the_dunk_tank

This is somehow even dumber than Paul Ryan liking Rage Against the Machine. I could see a dumbass like Ryan tuning out RATM lyrics as just general aggressive fuck you energy while you jam out to the riffs and Morello's guitar doodling. In contrast, literally the entire verses of "Rockin' in the Free World" are about how terrible America is in pretty plain language, and there's not a whole lot else going on musically to distract from them.

But even worse than that is the spin from that thread:

He sang an old song criticizing his own government, in a country that freely allows its own citizens to do that, but which is under threat of being taken over by a country which routinely sends political dissidents to Siberian prison camps to die. Or just pushes them out 10th floor windows.

People on reddit: "wow, seems tone deaf"

Motherfucker, he IS the government! He's either dumb (it's this one) or he fully understands the song and is in essence taunting people! Beyond parody.

Video of the performance courtesy of the Guardian, which helpfully points out that

The song was written by Young after he was denied an opportunity to perform in the Soviet Union.

lmao, yes, this is definitely the most important context to give about the song. Also it's worded ambiguously in a way that makes it sound like he was specifically barred from performing in the Soviet Union, but the source I found for that (quoting Neil Young's guitarist) doesn't imply anything of the sort:

We were on the road with the Los Dogs in 1989. I was riding on Neil’s bus at the time. I was his cook on the bus, so we were hanging out 24/7. All this stuff was going down with the Ayatollah. I don’t know if you remember that footage of them passing the casket along over the heads of thousand and thousands of people.

There was a lot of “Hate America” demonstrations and we were supposed to do this exchange. We were going to Russia for the first time. It was a cultural exchange. They were getting us in exchange for the Russian Ballet. [Laughs] And it just fell through. Neil was like, “Damn, I really wanted to go.” I said, “Me too. I guess we’ll have to keep on rockin’ in the free world.” He was like, “Wow, that’s a cool line.” Then I said it again later and he said, “That’s a really good phrase. I wanna use it.”