Why ban TikTok? Because China! Because Internet!
Banning TikTok may or may not be the answer to a maiden’s prayer, but for many Democrats and Republicans, it is a much needed balm for all their wounds, or so they are so foolish to believe. Democrats and Republicans are unhappy because neither can command the support of a consistent majority of the American people, largely because neither party can provide the cure for America’s economic malaise. Of course, the solution for both parties’ woes is obvious: Look in the goddamn mirror! But both parties are frustrated, confused, and riven.1 Looking in the mirror provides them with more truth than they can handle. They don't want truth, and they don’t want answers. They want villains! Blame shifting yes, statesmanship no! In such an atmosphere, yelling at a Chinese guy (TikTok CEO Shou Chew) for five hours feels so goddamn good!
Just about everybody in Washington wants to kick China’s butt. Who do they think they are, with all their balloons and shit? We’re the top dogs all around the world. That’s the way it’s always been and that’s the way it’s always gonna be. If those fellas get to feelin’ frisky, well, as four star Air Force General Michale Minihan said, when predicting war with China by 2025, “aim for the head”. So just forget about the fact that China has four times as many people as we do, that their economy is growing three times faster than ours is, that their economy is already 60% the size of ours2 (the USSR’s economy never got above 40%), and that the Chinese economy, entirely unlike that of the Soviets, is inextricably interwoven with the world economy. Oh, and also forget about the fact that when we tried to kick the butt of Iraq, a country one-eighth our size (and less than one-thirtieth China’s size), well, things didn’t go so well. Yeah, forget about all that shit! When Uncle Sam wants to rumble, the rules go out the window!
Okay, no one really wants a war with China, unless General Minihan is really bored and, well, worried about his budget. But the prospect of a war with China is a different matter: a prospect that will replace the once so promising “War on Terror” as the “real” replacement for the original Cold War—this is a consummation devoutly to be wished (by some). The decades-long U.S.-Soviet, capitalist-communist confrontation, an “existential” struggle that actually was existential, now appears. in retrospect, to have become an essential stimulus/balance wheel without which the American political system tends to fall apart, thanks to Republican “rage” over the fact that they longer have a reason for being, thanks to Democrats’ fear of being called pussies, and thanks to the military intellectual complex, which fears nothing at all except peace.
But the “real” appeal of beating on China, for both parties, is that it “explains” why Washington can’t deliver sustained prosperity to America. Why, it’s the damned Chinese! They stole all our jobs! It’s time we got tough with those bastards! Never mind the fact that imposing tariffs on Chinese goods simply leads to inflation in the U.S., or that forcing other nations to “shun” China only makes them less sympathetic to our goals and more open to China’s advances. So what? Blaming China for our economic woes gets us votes in the U.S. and gives us an excuse for not making the kind of “painful” economic decisions that would actually create jobs here, decisions like eliminating all the “smart growth” restrictions on housing and other forms of economic development that us Blue State folks engage in to maintain the sky-high values of our homes and prevent “sprawl” (aka letting people live where they like), while denying unemployed and under-employed folks in Red States the opportunity to move into our neighborhoods where the “good jobs” actually exist. If we did that, we could stop spending money on costly public housing projects that create jobs for bureaucrats rather than housing for the poor, so that we could, you know, cut taxes and fire some useless bureaucrats, letting them go out and find productive jobs instead of unproductive ones, thus promoting economic growth instead of inhibiting it. Sounds like a win-win!
Yes, everyone hates China, and everyone hates the Internet too. Both our parties are convinced that “right” is on their side, yet neither can win elections consistently. Democrats are always on the “verge” of establishing that ever elusive “permanent” Democratic majority that never quite comes to stay. Democrats have a legitimate beef against the “permanent gerrymandering” of both the Senate and the Electoral College, but Republicans have shown that they can win the House on a pretty regular basis, both on the basis of actual seats won (which is what counts, of course) and the total number of votes cast, nationwide. For Republicans, of course, the notion that they have a “natural” majority is pretty much an exercise in paranoid denial of reality, which is something they’re awfully good at.
But even paranoids need excuses, and so do frustrated liberals, and, well, there’s the Internet, just sitting there. It’s new, and everyone’s using it, and we don’t understand it, so it must be bad! So hauling up some, some Chinese guy no one ever heard of and yelling at him for five hours about something called “TikTok”, well, it sounds like a no brainer! Because it is!
Afterwords
Reason’s Robby Soave says that TikTok’s Chinese connection is worrisome, but letting the federal government censor TikTok is likely to make the U.S. more like China, allowing whoever is in office to “correct” Facebook, Google, and all the rest at their leisure. Elizabeth Nolan Brown agrees and goes the extra mile to link to those on the left and right who, refreshingly, don’t want to save America by shutting TikTok down. .
1. Democrats are split, as always, between the pure and the practical. Republicans, between the psychotics and their enablers.
