Joe Rogan & RFK Jr v. Peter Hotez

The $2.7 million dollar debate/duel that will never happen because there is no honor among sociopaths

Presidential candidate, long time safe-vax proponent, environmental lawyer and author of The Real Anthony Fauci, Robert F Kennedy Jr appeared on the massively popular Joe Rogan podcast (Rogan’s podcast regularly gets 11 million listeners/viewers per 3 hour show dwarfing even Tucker Carlson when he was on Fox, who only drew 2.5 million per night) and spent most of the time discussing his views on vaccines, though he veered into speculation on atrazine in the water possibly triggering LGBTQ proclivities, since one study shows it transforms most hyper male frogs into females, inspiring much commentary lamenting the fact that a presidential candidate was spewing Alex Jones’ conspiracy theories, but I digress.

Soon after the interview the illustrious Dr Peter Hotez launched an attack from his ivory tower claiming RFK was a misinformation spreader. Joe Rogan quickly struck back offering him $100,000 to the charity of his choice if he would just come on the show and debate RFK in person.

Peter Hotez entertained the possibility for half a millisend, tweeting this out then quickly deleting it:

Truth be told he cannot debate vaccines at any price as it would quickly be the death knell for his entire career and reputation.

He spent the entire pandemic gracing the mainstream airwaves on a near nightly basis advocating strongly for just the wrong thing at just the wrong time over and over and over again, be it masks, lockdowns, death shots, or the jailing of anyone who had a different opinion from The Science, AKA himself and/or Sir Anthony Fauci.

Within hours of Rogan throwing down the gauntlet others chipped in with additional pledges. The pot quickly ballooned to over half a million and over the next 2 days reached at least $2.7 million pledged by people claiming to be on both sides of the vaccine debate (though primarily “anti-vaxxers”, whatever that term means). On the pro vax side were hedge fund titan Bill Ackman and Silicon Valley VC Jason Kalakanis. On the “anti-vax” side Steve Kirsch jumped in with Richard Urso, Bryan Tyson and yours truly (with the caveat that the proceeds shouldn’t go to a vax enabling death “charity”).

The pro vax half of med twitter jumped to Hotez’s aid, not by way of encouragement to take on the big bad disinformation wolf on perhaps the largest English language platform in the world, but by assuaging his ego and assuring him that debate was beneath him, it would be like debating a Holocaust denier, someone convinced the moon was made of cheese, or a flat earther, and anyway he was a certified MD, the creator of a “free” no patent COVID shot for the 3rd world, a Nobel prize nominee!

This tweet summed up the response of the pro vaxxers:

Of course Rogan, judo master that he is, wasn’t taking that lying down:

But then the trusty mainstream media which is almost entirely funded by Big Pharma piled on:

Hotez hemmed and hawed for a couple days and then finding enough cover from his comrades in the media and on Med Twitter he outright refused to show up, retweeted as many supportive tweets as he could find (you may have noticed that my screenshots of Hotez’s tweets look different with the black background, that’s because along with anyone else in the medical freedom movement who has interacted with him on Twitter, he has me blocked. Luckily the handy black backgrounded website nitter.net allows you to easily check out the feed of anyone without a login).

In the aftermath to all this it occurred to me that the honorable thing to do when called out by someone to debate on behalf of charity is to accept, especially when the callout was in response to an aspersion on the honor of the challenger. These debate challenges seem to be something like the modern day equivalent of the duel. Instead of putting your life on the line, you put some significant sum of money on the line. Just as in a classical duel you can elect a replacement.

Interested in the parallels I looked up duels and found this passage at the Library of Congress website (emphasis is mine):

What distinguished a duel from a casual bar room brawl or a street fight is that it was considered a rule-bound affair of honor among men of equal social standing. To receive a challenge to duel was actually a confirmation by the person issuing the challenge that they considered you a gentleman. If they had not, they probably would have just attacked you with a whip or a cane.

Of course we moderns like to think we are far more civilized than those who dueled, in fact we’ve outlawed the barbarous practice, but it’s interesting to note just how regimented the duel was. Code Duello enshrined the rules dueling in 25 points, the first 5 of these provide a representative sampling:

Rule 1. The first offense requires the first apology, though the retort may have been more offensive than the insult. Example: A tells B he is impertinent, etc. B retorts that he lies; yet A must make the first apology because he gave the first offense, and then (after one fire) B may explain away the retort by a subsequent apology. 

Rule 2. But if the parties would rather fight on, then after two shots each (but in no case before), B may explain first, and A apologize afterward.

N.B. The above rules apply to all cases of offenses in retort not of stronger class than the example.

Rule 3. If a doubt exist who gave the first offense, the decision rests with the seconds; if they won't decide, or can't agree, the matter must proceed to two shots, or to a hit, if the challenger require it.

Rule 4. When the lie direct is the first offense, the aggressor must either beg pardon in express terms; exchange two shots previous to apology; or three shots followed up by explanation; or fire on till a severe hit be received by one party or the other.

Rule 5. As a blow is strictly prohibited under any circumstances among gentlemen, no verbal apology can be received for such an insult. The alternatives, therefore -- the offender handing a cane to the injured party, to be used on his own back, at the same time begging pardon; firing on until one or both are disabled; or exchanging three shots, and then asking pardon without proffer of the cane. 

And of course one of the reasons dueling existed was to prevent blood feuds developing, or gangland violence taking over cities, i.e. the general breakdown of the social order that accompanies the lack of a socially acceptable outlet for the testosterone drunk among us.

It would have been better if the duel had not disappeared altogether, but instead evolved to be less deadly.

Most animals have evolved means of dueling without actually harming each other - they butt heads, but neither is actually hurt. Horns often evolved to be as imposing as possible, but also as harmless as possible - e.g. curving back away from the opponent.

One notable exception is the lion, perhaps the most lethal fighter in the animal kingdom. John Danaher a martial arts expert who appeared on the Lex Friedman podcast, was asked the seemingly inane question: who would win in a cage match fight to the death if a lion and a male gorilla went at it?

The answer was surprisingly nuanced, as the answers of real experts usually are (unlike the ejaculations of our public health experts).

In part he explained that lions have evolved to fight to the death, and while gorillas are immensely powerful, both in tooth and claw, they have not evolved the same ferocity and even leopards have been known to best them.

In Gorilla duels they are not aiming to kill each other. The male betas in a gorilla troop can survive on the fringes, but the king of the jungle will not tolerate any other grown males, not even his own sons. When one comes of age they fight to the death, until the father eventually loses to one of his offspring.

Over the vast expanse of evolutionary time this means lions have been viciously bred by nature to be this planets premier physically unaided killing machines (humans of course are firmly seated at the very apex of the hierarchy of killers, but of course we needed more than our physicality to get there - utilizing our wits and usually a fair bit of technology: lion vs man with handgun might be a toss up, but lion vs man in helicopter is a foregone conclusion).

So anyway the point being a debate for charity is an entirely non-lethal means of hashing out our differences compared to taking 10 paces, turning and firing a bullet.

It should take the place of the duel, especially in the intellectual realm, if only we could all agree to the rules and we all had the honor to abide by social norms.

Of course that’s the real issue. Dishonor has become the new norm, spectacularly evidenced by the tremendous toll of death attributable to the policies foisted upon us by our pillars of public health.

I would argue the pervasive dishonor among all the thieves and murderers in our modern world is due to the destruction of our time preference, wrought by the debasement of our currency, but that’s another story:

Finally on a lighter note, since we will never see a real debate,

Damon Imani

put together this mashup as a joke, but I think it does a good job of showing what the debate would have been like had it ever occurred: