There seems to be a lot more push back against the status quo, these past few weeks, and I'm wondering what we should read into that.
One aspect of this push back is the entire Joe Rogan controversy. I just saw an article about "how Joe Rogan became Public Enemy #1", and at this point, he well may be. Now, I know that with JR, as with all these cancel culture experiments from recent years, it's being used as a ramp for a lot of unknown people to boost their own social following. I'm not sure who surfaced the infamous N-word compilation. Personally, I saw it in a news article, lifted from some nobody-actress's feed. Someone who didn't get much news coverage before, but is getting some now, because she's attacking a famous person. Easy to see how that can be beneficial.
But there's also more behind this. Joe Rogan is obviously not very well-liked by the establishment, or, to quote Adam Carrolla, by The Man. So it stands to reason they'd want to put him down, or at least bring him to heel. Furthermore, stamping Joe Rogan's freedom of speech is symbolic. Rogan is a man of the people, and through him, they can squash all of our individual freedoms. It sends a message. Behave, or be punished.
And yet, things aren't going their way. Spotify (for now) isn't dropping Rogan, and even if they were to do so, he'd have a new platform by this time tomorrow, and his followers would continue to have access to him. In past cancellation cases, it didn't go this way, not to this extent, at least.
They said Johnny Depp was a wife-beater, and boom, he got cancelled. But there wasn't a way for the general public who didn't believe those allegations to say "fuck you", and support Depp anyway.
There is, with Rogan. Free social media platform Rumble offered Rogan $100 million for a 4-year contract. And they're not alone.
What I'm getting at here is, the general population seems to have a lot more control over this. You take down Rogan? Then I leave Spotify. I move to Rumble, or wherever Rogan might decide to move his platform, should he get kicked off Spotify (which I hope doesn't happen). It's a way of standing up to this poisonous cancel culture mob, at long last.
And it seems to be working, because his attackers are becoming desperate. This newly-surfaced N-word video is taking away from the entire medical "disinformation" scandal, because that flopped, because it was not a scandal. And they saw they had a weak point there, so they resorted to the most basic, and lowest throw in the book. Calling someone a racist. Oh, you wouldn't want to keep associating with Rogan, would you? He's ray-sis.
Joe Rogan is obviously not racist. What we can't seem to remember here is that it's not the word itself that's bad, it's the racist asshole saying it. And a racist asshole can and will continue to be that, even without the N-word, or any other. Besides, it seems once again we are playing with a double standard. Canada's disappeared Prime Minister is, by the same book, guilty of a much worse crime, aka his infamous "blackface" stunt, and yet he's being viewed as the bastion for law and order, at this point. Weird, I thought we weren't supposed to side with racists.
The Freedom Convoy in Ottawa is sending the same message as the Rogan scandal, though we've yet to see how far that will go. Because both scandals are closely related. Both Rogan and the truckers are standing up for their basic, constitutional freedoms, and so the people behind one are largely the same crowd behind the other.
For a long time, during this pandemic, the message has been clear. Behave, or be punished. Same as with Rogan, and the whole cancel culture of our recent years. Throughout the pandemic, we've watched our basic rights being stripped from us, with little to no ability to stand up for ourselves, but now there's this protest in Canada that's sending a message of hope across the planet.
Could it be orchestrated? Undoubtedly, but that doesn't blight the message of freedom, at least not at a global level.
Here are two cases of global renown. They are literally the most talked about things in the press, even the MSM, for the past several days. And what are they saying? They're both telling you, in some form or another, that you can stand up to The Man. That you can fight for freedom. That you can make your voice heard. You know, that mad illusion we used to believe in, in the good old days...
Before the Freedom Convoy, we had the Novak Djokovic case at the Australian Open. Similar idea, ultimately blighted by the tennis player's deportation, but it still got the message out. People stood with Djokovic, as it were, and it's not like they're going to forget that. A hero rose, finally, for those not buying into the MSM narrative, and they won't forget that, either. Where one fell, another will succeed. Might that hero be Rogan? Or the truckers?
There seems to be a pull towards standing up, in recent weeks. Towards saying fuck your cancel culture, we don't need that. It's becoming a mockery. I was reading an interview with Ricky Gervais where he says he hopes his next special gets him cancelled. And if enough people leave this toxic culture (I'm talking both about big personalities, but also about audiences), then it becomes powerless.
Might this be an incipient movement, driven by the knowledge that our rights, and our contributions to society matter? Because that's what both the Rogan and the Convoy story are saying. It's a riposte of the most basic level, on both parts. On the one, it's saying I don't need Spotify, or Neil Young, or whoever attempts to stifle free speech. On the other, it's saying the truckers' contribution (and that of every other person refusing to be bullied into a totalitarian medical regime) matters.
Bear in mind that this post might not appeal to your sensibilities or beliefs. That's fine. Nothing can please everyone at one time, so I don't try to. If you don't agree with Rogan, or the truckers, or what you read in this post, don't waste your time commenting that (or mine), as that's not a valid answer to the question I'm asking. You are entitled to your opinion. You can hate Rogan and the truckers and whoever else you want with a passion, but try not to let that hate spill out into the world. It only does more damage. If you have a take on what's going on in the world right now, I'd like to hear it.