I don't understand what motivates a move like this. Is he really that indignant about Joe's views on COVID that he can't sell on the same platform. If so why? Because he cares about public health initiatives that much?
There's been this big shift the last 10 or so years that hasn't got enough attention. People somehow now act like the world has to align to focus all its priorities on exactly what they prioritize, and can't imagine the idea that things matter differently to different people.
The way things previously worked, you didn't have to agree with everything someone else did or said, you just had to get along. Now it's like "if you don't drop everything and take my cause as seriously as I do, you're dead to me"
I had previously thought it was a "me generation" thing, but Neil Young is like 80 so i guess it's a societal shift.
this isnt really that different than asking Young to share a show with someone. our systems and our services have gotten more centralized, more controlled. the connection is not as clear & apparent as sharing a stage. but this is not some new radical new interpersonal cruelty Young has fostered. it's the simple desire to not associate with trash & cruelty, to find better spaces. that's not new. it's just good sense.
we dont all have to follow the same code, but we should not be party to those supporting the despicable. obvious, & anything else anything less in madness.
[1] https://www.antiwarsongs.org/do_search.php?idartista=224&ste...
Ironically your attitude itself is not new. During the Civil Rights era it was a common meme among the "center" that emancipation was a worthy and noble cause but that ending segregation and Jim Crow was a bridge too far. Hindsight is 20/20...
That's kind of an odd take. By the time the dust settles there will be more than a million Americans dead from COVID. The lion's share of them will have been unvaccinated.
I don't think it's radical for someone to believe that they have a social duty to help ensure that public discourse around our most potent public health tool is rooted in science.
Moreover I don't think there can be any reasonable disagreement that Joe Rogan is in a position of considerable influence to many millions of Americans, and consequently his commentary about vaccines (and COVID treatments) has been the proximate cause of many deaths, perhaps thousands, and I'm pretty sure that history will take a dim view.
Neil Young's actions here are quixotic, certainly, but considering the personal cost he can hardly be accused of failing to walk the talk.
Most of them died before vaccines were available. So, you aren't wrong but...
> ensure that public discourse around our most potent public health tool is rooted in science.
Fact checking is not aligned with science, which is a continual process of correction. Remember when fact checkers all jumped in about how masks didn't do any good when that was the official CDC and WHO position? We have known since the 1990s with SARS that masks are effective.
Young recognizes who is hurting us & is standing apart.
Youcre trivializing what is happening, trying to make it look unimportant. Saying that this malignance isnt as toxic as past ones so we should just quietly hold our noses.
Personally i disagree with your assessment of scale about whats happening. But as important to me is whether society quietly suffers it's toxic, harmful, animosity-based elements, or whether we have a society that actively thinks/cares/promotes goodness & cooperation. It is outrageous that small-minded anti-societal reactionary-ism has winded us so bad, that anti-activism has such a huge banner, garners such animosity against doing good. Rogan is a head wolf, one of the main profiteers selling hardened uncaring individualism & trading misinformation to boost his popularity.
No side here is free from claims of attention seeking or outrage-generation. But one side pretends it's doing something else, one side gets offended when the other side is activist, & it's not the side that seems to be very interested in dealing in peace & coexistence.
This is the most hilariously sheltered and out of touch comment I have ever read in half a decade of reading HN
They are specifically outlawing teaching racial superiority or inferiority. You can read the Texas bill here: https://capitol.texas.gov/BillLookup/Text.aspx?LegSess=87R&B...
While this is definitely an anti-CRT bill, it does not make "teaching about racism illegal" in any sense.
> half of the country is trying to perform a fascist coup
> Fascism
> often capitalized : a political philosophy, movement, or regime (such as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition
From https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fascism
> Coup
> 1 : coup d'état a military coup
From https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/coup
Oddly enough, "half of the country" would be approximately a majority. If they are "performing" something, it would basically just be Democracy, though I suspect you're equivocating between a small group of insurrectionists and 175,000,000 people.
> This is the most hilariously sheltered and out of touch comment I have ever read in half a decade of reading HN
Well, you were at least self prescient if mistimed.
This might be the benefit of international distance but it seems to me it is really _unambiguous_ -- based on known facts and no matter which side you come from -- that at the end of 2020 Trump and his DC faction attempted a legislative self-coup:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-coup
It's at least very arguable that there are ongoing, truly widespread, state-level efforts among his supporters to secure politicised control over the administration of future elections.
