> I don't understand what motivates a move like this
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.
There's been a big shift recently, but the general phenomenon of weird performative stunts isn't new at all. Did you know about the time Marlon Brando refused to accept an Oscar because he was mad about the government response to a protest in South Dakota? It'd be another story if Young were going around saying that he's gonna try to cancel any artist who stays on Spotify, or that you and I have a moral obligation to quit Spotify, but taking your ball and going home is a very well time-tested protest strategy.
> Did you know about the time Marlon Brando refused to accept an Oscar because he was mad about the government response to a protest in South Dakota?
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.
It's pretty stunning how consistently intense, passionate arguments get sanitized to mere disagreements in the popular imagination. You read about the Cross of Gold speech, where William Jennings Bryan declared that the gold standard is an enemy to humanity and whipped up a mob to cancel anyone who supported it, and it comes across as some kind of polite dispute.
It went way beyond offending their audience. The Dixie Chicks were black listed. This was also a time when people started calling french fries, freedom fries, among other insane "patriotic" things.
hahaha you surely must be joking. what a ridiculous spin! being political & caring about the world is not new. Young has been a strong advocate, loudly held moral stances for probably longer than many many of the readers on HN have been alive[1]. having backbone, a stance, caring: it's not new.
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.
Pretending that the current brand of "activism" is the same as previous ones is disingenuous, and disrespectful. Previous struggles for rights, for example by women, blacks, and gays, as well as pushing back against "the man" - conformity with the establishment, were important causes, I don't need to dwell on that. The current need for outrage and attention while simultaneously being ultra conformist brand of slacktivism is nothing like that. Neil Young may have been an important part of past struggles, but he's just another establishment shill looking for attention now if this is the kind of hill he's dying on.
> Previous struggles for rights, for example by women, blacks, and gays, as well as pushing back against "the man" - conformity with the establishment, were important causes
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...
Yes I've heard that before, but I don't think the comparison makes it impossible that this time is different. It's the shift from fighting for freedom to using more and more obscure perceived slights as a pretext for complaining that makes this time different. The goal is not equality or rights, the goal is securing the status of an elite
> The goal is not equality or rights, the goal is securing the status of an elite
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.
> The lion's share of them will have been unvaccinated.
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.
Multiple states are currently making teaching about racism illegal based on whether or not parents subjectively feel "uncomfortable", and half of the country is trying to perform a fascist coup but you want to boil it down to "outrage and attention"?
This is the most hilariously sheltered and out of touch comment I have ever read in half a decade of reading HN
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
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.
"Military" is by no means the only form a coup can take, and indeed it's just one of the examples in that definition.
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:
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.
A coup is via a military or other governmental power structure. When it is citizens, it is an insurrection.
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.
> A coup is via a military or other governmental power structure. When it is citizens, it is an insurrection.
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.
> 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).
> Pretending that the current brand of "activism" is the same as previous ones is disingenuous, and disrespectful.
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.
It’s more like sharing a shopping mall with them. Merchants don’t endorse each other and may not have many customers in common, yet outsourcing common construction and parking and security is better for all of them.
We didn't have a large, loud faction of conspiracy theorist celebrities and politicians disseminating disinformation about public health in the middle of a pandemic any time in the last 100 years either.
We have always had various false news, conspiracy theorists and outright disbelievers and angry mobs about pandemics, including 1918 [1][2]. None of what we have gone through is new in any meaningful way.
Because its outside of the lived experience of pretty much everyone alive right now. It's not the reaction to the disinformation thats special. Its the circumstances under which people are spreading disinformation that is special. These aren't JFK assassination conspiracy theories. Almost 2000 Americans died yesterday. A lot of them needlessly because a huge segment of society is treating reality as optional.
Oh I certainly agree with the effects, I just don’t think it’s worth excluding the last pandemic where similar things happened (even if it was a while ago). It just seems to be a perpetual problem and when there are consequences for that misinformation spreading we see bad results :(
I think it's more than 2000. Many are dieing from over eating, over drinking, drug addictions, and other bad choices. It's just that we have gotten used to all the other reasons people die.
I don't think the way to deal with people whose opinions we don't like is to pretend they don't exist and forbid those opinions to be discussed.
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).
I would like to live in a society with a healthy disdain for purveyors of lies and misinformation. People like Neil Young standing against the BS on Rogans podcast is an example of free speech in action and civil society at work. The more the better.
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.
> I would like to live in a society with a healthy disdain for purveyors of lies and misinformation.
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.
Those things certainly don't require that we break societal norms or use them as an excuse for taking any kind of extreme action. There are lots of ways to constructively disagree with things, my point is that we've strayed from those into new territory where complaining and outrage are the end and not the means
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.