I see the de-platforming and censoring of comedians specifically as being extremely concerning. Comedians in theory should not be a threat to anyone. To me this is the canary in the coalmine. What this tells me is that we as a society can't handle criticisms any longer.
The comedians are extremely important to our society, because they have a way of saying things that need to be said that others are often afraid to. In fact when something is funny, its because our minds weren't able to predict the outcome. This is what worries me most, because we are seeing the comedians get silenced for laughing and joking around about political issues. Sure they're just having fun, but they are pointing things out and creating memes that spread through society that need to be heard. If they can't criticize certain ideologies and look at topics from a different perspective, we lose our ability as a society to realign ourselves to improve upon the situation that caused hilarity.
Once the comedians go, then we know people can't just joke around about certain topics. And then we know other forms of silencing are on its way.
There are plenty of comedians joking around COVID, conspiracy theories, vaccines, and making people laugh.
Joe Rogan as a comedian is very different than Joe Rogan as a podcaster. He tries to be a very serious podcaster, and brings in serious people to debate serious subjects.
But he treats them all with the same respect and reverence. Which is a good attitude to take with people you meet 1on1, but may not be a dispassionate neutral position when you have a massive audience of tens of millions.
So when he brings in an astrophysicists and they teach the audience about the lifecycle of stars, it's educational and people both learn and are entertained. And the next guest is a conspiracy nut with a lot of PhDs that tells everyone COVID is overplayed and vaccines don't work, they also learn and are entertained.
Rogan has a sizeable enough audience that the impact of his COVID misinformation can be included as one of the reasons why Americans have so much COVID vaccine hesitancy, and directly contributes to the elevated COVID death toll in the US.
All I see is an expert in a field, who I can't tell if they are right or not, disagreeing with other experts in the same field, who I also can't tell if they are right or not.
Americans are ruthlessly free spirits with a disrespect for herd mentality and overglorification of extreme individualism. No amount of COVID information nor misinformation has anything to do with vaccine hesitancy.
Being american is in many ways being rebellious. Vaccine mandates go in opposition to this very american spirit, a spirit of irreverance, rock and roll. Misinformation has nothing to do with why americans are refusing to get vaccinated. Informing them further wont change this fact, america would not have been founded without a rebellious spirit.
Your imposition of your beliefs by the way, are not to protect the other americans, its for your own "salvation". You want so desperately to be right, you're willing to only look at information that aligns with your belief system. You want your enemies to be wrong and you want them punished for not holding the same beliefs you do. If you really cared about the people who are not choosing to get vaccinated, you would let them be free to make their own choices, even if it means their death.
I repeat this over and over again. Everyone who wants to get vaccinated is vaccinated. Everyone who's willing to take the risk of not being vaccinated is willing to die for their freedom. There is nothing stopping us from opening up now. Its just theater for one side to blame the other for not being good little sheep. The anti-mandaters have been ready to open up for months now, and they don't care if they die, they don't care if they lose their jobs, they don't care if they are ostracized. Honk if your horny!
If only the ones pointing fingers saying we can't open up because of the unvaxxed, would stop crying and realize that we have been able to open up already for a long time now, we would be able to open up. But alas, it seems people aren't here to solve problems but to be angry, point fingers, and blame others for a situation which they can fix themselves. I'll repeat that one more time, you aren't here to debate or ameliorate or fix the situation, because if you were we would have been done with this a long time ago.
You're here because you want to be angry at the people who refuse stand on your side of the field like drunk men in a football stadium harassing anyone who wears the other color. And this is why you care so much about getting the unvaccinated vaccinated, not to save their lives. Oh no. you relish it when there's news of people who lie in hospital beds regretting not getting the vaccine. You relish in that schadenfreude, you relish in it because you are so desperate to be right, unable to realize its not about any information/misinformation/disinformation. Its about rebellion, you're just mad that some people just don't play along.
The comedians are extremely important to our society, because they have a way of saying things that need to be said that others are often afraid to. In fact when something is funny, its because our minds weren't able to predict the outcome. This is what worries me most, because we are seeing the comedians get silenced for laughing and joking around about political issues. Sure they're just having fun, but they are pointing things out and creating memes that spread through society that need to be heard. If they can't criticize certain ideologies and look at topics from a different perspective, we lose our ability as a society to realign ourselves to improve upon the situation that caused hilarity.
Once the comedians go, then we know people can't just joke around about certain topics. And then we know other forms of silencing are on its way.