You do not need to be left-wing, or anti-conservative, to acknowledge the above. You merely have to make an honest appraisal of what we know (not least based on what various Trump-affiliated political actors have openly said).
I will leave it to others to decide whether Trump met the definition of a fascist, but one tech-related episode that strikes me as instructive on the subject is his attempt to force the sale of TikTok to a company of his choosing if they paid what amounted to a kickback levy to the Treasury.
You and I both agree Trump did not have his cabinet members attempt to dissolve Congress or such.
You might have the belief that Trump coaxed citizens into raiding a Congressional building. That would be "formenting insurrection".
> It's at least very arguable that there are ongoing, truly widespread, state-level efforts among his supporters to secure politicised control over the administration of future elections.
No, it's not. At most he has some loud and frothy followers demanding "recounts", which they got and were still disappointed with.
If you actually dislike Trump, do not repeat the mistakes of 2016. Don't paint him up as some master Hitler who is one step away from being dictator for life. Don't bring him up in every topic and let him live rent free. The media did that and he got a better PR campaign then he could have ever bought.
He's just not that smart, nor are most of his followers actually that dedicated. Even "insurrection", while accurate, gives the Jan 6th stunt too much credit.
Yes, but you're misunderstanding/misrepresenting what is going on if you think the Capitol insurrection is the entirely of the story. The insurrection was _clearly_ provoked as a single component of a self-coup. There's abundant evidence of this; it's really not in doubt.
> You and I both agree Trump did not have his cabinet members attempt to dissolve Congress or such.
The "or such" is attempting more work here than it can pull off. For example, he and people close to him (like Giuliani) attempted to illegally establish a corrupt slate of electors to throw the election. And he attempted to literally intimidate his Vice President into not certifying at all.
Yes, he was dissuaded from some actions. but he was so much closer to pulling it off than you seem to suggest.
> No, it's not. At most he has some loud and frothy followers demanding "recounts", which they got and were still disappointed with.
Again, you are suggesting that the activity of citizens is the end of it. It is clearly not. It is a multi-state state-level legislative agenda, heavily co-ordinated.
Here is a quite good summary of what is going on:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/dec/23/voter-suppre...
> He's just not that smart, nor are most of his followers actually that dedicated. Even "insurrection", while accurate, gives the Jan 6th stunt too much credit.
You don't seriously think people should believe he did it all on his own and just discount it? It didn't succeed, yes, and he didn't surround himself with the best people, but it was a co-ordinated campaign by many people around him (see the Willard group for example).
In many ways it is still ongoing. If you are content to imagine that Trump and Trumpism are no longer a threat, you are mistaken. Trump may not get to run in person in 2024 (he's clearly dangling this in part so he can claim that his many legal troubles are political persecution), but Trumpism will not be reversed, and minority rule is not off the table.
From a distance, the USA looks increasingly like it is heading towards a very big political reversal from democracy. The GOP certainly won't ever close the lid on everything coming out of Pandora's Box and go back to being a normal political party, and there's no evidence they want to. (They are paying millions of dollars of Trump's legal fees, right now).
It is not a time to pretend things are OK.
I don't think that teaches children or society in general a healthy way to deal with different opinions including misinformation and form your own opinions.
I also think the reaction shows or gives the appearance of fear, which itself gives undue power to them. Banning words and phrases and people like some nazi or communist police state makes people sit up and wonder why the regime is so terrified of words and in some ways marvel at their power (and don't give me the "private companies" line, we all know the corrupt government-corporate complex all work for one another).
If you want to stand up against Orwellian police state BS look at the county in Tennessee that just banned the graphic novel Mause or the states passing laws banning teaching anything that might make white people feel guilty as a response to the BS moral panic that was whipped up around critical race theory.
You say that like it's opposite what I said.
My position is that I don't think censorship and banning of ideas and people is a healthy way to develop that disdain in society.
> If you want to stand up against Orwellian police state BS look at the county in Tennessee that just banned the graphic novel Mause or the states passing laws banning teaching anything that might make white people feel guilty as a response to the BS moral panic that was whipped up around critical race theory.
There's lots of things to "stand up against". Corporate censorship and other kinds of proxy attacks on anybody who questions certain narratives pushed by the ruling class is a big one even if you sometimes agree with the establishment. They don't have your interests at heart even if they coincidentally appear to align from time to time. One day it is be about vaccines, but another day it will be war with Iraq or intervention in Libya or conflict with China over Taiwan.
