Florida Georgia Line canceled their tour, Garth Brooks too…are they more worried about infections or potentially pissing off their audience?

The only video you must watch this weekend is this:

“Dying in the Name of Vaccine Freedom”: https://nyti.ms/2W6usjh

It’s a brief documentary on vaccine adoption in the Ozarks. Bottom line, you can’t convince those who refuse to get it.

Now if you’ve been following the news, it appears the Pfizer vaccine will get full F.D.A. approval on Monday, in any event by Labor Day, and what will the unvaxxed say then? IT DOESN’T MATTER! F.D.A. approval was always a straw man, a way to hide their desire to never get the shot. However, the big deal about F.D.A. approval is then businesses will feel more comfortable telling their employees they must be vaxxed, or else.

I’m watching a TV series right now in which a wealthy character, not an alta kacher but someone significantly under fifty, says the key to success is correct information. Sounds so simple, so obvious, but most people don’t heed this aphorism. In the information society, an amazing number of facts and insights are available online for free, you just have to spend the time to hoover up the information. However, not just any information, but correct, true information. Then you are powerful. Talk to anybody in business, false information is a drag on your enterprise, it may even kill it. And the truth is, it’s no different in society. Furthermore, a good businessman knows how to separate the wheat from the chaff, what is viable and what is not, and listens to experts, all of which are anathema in this self-researched, biased knowledge world we now live in.

So the #1 trending topic on Twitter today was Patagonia. It is detaching from Jackson Hole ski resort, not allowing the shops there to sell its merchandise, because Robert Kemmerer, the resort’s owner, cosponsored a fundraiser with Marjorie Taylor Greene, Jim Jordan and Mark Meadows: https://bit.ly/3y6G5U4 The story broke on the ski sites a couple of days ago, but is now being reported by regular news outlets. And if you read the Twitter thread, it’s almost all positive, posters saying they’re going to go out and buy Patagonia gear.

Same thing happened with Nike and Kaepernick.

It turns out taking a stand is good for business.

This is a complete change from the old thinking, when we lived in a more consolidated market, with three TV networks and top-down information. Today, no one is that big, NO ONE, you’re lucky if you have acolytes at all, and you gain them and they adhere to you by taking a viewpoint and sticking to your guns. Then again, like that character said in the above-mentioned TV show, to succeed you’ve got to have the correct information.

That’s the history of America. Gays can get married. We evolve to be together as opposed to apart. Yes, you can stand on the wrong side of history, try to hold the future back, but your base is going to slip through your fingers.

As for me?

Since I’ve been posting on the unvaccinated I’ve lost in excess of a hundred subscribers. But those who are e-mailing me who are staying are much more vociferous in their support than in the average e-mail I get. They like that someone is standing up for THEIR position, because to a great degree they feel powerless. This is how you build and maintain a career, by taking sides on the issues, what you believe in, otherwise the bland social influencers with millions of followers would be ruling public opinion, and they’re not, and almost all of them have a very short tenure. Have a top ten hit and people might know your name, be a career artist, testing the limits, exploring, bonding to people, and you may never have a top ten hit but you’ll be able to play live and be supported playing music for the rest of your life, that’s the power of a fan base, and fans are caught by edges, not curves.

Now Florida Georgia Line is a Live Nation act. They can’t go on the road without Covid/vaccine restrictions. This is a scenario facing so many of the big acts who are on the fence. Believe whatever you want, but if you’re taking the money, you’re playing by the promoter’s rules.

So what we’ve learned is the battle isn’t about waking up the uninformed, the unvaccinated, but closing the doors on them as a result of their behavior. Just like smoking… Smoke all you want, just don’t do it inside, in the office or the club. And sure, people still smoke, but if you’re a smoker today the young people, even older people, judge you negatively, there’s nothing cool about it. We will get to this point with the unvaccinated if the reasonable, the educated, those with the correct information just do what is right and wait for the disenchanted to wake up and do what is right for not only them, but society. And if they don’t want to wake up, it’s their choice.

That should be the modern philosophy. If you don’t want to get vaxxed, that’s absolutely fine. But don’t plan on being in a public space. And protest all you want, statistics tell us there are far more pro-vax than anti-vax people, despite the anti-vaxxers being very vocal and the media reporting about them.