Why Some Want Nate Bargatze To Fall
And The Trap That Keeps People Stuck (Comedy Mindhacks #117)
When I lived in Hawai’i, I worked with a guy who loved telling stories about his younger years, his 20s and 30s, which I personally wouldn’t describe as his “wonder years.” Most of his stories involved bars, bad decisions, and fights. He and his brother had a habit or, should I say a “hobby,” of going to bars in downtown Waikiki and intentionally seeking out the biggest guys they could find just to start something. When his brother wasn’t available, he’d go alone.
Most people would explain that kind of behavior using terms like “Napoleon Complex” or “Short Man Syndrome,” and maybe there’s something to that. I’ve never been a psychologist, but I do know there’s something deeply human about wanting to see the top dog brought down. Most of us love underdog stories. Sometimes we love them so much that we start manufacturing them ourselves.
That’s part of why I’ve been thinking about Nate Bargatze lately. By almost any measure, he’s at the top of the comedy world right now, with record-breaking ticket sales, a movie, a television game show, and a theme park project in development. Whether you personally enjoy his comedy or not, it’s hard to argue with the run he’s on. And what’s equally predictable is the reaction that kind of success tends to generate.
I’ve watched that happen to Bargatze recently. He attended a UFC event at the White House, took a photo with RFK, and suddenly people were announcing, with impressive certainty and remarkably little evidence, that they knew exactly who he was and what he believed. “MAGA!” some said. “He never claimed to be smart!” declared others. A few announced they’d never watch him again. Ugh! Miss me with the smugness already.
And here’s another aspect to what makes all this really strange: Bargatze has never been someone who broadcasts his political opinions, which seems to be a deliberate choice. But somewhere along the way, “doesn’t do political comedy” got twisted by haters and people who’ve not asked whether their conclusions actually follow from the evidence into “he not supposed to have political views,” and then twisted again into “his political views are whatever I’ve decided they are.” That’s not reasoning; no, that’s conclusion-first thinking. Literally, it’s a string of logical fallacies (Confirmation Bias; Motivated Reasoning; Cherry Picking just to name a few). It is, in a nutshell, a predetermined conclusion looking for something to attach itself to.
And while people were generating all that outrage over Bargatze’s attendance at a fight, numerous folks have pointed out that almost nobody leveling vitriol against Bargatze seemed bothered that Mark Zuckerberg, the man who owns Facebook, where most of this outrage was being performed, was sitting at the same event. That detail’s worth a moment of reflection because it highlights the absurdity of all the feigned outrage. I often wonder: Don’t these people ever get tired of the outrage machine?!
Let me say this: I still watch Bill Maher pretty much every weekend even though I vehemently disagree with him on plenty of things. One reason I keep choosing to watch him is that he regularly sits down with people he disagrees with and actually talks to them. But that shouldn’t be remarkable; it should be normal. Yet, somehow, we’ve arrived at a place where many people seem more interested in identifying enemies than understanding people, and more comfortable with a clean caricature than an actual conversation, because conversation is harder.
Conversation requires people to stay curious, and somewhere along the way a lot of folks traded curiosity for a stupid system built on and fueled by outrage. They’ve subscribed to a ready-made framework that tells them exactly what to think the moment someone does something it can be applied to. Once the system’s in place, it does all the work: No questions required, no humility required, no discomfort required. It’s efficient, and it’s also a trap.
Here’s what I’ve come to believe: Contempt is the enemy of growth. Whereas curiosity asks questions and opens doors, contempt assumes answers and closes doors. Curiosity leads somewhere new while contempt just stays stuck on a loop of outrage to outrage to outrage to outrage, regardless who today’s target is, and the person running that loop never actually goes anywhere. That’s what I keep thinking about when I see the certainty-filled articles and comments about Bargatze.
It’s easy to see that the people writing these kinds of things are stuck. They’ve quietly subscribed to a way of looking at the world that’s replaced the hard work of understanding people with the easy work of filing them away. And once you’ve filed someone away, you stop learning anything from them. You stop asking questions and you just get more certain and more stranded in whatever version of yourself you were when you started.
