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The Death of TikTok and the Demise of Democracy
For now at least, but this thing isn’t cooked yet
Sunday was a big news day. Three hostages were released by Hamas in Israel and hopefully they are the beginning of the end to the horrors there. Washington was awash in Inauguration parties, if you had the millions required for tickets. But these events were eclipsed by a national tragedy of epic proportions.
170 million Americans are mourning the loss of TikTok, a meaningless app that has mesmerized a majority of the country while sharing everything they know and do with China, our greatest enemy. That entire sentence might be the most absurd and surrealistic thing I have ever written and it is the truth.
Today Donald Trump has been sworn in as the 47th President of the United States, surrounded by billionaires celebrating their political takeover of the world’s most sustained democracy and the greatest military power ever seen. Or so we are told, though China is moving up fast as they risk their entire economy to build a massive, highly advanced military.
But TikTok? Really? Are we really that stupid and self-absorbed? Of course we are. I watched a grown man, if twenty-something is grown, crying on national television over the loss of endless tiny videos of people acting like idiots while a dictator and his courtiers took over our country.
It’s quite amazing to see our country go to hell in a handbasket in a few short years. I wish I could be blasé about it but WTF? TikTok? Really?
We should be living in an enlightened age of technology right now. Instead we get what David Mattin, in his brilliant newsletter on AI, New World Same Humans, calls the splinterverse, an information landscape that divides instead of unites humanity.
Donald Trump learned the power of dividing people into us and them and it took him to the pinnacle of power on this planet. The lesson he learned is one every bully, no matter how intellectually stupid they may be, learns early on. Build a power base of lackeys, ridicule everyone around you, and then create a cult of power, often based on nothing.
I mention this because it is the culmination of many Americans checking out from reality and choosing willful…
