Reasonable people can disagree with or be put off by things Piker has said or positions he’s taken. In fact, it would be surprising if they weren’t: Piker, like Rogan, is first and foremost an entertainer whose willingness to be outrageous is a key part of his persona. There are certainly plenty of things that Piker’s said in the tens of thousands of hours of public airtime he’s logged over the past six years that I would not cosign.

But that’s plainly not the reason for this tedious uproar. We know it isn’t, because of the scores of commentators and political figures who remain in the good graces of the Democratic establishment despite saying things that are not identical to but often far, far worse than anything Piker’s said — let alone actually doing things that have caused untold death and misery to millions. We also know it isn’t because centrist Democrats who tut-tut at Piker, like Elissa Slotkin, still eagerly get in line to yuk it up with Bill Maher — who, just like Piker, once made an offensive statement about September 11 that he later apologized for (besides his virulent, open racism toward Arabs and Muslims).

No, this is about a sick political establishment that constantly bemoans political violence but is so deeply suffused with the most extreme forms of it that openly calling for and defending mass murder via the US or Israeli military doesn’t even raise an eyebrow. And it’s about the ongoing factional war within the Democratic Party, which is seeing its discredited and widely hated corporate establishment once more play the move it always goes back to when it feels its control wavering: cancel culture and language policing.

They’d much rather cry about Piker than actually look inward at why they continue to lose elections. It would be comical if it wasn’t so blatant and frustrating.