I’m not doubting what you say about Rogan’s audience, I watch him if he’s speaking to someone I believe is interesting and I’ve never seen him give any of his guests a hard time. I genuinely have no idea about his audience but I like relaxed conversational style of interviews. Politics is a kind of gladiatorial combat, it’s visceral and increasingly dripping with hate for the “other side”. It’s not a kind place and nobody is whiter-than-white would be my observation after 69 years on the planet. However you cut it, the Dems picked themselves a shit candidate - there’s no way to sugar-coat it. Drawing on my lived experience of thriving and surviving in the Corporate shark tank of a Fortune 500 Company, I spotted that Harris had that “rabbit in headlights” look of fear in the earliest days of her campaign. She was always going to lose and she lost badly.
I’m sure America will survive a Trump term !
But what do we Brits know, looking at our recent history !
I think America will survive -- but my concern is more certain Americans -- the ones he and his more Machiavellian minions plus the more craven of the rabble want to enact their revenge upon. It starts with immigrants, then moves to LGTBQ people, then "Democrats" then women at large (and I'm obviously missing many other non-white, non-Christian sub-groups). Many members of these groups will suffer -- and suffering begins with feeling frightened and hopeless.
It is Donald Trump and his party who have made them feel this way.
Trump is not interested in making America better for Americans. He's interested in making America better for HIM. Which means he's richer, protected from the consequences of his past actions, and makes those who opposed him suffer his "revenge".
The only thing that would make this worse is if he weren't stupid or lazy, but since he's both, and so venal, it's his complete and utter self-interest that probably limits the damage on the nation. But also maybe not, given that the Senate, House, court system, press and probably bureaucracy are increasingly powerless to prevent him from doing whatever he wants.
If those who supported him cannot see this, and immediately reject it on it's face, than they either a) don't care or b) are blind and deaf to it. As such, I don't think it matters one whit who the candidate he was running against was.
As I've taken great pains to explain over my many years on these threads, my issue is with Trump, not Conservatives generally. I voted for Mitt Romney. I voted for Ronald Reagan. I have voted for other Republicans too. I vote for the candidate I believe is the most pragmatic and thoughtful first; the politics come second.
I lost faith in many Americans' common sense when he won the first time, but we survived. That I had any hope at all this time in the face of overwhelming evidence as to who and what he is after his first term, then the pandemic, then 1/6, then the court cases, then the campaign is my own foolish optimism getting the better of me again. What's the phrase? Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
It's not Trump that fooled me -- it's the American people who did.
They won't again.