Incredibly Stupid Man, Kanye West, Might Get People Killed
Younger readers might find it hard to believe, but there was once a time when Kanye West wasn't a morally corrupt billionaire and faux-spiritual leader who supports racists like Trump because he sees a little of himself in Trump's egomania. It's true. He used to make good music and sell ugly shoes at a preposterous markup and we were all cool with that.
Now, he's at a sad low point where you can tell he's promoting an album because there's a noticeable uptick in the amount of dangerous galaxy-brained horseshit that flies out of his mouth. For instance, he's got a new album coming out at some point, titled God's Country, and to promote it, he just casually tossed out that he's running for president while having filed none of the required paperwork to do so.
More recently, and definitely more dangerously, he announced he's an anti-vaxxer.
This is Kanye West, who likes to make a big, beautiful production of everything, from live performances to bad takes. So, when he goes anti-vaxxer, he goes all-in. He expressed that he'd be cautious whenever a COVID-19 vaccine was released, which, fine, whatever. But then he told Forbes that vaccines are "the mark of the beast. They want to put chips inside of us, they want to do all kinds of things, to make it so we can't cross the gates of heaven. I'm sorry when I say they, the humans that have the Devil inside them."
First off, very thoughtful of him to acknowledge he made a mistake when he lumped all demonically possessed medical professionals who want to inject us with microchips that prevent us from entering Heaven into one group. #NotAllDemonicallyPossessedDoctors. Second, it's impossible to truly know if he's kidding or crazy. Both are always an option, but the fact that "attention-hungry asshole" is his dominant trait makes it difficult to pin down the precise reason he's such an asshole.
The whole "microchips are the mark of the beast" thing is old deranged Christian evangelical madness that pops up from time to time. It stems from a, uh, unique interpretation of a passage from the book of Revelation: "It also forced all people, great and small, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hands or on their foreheads, so that they could not buy or sell unless they had the mark, which is the name of the beast or the number of its name." They took this to mean microchips. That's pretty inventive considering a tattoo of a mischievous little cartoon devil with a plump red cherubic butt is where my mind would go first. One guy connected vaccines to microchips and microchips to the devil and a bunch of others who weren't huge fans of thinking just went along with it until, eventually, Kanye West said it to promote an album but mostly because he likely does think vaccines turn you into a godless iPhone.
His "am I crazy or do I just suck" bit is cute if tiresome, like a child who made a good joke then keep repeating it well into their 40s. But when he ventures into peddling full-on, no-holds-barred, batshit religious anti-vax lunacy, and during a pandemic in a country that's already too self-absorbed to care about putting in the least amount of effort for the safety of others, Kanye's shit becomes dangerous. He's not a provocateur, he's just a dangerous prick who seems to not care if people get hurt because they used his opinion as yet another tiny bit of justification for their irresponsibility. It's no wonder he gets along so well with fellow dangerous dipshit Elon Musk because idiots move in herds.
Elon's not an anti-vaxxer (as far as I know) but he is a known COVID misinformation machine. They're both grown children who got so famous that they started equating their success with infallibility. These two were meant to find each other so they could combine and weaponize their belligerent ignorance to indirectly kill every bro-y trendy new-age tech douche that dares take them seriously.
Luis can be found on Twitter and Facebook. Catch him on the "In Broad Daylight" podcast with Cracked alums Adam Tod Brown and Ian Fortey! Check out his regular contributions to Macaulay Culkin's BunnyEars.com and his "Meditation Minute" segments on the Bunny Ears podcast. Listen to the first episode on Youtube!
Top Image: Jason Persse/Wikimedia Commons
