i think there's a difference between talking to joe rogan - which didn't bother me much - and accepting his endorsement, which leans more towards shrugging off his politics. but, bernie sanders has already established a pattern with this, and this doesn't surprise me.

however.

i sometimes feel like we get this backwards.

i reject claims that being critical of islam is "bigoted" or "racist", especially due to the fact that so much of the criticism is due to islam's own inherent racism and bigotry - and homophobia and misogyny. it's a false equivalency. while it's important to recognize that humans are individuals, and wrong to prejudge them based on their background, it nonetheless remains the case that standing up against prejudice means standing against islam, rather than with it. you can't pretend to stand for equality if you're standing there endorsing islam - it's preposterous, and that kind of hypocrisy needs to be called out loudly. i'm wiling to do that openly, and i'm willing to take flack for it.

so, i reject the idea that i'm in any way promoting oppression - i insist that i'm consistently fighting against it, and my critics are deeply confused as to what the right side of this debate is, or actively supporting oppression, themselves.

but, i recognize that a lot of people might not want my endorsement, either because they legitimately disagree with me (in which case they're wrong, and need to be convinced of it) or because they just don't want to engage in as subtle a debate as this is. they don't want the controversy...

but, i'd basically tell them to fuck off if they told me that, because politicians don't pick voters, voters pick politicians.

i've decided i'm not endorsing sanders, i'm going to support the greens. the greens might not exactly like my endorsement - i would hope they'd see where i'm coming from, and there are issues that for me are not ballot issues where we'd disagree (such as iran. i'm not voting on iran.), but they might make the choice to say "we don't want this", and that's fine. but, that doesn't change where my self-interest is...

if my ballot issue is about health care, and the party that best represents my interests in health care (speciously) thinks i'm a racist, that doesn't change where my interests on health care are. i'm still going to vote and support the group that is best for me, whether they like it or not.

i think a lot of the disconnect with this comes up with the concept of identity voting. if voting is about joining a club, i'm willing to acknowledge that i'm certainly not in the democratic club, and that i'd no doubt have a lot of disagreements with anybody in the green socialist club. i'd want to join the insurrectionary anarchist club, but that would be a very small club. i completely reject this, though. voting is not about joining a club, it's about advancing one's self interests. i consequently don't really care about these identity issues. but, i abstractly grasp where people are coming from with this, too.

so, should sanders reject rogan's endorsement? i think that if you were expecting him to, you haven't really been paying attention - that wasn't an expectation that is supported by the evidence built up over the last few years. i think he might not realize that it's in his self-interest to say something about it, and that, if he doesn't, it might hurt him with key demographics that he's likely to do poorly with, anyways. he seems to have a flawed concept of the demographics that he needs to win; this is a broad strategic problem, and we'll see how it plays out over the next few weeks. i think he's going to regret the decisions he's made, and his uncritical acceptance of rogan's endorsement is just one example of this.

but, it's ultimately not his place to pick his voters, it's ultimately the place of voters to pick the candidates that best represent their interests.

https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2020/1/27/21081876/joe-rogan-bernie-sanders-henry-kissinger