The healthiest people I know have stayed curious. As a college professor and college debate coach, I push my students on this constantly. I push them to talk to people they disagree with, to ask questions before they draw conclusions, and to keep in mind that it’s a bit harder to hate someone up close, and a bit harder to reduce someone to a label after you’ve actually heard them out. Distance and lack of curiosity is what makes the caricatures easy. So, either a) Close the distance; or, b) Shut up until you do.
You know, my old coworker never actually won anything in those bars. He’d pick a fight with the biggest guy in the room, and whether he won or lost, he never really won. He went home the exact same person he was when he walked in. The guy he fought went home the same, too. Nothing changed. He was burning energy on a loop, mistaking motion for momentum and a lot of people online are doing the exact same thing, just in a different bar called social media. The only way out of that loop, and the only way forward, is to stay curious. It’s harder but it also happens to be the secret to much of life.
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Here's the thing: there are two reasons those on the left designate those who "don't like to talk about politics" as "probably conservative".
First, because time and time again, those people have turned out to be conservative. And because they determined that being conservative isn't popular, they decided it was in their best interests to not announce that fact. It's only a matter of time before they can't contain themselves any longer, and they say or do something that shows they were a conservative all along. Leftists are tired of pretending that someone isn't really 'staying above the fray' and instead is just 'hiding their views'. This is especially true in the dating world, where any woman who hears from a guy 'I don't pay attention to politics' often finds out within months that the guy is 'secretly' conservative.
And second, because the actions of this administration in particular have become so toxic to everyday Americans that ignoring them is not enough anymore. I hate to use the Nazi comparison, but no one sympathizes with Germans who just tried to ignore everything that was going on around them in the 1930s and 1940s. Similarly, if someone isn't vocally against this administration, then they are accepting of it, and that gives more power to the status quo.
That's why Bargatze is being treated the way is. It is impossible to go to what is essentially a propaganda event for Trump and take pictures with someone who has used the right-wing propaganda machine to push his own unfounded opinions and not be at least sympathetic to conservative views. The whole event was toxic to the majority of the American public, which is the same reason why the majority of the artists who were manipulated into joining the Freedom 250 concert backed out as soon as they realized it was associated so strongly with Trump and not America in general. If Bargatze really wanted to not be political and not broadcast his views, he wouldn't have gone to this event, which was by its very nature political. It was a birthday party for Trump, for crying out loud.
In a time when people feel helpless and unable to affect change in their country, they are going to express their views any way they can. And one of the ways they do this is by boycotting people with views they see as immoral or destructive. And let's be perfectly honest; the vast majority of people who are hating on Bargatze here also hate on Zuckerburg on a regular basis. It's just a lot harder to cut something as ubiquitous as Facebook out of your life as compared to not listening to Bargatze anymore. And by the same token, it's likely their 'cancellation' of Bargatze will have a lot more meat to it than one person against something as gargantuan as Facebook.
As for 'we need to have more conversation', a lot of people have given up on this specifically because of who leads the Republican party. Trump routinely counters coherent arguments with name calling, vitriol, and lying profusely. As a consequence, a lot of his followers do the same. I've lost count of the number of times I've tried to have a legitimate discussion with someone on the right only to be met with insults, mocking, or being accused of 'TDS'. There's no possibility for discussion there. I'm a lot more stubborn than most, but I'm not surprised by the number of people who have just stopped trying. Some people you just can't learn anything from, mostly because they stopped learning themselves a long time ago.
And as a point of fact, telling people that they should 'shut up until they're willing to have a discussion with others' is just a way for you to close off others in the same way that you're accusing them of doing. Because you've stopped listening to the reasons WHY they don't feel they can have those discussions anymore.
Personally, I stay curious and try to have those discussions. But there's only so many attempts with someone I can make before writing them off as 'beyond talking to'. Discussion is a two-way street, and if someone slaps the olive branch out of my hand at first meeting, I'm unlikely to pull out a second one.