When is Joe going to stop talking about and admonishing the collective and actually make it personally reflective? Even Schulz actually reflects on his personal error, but Joe cannot risk alienating his audience who supported it, or still do. He has to appear like the ‘cool guy just asking questions’, not the ‘brainless idiot who got out of his depth and enabled fascism’. He can’t stand the hit to his self image as a great judge of authenticity/bullshit (truly the most discrepant self image in media). So he adopts the standard comedian rhetorical trick used to build rapport: He talks in the passive, ‘are we really that type of people’ voice. It is an influencer mindset, obsessed with audience.

These guys are total frauds. They completely sold out, assuming they had principles before. They never shut up about Hopf’s “hard times create strong men”, because they clearly think these are the hard times and they are the strong MMA tough men, but there’s no way life is hard for these pampered-ass multimillionaires living in their mansions, and if you took all that away we’d find out they’re as soft as baby shit.