David McElroy

I’ve always been baffled by Joe Rogan’s popularity.

His comedy isn’t funny to me. He often comes across like a thoughtless jerk who doesn’t care about others. He doesn’t seem insightful or interesting to me. He comes across as a blustering buffoon who hasn’t thought much about what he’s saying.

But it’s never crossed my mind that I should try to silence him. I simply don’t listen to him. I might tell others what I think about him. I might express surprise at his popularity. But I don’t want to muzzle him.

A lot of people want to silence Rogan right now.

Much of the mainstream news media and pretty much all of the political left is screaming to stop Rogan from distributing what they call “misinformation.” What they really mean by that is that Rogan has guests on his podcast who hold views which they disagree with. That’s the real issue.

Do you remember a time when the political left championed free speech? Do you remember when this was a core “liberal value” that was important to the left? The old counterculture leftist of the 1960s has taken over the culture — and he’s become the very thing he once knew was evil.

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I felt completely different from the other kids. We moved a lot when I was young, so I was in a new school every year. Atlanta, Knoxville, Meridian, Anniston, Birmingham and Pensacola. That was just through the seventh grade.

I was always the new kid in class. I was always the new “smartest kid in class,” too. But even beyond that, I simply felt different from the others. My thinking was different. I wanted different things. My play was different. I felt like an alien.

But on the outside, I complied with every norm of my childhood culture. I looked and acted like the others. I obeyed their norms. I learned to fit. I didn’t want to, but I learned to play the part that was expected of me. I was forced to learn.

I’ve been thinking about this lately because I’ve been learning about the experiences of high-functioning autistic children and their families. Until recently, I’d never thought about the challenges faced by such families, but now that I’m thinking through the issues involved, I feel a lot of empathy for children in such situations.

As I’ve learned about the therapy considered the “gold standard” for autistic children — “applied behavior analysis” — I’m comparing it to what I experienced as a child. I’m finding a lot of autistic people who say this therapy is abusive. And I don’t know what to think.

How far is it reasonable to go to mold and manipulate a child to fit into his or her society? Is it abusive and immoral to force someone whose nature is fundamentally different from ours to conform to our expectations?

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I got a handwritten note from a friend last week. She had to drop something off for me, so she included several paragraphs of updates about her family.

The note was newsy and seemingly happy, but my gut told me she wasn’t doing well. Some tiny whisper in my mind told me to pay attention to a few words that didn’t quite fit with the rest. And then I suddenly knew — without knowing why — that my friend was miserably unhappy. She was stressed and crumbling inside, despite all the happy talk.

I picked up the phone and called her. I told her that I could tell she’s not doing well and that she was hiding what stress was doing to her. I asked what I could do to help.

“How did you know?!” she asked in a tone of shock. “The people I work with think I’m fine. My family thinks I’m fine. You hardly ever talk to me, so how did you know this about me? You’re right, but how did you know?”

The answer to that is complicated. I don’t read minds. I’m not a psychic. But I do read subtle clues from other people, especially in person. Nobody purposely taught me this skill. In fact, the way I learned was very unhealthy. But it’s a skill that all children need to learn.

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