I get it: its not healthy to turn someones bad Twitter day into a scrap of journalism. This is a principle we will have all absorbed within five or 10 years, and I dont like to run afoul of it. But Bryan Adams train wreck is legitimately interesting, right?

On Instagram Monday, Adams pondered the sad fact that he had been scheduled to begin a series of shows at the Royal Albert Hall on that date. Instead, thanks to some fking bat eating, wet market animal selling, virus making greedy bastards, the whole world is now on hold, not to mention the thousands that have suffered or died from this virus. My message to them other than thanks a fking lot is to go vegan.

The anti-Chinese subtext of this complaint did not go unnoticed. It would be hard to miss, especially since it incorporates three different theories of how the novel coronavirus entered human populations, one of which (someone made the virus) directly contradicts the other two. Even an intelligent vegan and lack of cognitive ability is not typically what makes people vegan would surely find this a little awkward.

All right, buddy, you think open-air food markets that sell meat are morally equivalent to genocide anyway. Its only natural that you would assign a mass human calamity to wet markets, just as it is very natural for us anticommunists to attribute the pandemic to communist habits of censorship, politicized science and xenophobic dread. (To say nothing of actual genocide.)

But if anyone designed and unleashed the Wuhan virus in a lab hoping to make life better for meat producers and consumers, that was definitely a weird choice of tactic. If anything the results of the pandemic look more like a vegan terrorists dream of revenge against workers in meat-packing plants, who, by vegan logic, a) completely deserve what they had coming to them; and b) are not to be regarded as having any more value, individually, as the beasts that they slaughter in large quantities for a living.

COVID-19 is, as far as we know, exclusively killing those of us at the tippy-top of the food chain. Wildlife is having a jubilee without precedent in the industrial era. Shouldnt Bryan Adams be celebrating? And praising the designer, divine or human, of the animal rights virus? Did the loss of a few shows in a prestigious venue overwhelm his principles?

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CUTS LIKE A KNIFE. A song by me. Tonight was supposed to be the beginning of a tenancy of gigs at the @royalalberthall, but thanks to some fucking bat eating, wet market animal selling, virus making greedy bastards, the whole world is now on hold, not to mention the thousands that have suffered or died from this virus. My message to them other than thanks a fucking lot is go vegan. To all the people missing out on our shows, I wish I could be there more than you know. Its been great hanging out in isolation with my children and family, but I miss my other family, my band, my crew and my fans. Take care of yourselves and hope we can get the show on the road again soon. Ill be performing a snippet from each album we were supposed to perform for the next few days. X #songsfromisolation #covid_19 #banwetmarkets #selfisolation #bryanadamscutslikeaknife #govegan

A post shared by Bryan Adams (@bryanadams) on May 11, 2020 at 8:45am PDT

His apology for the spittle-flecked gram only made things weirder. No excuse, wrote the crooner: I just wanted to have a rant about the horrible animal cruelty in these wet-markets being the possible source of the virus, and promote veganism. In other words: I said the words that ticked everybody off because I wanted to say them, and I wanted to say them for the reason I stated at the time, which still stands, and I am not offering any excuse.

You can see why I have to embed the term apology in scare quotes. Adams didnt amend or withdraw anything. He could easily have concluded the pseudo-apology with, so kiss my heinie, carnivores. Instead he tacked on a few words of solidarity with members of his own species (I have love for all people), once again suggesting that his -ism may be a tad shallow.

It might even just be though one hesitates to suggest such a thing a talented dimbulbs instinctive, half-assed absorption of a belief system that is trendy amongst his cultural and economic peers. We are left with the question whether Bryan Adams really needs to apologize to fellow vegans for disgracing himself in the name of veganism; or whether he needs to apologize to them for being an unprincipled vegan that favours humans; or whether no apology is needed and he is a decent representative of real vegan reasoning.

His underlying picture of the world one that would feature no epidemic disease if people didnt eat meat does represent a familiar tendency. Hardcore vegans will sometimes call meat-eaters carnists and suggest that carnism is socially constructed that everyone is actually born vegan. That there is a McDonalds every few city blocks only goes to show how much force must be applied, how grand and elaborate the conspiracy has to be, in order to trap mankind in the unnatural, unhealthy carnist state.

If you replace carnism in these sentences with capitalism, you can see where the verbal technique comes from and how it works. Man is born free and everywhere he is in chains, said Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Muslims, for that matter, are said to believe something of the sort that theirs is the faith people are genuinely born with, and that heresies and blasphemies are just socially constructed errors.

Unfortunately, if you like hamburgers, or the sight of thousands of humans dying makes you unhappy in a way that bacon in a supermarket doesnt, this tactic can only serve as a reductio ad absurdum useful mostly for making you step back from the vegan position and search its premises more aggressively for flaws. Unless youre Bryan Adams.

National PostTwitter.com/colbycosh

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Colby Cosh: Is Bryan Adams bad because he's a good vegan? Or forgivable only for being a bad one? - National Post