The Real Work Isn’t Changing Minds

When Josh Johnson makes fun of Elon Musk on stage, he gets heckled. Not when he jokes about Trump, not when he talks about policy—just Elon. “The richest man in the world is arguing with people like me on his platform,” Johnson tells Tom Papa on Breaking Bread. “That sounds broke to me.” The hecklers reveal something Johnson has learned to accept: some people don’t want their minds changed. They want their worldview reinforced.

Why Trying to Change Minds Usually Backfires

Johnson’s approach to political comedy is deliberately modest. “I’m not really out here trying to change people’s minds,” he says. “I’m just presenting them with the things that I think and what I’ve noticed. If that happens to change their mind, that’s all well and good.” He sees a specific problem in how liberals approach persuasion: “There’s a level of hubris that goes into thinking that you can truly change someone’s mind. Like, oh, if they only knew what I knew.” Johnson argues that this attitude assumes you hold the “prevailing view of what reality is,” and that the other person just needs better information. But his experience, especially as a Black man in America, has taught him otherwise: “I think they saw. I think they see that that’s racist and they don’t care.”