Whether American citizens like it or not, Senator Josh Hawley and other lawmakers are aggressively pushing to ban the social media app TikTok because they feel the app is influencing opinions on Israel. This is a huge problem for many reasons. It’s also ironic that this push is coming from the conservative right. Conservative politicians usually stand for free speech and less government. However, evidently, there are times in which they about-face on these ideals conveniently.
The problem with Hawley’s attempts to ban TikTok is that it’s un-American, draconian, and fascist, considering that many American citizens enjoy, and have even started entire businesses from TikTok. Banning the app is not a sane nor warranted approach. Furthermore, this move attempts to normalize a new normal, of allowing the government to ban whatever it does not like. In short, this is a terrible precedent.
Many of these career politicians are completely out-of-touch, and they are suggesting that a sole app is to blame for a growing shift in public sentiments. These politicians representing the unseen oligarchs are so unhinged that they don’t seem to even consider that perceptions and attitudes may be changing organically. They think so little of people and their ability to think for themselves that they feel the government has to censor or restrict access to content and social media applications.
Another big problem with these grifting politicians is that they are springing into action based on lies, exaggerations, and many times lying themselves. There was exaggerated hearsay that there were scores of American TikTokers praising and sympathizing with Osama Bin Laden and are also siding with Hamas. They’re peddling a weird insinuation that TikTok somehow possesses the magical power to brainwash and indoctrinate unsuspecting people at will to support terrorism. This is preposterous and none of that is the truth. No one is supporting known terrorists or terrorist acts because of TikTok.
It may be difficult for some to grasp that many younger people are simply having more nuanced conversations and believe that certain aspects of what Bin Laden wrote were valid. Saying this may sound shocking and immediately spark an angry knee-jerk reaction for some, but that’s just the programming kicking in. For this reason, tensions are growing between people caught in differing perspectives.
Most of society is habituated to think in extremes and absolutes. We were institutionalized to think of many world wars and conflicts as good versus evil, us versus them, villains versus heroes, with each country portraying itself as 100% in the right. So the issue isn’t necessarily that more Gen Z folks are becoming anti-American, but many growing minds are realizing that some issues are more complex than how things have been simplified and spoon-fed to them. They are not supporting Bin Laden or any of the terrorist acts our government tells us he did. They are merely expressing shock that his writings weren’t the maniacal, angry screeds of a psychopath they thought they would be. And the path to world peace may be in transparency, and a people truly understanding all angles of a conflict instead of having blind trust in government narratives or decisions. But again, there aren’t many people praising Bin Laden, Hamas, or terrorism.
The truth is leaking out that the United States’ hands aren’t squeaky clean and some younger people are merely discussing some of the catalysts for the current tensions in the Middle East. Because of what was said about him all these years, Americans viewed Bin Laden as a bloodthirsty savage. However, after reading his letter to America, some discovered a more sane, logical, and human side to the man. However, the US government simply isn’t used to critical thinking masses or collective objectivity, so the “powers that were” are panicking. So while they are still deciding on banning TikTok, the government censored the internet yet again and had platforms remove content featuring Osama Bin Laden’s letter.
Controlling The Narrative
The true brainwashing mechanism actually comes from American media conglomerates that secretly work with American intelligence agencies to shape public perception. And in the old world that we are more accustomed to, people characterized as the evil villains must be vehemently denounced and every single thing they say or do must be disavowed. However, the era of American media simplifying our worldview in which they dictate who the “good guys” and “bad guys” are may be coming to an end. And that is what they fear.
The real motive for some of these politicians might be the fact that it is becoming increasingly difficult for mainstream platforms to control the flow of information. Regardless, human beings all over the world have unprecedented access to one another, and banning one app is not likely to change much.
At any rate, when we fall to the point in which politicians are covertly serving large corporate entities and not their respective constituencies in order to dictate to American citizens which apps they can and can’t use, we are continuing down a very dark totalitarian path. The times are changing and many things in the dark are coming to light. Consequently, many people in society are struggling with the information paradigm shift, and some may be experiencing a little cognitive dissonance when it comes to many topics of the day. Regardless, if we learned anything at all from the last few years during the pandemic, we’ve learned that the entities calling for censorship or restrictions on information are never the good guys.
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