a whole swath of the country that likes the ground they’re standing on—because it’s on someone else’s neck.

You don’t reason with that.

You outnumber it. You outmaneuver it. Maybe you third-party it. You survive it.

And you stop pretending this is anything but what it is.