The Sound of One Window Shifting

when a satire becomes a prophecy

Last night, on Twitter, I rewatched a clip from the Joe Rogan Experience — the moment where Rogan, mocking Douglas Murray, tilted his head and sneered in a fake British accent: “But have you been there?”

He was quoting Murray’s appeal to direct professional experience during a debate with Dave Smith about the Israel–Hamas war. Murray had argued that having been on the ground — in Gaza, in the West Bank, in Israel itself — conferred a kind of insight that reading could not.

And Rogan, when reflecting on the conversation later, took Smith’s side. Not just casually. With mockery. With open derision for the idea that professional experience — particularly the kind of experience Murray has as a war correspondent — counts for anything at all in a discussion about war.

I haven’t been able to stop thinking about that moment. Not because it was offensively stupid, though it was. But because it felt like a hinge.

This morning, I finally realized why. Why I felt compelled to watch that clip over and over — and what the intense deja vu I kept feeling was about.

It marked the moment a satirical novel I read and enjoyed last year stopped feeling like fiction.

Lionel Shriver’s Mania came out last year, to almost no mainstream fanfare. That’s not surprising. The book is scathing, unsparing, and brilliant; which is to say, culturally radioactive. It tells the story of a United States overtaken by a movement for “Cognitive Equality,” a world in which IQ is denounced as hate speech, intellectual disability is rebranded as “alternative processing,” and the gravest sin imaginable is to suggest that some people might be smarter than others.

It’s a razor-edged satire of the trans movement, thinly veiled and unapologetically direct. And when I first read it — and reviewed it here — I thought that was all it was.

I was wrong.

Shriver didn’t just write a trans parody. She wrote a prophecy.

Because what Mania captures — in ways that are only now becoming clear — is not just the absurdity of insisting that identity overrides biology.

It’s the slow, systemic dismantling of discernment itself. About our society failing to recognize the reality that no, not every perspective is equally valid.

Not every person is equally smart.

Not every religion is equally deserving of respect.

And in that sense, the world she imagined is the world we now live in.

Because we’re there.

In Mania, the institutions don’t just affirm nonsense — they punish dissent. The protagonist nearly loses custody of her children for using the word “stupid” at home. Surgeons are hired without reference to qualifications. Elite universities switch to lottery admissions in the name of fairness. And when people express concern, they’re told they’re bigots. Or worse, deniers.

That’s the logic behind the Rogan-Murray moment: that qualifications, expertise, and experience mean nothing compared to the vibe of what feels righteous, empathetic, and trendy. That’s why it stuck with me.

Because the idea that being there — that witnessing war, reporting from rubble, interviewing victims, and living under fire — might make you more qualified to speak than someone who has done some reading?

That idea, which would once have been so flagrantly obvious that stating it clearly would’ve felt condescending, has now become something to mock.

And everyone laughed.

The guest laughed. The audience laughed. Online, the mockery spread.

No one paused to ask what it means that we now collectively roll our eyes at war correspondents — while elevating podcasters, armchair analysts, and Twitter randos with a Substack and a vibe.

That’s Mania. That’s the joke Shriver told.

And now we’re living in the punchline.

The scariest part of her novel wasn’t the language-policing or the institutional cowardice. It was the sense that society had quietly, collectively agreed to pretend. To affirm things everyone knew weren’t true. To nod along with the delusion, because the punishment for reality was too high.

We’re pretending again. Pretending that earned authority means nothing, that vibes trump expertise and experience.

That if someone lands a good jab in a 2-on-1, stacked-deck version of a debate, then they’re right — regardless of how much of their life they’ve spent dodging mortars in Ramallah.

And the thing is, I don’t even agree with everything Douglas Murray says. But I do think he’s earned the right to say it.

Specifically, to say it without being sneered at by men who’ve never once seen the bloody handprints left behind when innocent people drowned in their own blood after having their throats cut by people who take their holy book seriously.

That’s what haunts me about Mania. The sheer volume of things it got right — not just the parody, but the progression. The way good intentions turned to rules, rules turned to punishment, and punishment turned to madness.

And if you think we’re not on that path now — remember what it means that Joe Rogan is the one doing the mockery.

Joe Rogan doesn’t just influence the Overton Window.

He defines it.

If he says something, it becomes sayable. Not universally accepted, not beyond criticism — but permissible. Instantly. Automatically.

He doesn’t need to be right. He doesn’t need institutional backing. He doesn’t need approval from media gatekeepers or academic panels.

His voice alone is enough to move the boundary of what’s allowed.

That is what makes his mockery of Douglas Murray so chilling. Because the moment Rogan laughed at the idea that professional experience — that being there and seeing it for yourself — confers insight, that idea crossed an invisible line.

It didn’t become wrong.

It became worthy of mockery. And that’s more dangerous.

Because mockery doesn’t refute. It delegitimizes.

And when the man who defines the edges of public discourse starts mocking war correspondents in favor of podcast debaters?

That’s not just cultural drift. That’s a shift in gravity.

Rogan isn’t at the edge of the conversation anymore. He’s the center of it — the massive object around which everything else orbits. Politicians, journalists, scientists, influencers — they all curve toward him, whether they like it or not.

So when he echoes a scene straight out of Mania, it’s not just commentary.

It’s confirmation.

We’re not headed for the world Lionel Shriver imagined. We’re in it.

We live there now. All of us.

Shriver saw it coming. She saw the mechanism, not just the moment. She saw how culture would turn — not suddenly, but in stages — until mockery replaced memory, and expertise itself was framed as arrogance.

The book is funny. Darkly, wickedly funny. But it’s not a joke.

Not anymore.

Read it. Before the next mandate comes. Before the next reality gets redefined. Before the next thing you’re not allowed to say is that being in a war, seeing it with your own two eyes, wearing a flak jacket over your very own vital organs, might give you insight into that war.

Because that’s where we are.

And it’s only getting dumber from here.

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About the Author (of the book being referenced)

Lionel Shriver is an American woman who has lived most of her adult life in the UK. She first came to prominence for her novel We Need to Talk about Kevin, which is a brilliant novel written from the perspective of a woman whose son carried out a school massacre.

In recent years, she has become just as well-known for her courage in being an anti-Woke commentator, particularly in defense of imagination and the right to write fiction—for people to write characters of other sexes, races, ethnicities, sexual orientations, disability status, etc. She has quite a few excellent interviews that can be found on YouTube, and will be interviewed on

Triggernometry

in a couple of weeks, which should be brilliant.

I haven’t read her entire oeuvre, but am slowly working my way through it. I highly recommend Kevin, but it’s an absolutely brutal read and should be undertaken thoughtfully by readers who are sensitive to horror.

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