[1] - https://edition.cnn.com/2021/02/16/health/1918-flu-lessons-p...
[2] - https://www.history.com/news/1918-pandemic-spanish-flu-censo...
He also went on Dick Cavett and made some insane connection between that random protest and the stereotypes of Native Americans in Hollywood movies and tv shows.
Not only that, he traveled back in time to participate in the civil rights movement to gain enough credibility to convince an actress who'd been at the occupation of Alcatraz to accept his Oscar and give a speech connecting Native American stereotypes and that random protest. We're talking serious Back to the Future level shit here.
Brando's nuts.
So anyway, thanks for that meaningful addition to the comments.
Well, looking at the past two years, I'm not so sure about that. Locking up the whole world in their apartments, fining people for being on the street, locking up playgrounds, banning outside exercise or limiting your "outside" time to 1 hour or allowing you to go no further than 1-3 miles from your home sounds pretty dystopian to me. My mom died of cancer after being ignored for 1 and a half year (in the EU she couldn't get a CT scan for 6 months because the hospital staff didn't want to disinfect the machine after each use) and I was able to see her only in the last 2 weeks of her life after being forced to stay in quarantine for 10 days, even if I had negative PCR tests before travelling, so yeah, let's all pretend we care about people and health, and not about people like you feeling superior and better than everyone else.
Also, "virtue" in these cases usually just means conforming to social pressure and the norms of particularly vociferous factions of society.
Even if you happen to agree with those norms (which are seen as Draconian by many), the sanctimonious holier-than-thou attitude probably won't help the cause in the long run.
What evidence do you have that this move by Neil Young is anything other than his honest feelings on the subject? A lot of people are sick of Rogan spreading BS. It's not suprising someone like Young would choose to use what little leverage they have to push for him to be removed.
A lot of people sharing the same opinion doesn't magically make that opinion less valid, engaging with the world as if there's some great conspiracy against you is counterproductive.
I kinda made the opposite of the that claim in my comment :-) I think a lot of people see the norms "virtue signallers" want to impose as Draconian. I don't think a guy having controversial guests on his podcasts is something many people find intolerable.
If we want to live in a circus where people who have no idea what they're talking about get to disseminate lies while thousands of people die preventable deaths every day we've lost our collective minds.
Supporting censorship would be more along the lines of asking the government to jail Rogan, erasing his content, etc.
Spotify has actually removed certain JRE episodes from the available catalog as a condition of their deal.[1]
[1]: https://nypost.com/2021/04/09/spotify-quietly-deletes-contro...
It's just "virtue signalling", it's just "PC gone mad", it's just "cancel culture", they're just "crazy SJWs". Notice how none of these things actually have any substance, they're just a way to dismiss someone else and walk away feeling like you've won a pointless argument.
Post something substantial or don't post at all.
It can be used that way, but it isn't just that. You could say the same about the word "racist", "TERF", or "transphobe".
> Notice how none of these things actually have any substance
I notice substance to these claims all the time (as well as non-substantial ones).
People to whom these words accurately apply have a stake as dismissing them though.
Neil Young was saved from Polio as a child by being one of the early recipients of the Salk vaccine. As someone who is living proof of the effectiveness of vaccines, he likely has very little patience for people who profit off of spreading vaccine misinformation and put his own profits on the line to make the statement. Good for him.
Even if there was something wrong about mRNA vaccines would it not have been better to campaign for Covaxin or Sputnik to be allowed by the FDA?
I think you should know that one of the main polio vaccines doesn’t actually prevent you from getting polio, you still get it and can spread it it just doesn’t paralyze you.
And that’s the Salk vaccine, the other vaccine is literally giving people a weakened stain of polio. And it actually causes some paralysis in about 3 in every million so that vaccine isn’t perfect.
Your comment was interesting, though. I did some additional reading about the history of those vaccines.
The fact is the original comment as phrased was totally wrong, and we could debate the clarification.
Instead let’s just acknowledge that if smallpox were around today and we had a world wide epidemic but we had a vaccine that prevented ill effects in nearly all cases but still allowed transmission, then it’s safe to assume there would be vaccine mandate. That would be different dynamics just like polio. Different dynamic need different responses.