Joe Rogan is better than his critics

Joe Rogan’s response to his critics makes his critics look like the intolerant, petty tyrants they are. You should listen to the whole thing, but here’s an important extract.

The problem I have with the term ‘misinformation’– especially today — is that many of the things that we thought of as misinformation just a short while ago are now accepted as fact.

Like for instance, eight months ago if you said that if you get vaccinated you can still catch Covid and you can still spread Covid, you would be removed from social media. They would ban you from certain platforms. Now, that’s accepted as fact.

If you said, ‘I don’t think cloth masks work,’ you would be banned from social media. Now, that’s openly and repeatedly stated on CNN.

If you said, ‘I think it’s possible that Covid-19 came from a lab,’ you would be banned from many social media platforms. Now that’s on the cover of Newsweek.

All of those theories — that at one point in time were banned — were openly discussed by those two men that I had on my podcast — that have been accused of dangerous misinformation.

We need more, not less, open and honest discussion in this country, and the success of Joe Rogan’s podcast shows that there’s a hunger for it.

This is not North Korea, where only one point of view is allowed to be spoken.

Nearly 1 in 5 Republican men believe violence against the government is now justified

If you can believe this article, anyway: Poll: 1 in 4 Americans say violence against the government is sometimes OK

I’m disappointed that only 1 in 4 think violence is “sometimes OK.” It should be 4 in 4. Of course it’s sometimes okay.

One in 10 Americans say violence is justified right now. And among Republican men, it’s nearly 1 in 5.

I’m disappointed that 1 in 5 Republican men believe things are so bad that violence against the government is justified now. I strongly disagree with that.

What do you do about a statistic like that? 1 in 10 Americans believe the government is so bad that we’d be justified in fighting against it. Real fighting, not protests and such.

A sensible response would be to try to find out why people believe that, and try to fix the problem.

Rational people only choose violence when they believe non-violent remedies won’t work. Why do 1 in 10 Americans think non-violent remedies won’t work? Do they feel as if they’re not being heard? Do they feel as if they’ve been asking for the same thing for decades (e.g., fixing the immigration problem) and the government pays no attention? Do they distrust the election system?

Some will want to blame fake news, crazy websites, radical politicians, YouTube channels, etc., but I think that’s backwards. Those sources are popular because their message resonates, and their message resonates because people are frustrated. The solution is not to shut down the channels, but to find out why the message resonates — and fix it.

Maybe look at things like this: 20 years of data reveals that Congress doesn’t care what you think.

I have little hope of this happening.

What’s more likely to happen is that the people in power will deny the problem, wag their fingers at the 1 in 10, demonize them, call them deplorables, etc. As that doesn’t work, they’ll take increasingly tyrannical steps to silence the 1 in 10, which will backfire and make those numbers even worse. Eventually we’ll get to the tipping point where too many people believe the only solution is violence.

You must think in these categories!

segregated water fountainOne way to influence the way people think is to always express things with certain categories. For example, the simple fact of having white and colored water fountains trains your brain to divide people that way. It’s not tall or short, fat or thin, hungry or well fed. It’s white and colored. That’s how they want you to divide humanity.

I just saw an article that talks about people “of every age, ethnicity, gender, and orientation.”

Why pick those? Why not religion, political party, sex, language, extroversion, IQ, eye color, ….

There are plenty of ways to divide people. Different sorts of divisions probably make sense in different situations. At a swim meet, age, sex, team affiliation and seed time are the most important. At football tryouts, body shape, speed and strength are very important.

Over-reliance on one set of divisions creates discrimination according to those dividing lines.

That’s part of why I will never list “my” pronouns. It’s an effort to retrain people’s brains to believe that gender expression should be a top of mind category.

Did Barack Obama help race relations in the United States?

I just heard Andrew Klavan say that he felt race relations got worse under Obama, and he asked Shelby Steele what he thought. (The episode is called “Shelby Steele Debunks the Race Hustle.”)

Steele agreed, and he said it was because Obama was elected for no other reason than that he was black. He didn’t have the qualifications to be president. He was just a means for white Americans to assuage their guilt.