> 1) Chinese Tiktok scaring the US government: Sure OUR corps can mentally rape our citizenry, but someone else? Nononononononono. This may provoke the first real debate on pernicious ubiquitous algorithmic manipulation.
It wont: It will be 'okay' for the US govt. and corps to do it, but it wont be 'okay' for others to do even a fraction of it. This kind of double standard and exceptionalism has been the lynchpin of the public discourse in the US throughout history. The people treat international things as if they were sports matches: They think that they are 'on a side', which is "their country's side", and they create group cohesion by uniting against the purported external enemy regardless of what happens at home. The problems at home are 'okay' to ignore until the external enemy is 'dealt with' because the country is 'more democratic'.
But the external enemies never stop coming up as they are manufactured by the establishment itself, based on real threats or, if none exist, made-up threats (at one point in mid to late 2000s they even went to the extent of talking about an extraterrestrial threat, which nobody bought so they had to drop it), and the fake democracy at home never allows the public to change anything. So things stay as they are at home, with the US govt. raping its citizens directly or by outsourcing it to private corporations and everyone just gets on with their lives in this horrible pandemonium - but at least feeling good about themselves because they live in 'the best country in the world', 'most advanced democracy', 'the shining beacon of freedom and prosperity'.
It wont: It will be 'okay' for the US govt. and corps to do it, but it wont be 'okay' for others to do even a fraction of it. This kind of double standard and exceptionalism has been the lynchpin of the public discourse in the US throughout history. The people treat international things as if they were sports matches: They think that they are 'on a side', which is "their country's side", and they create group cohesion by uniting against the purported external enemy regardless of what happens at home. The problems at home are 'okay' to ignore until the external enemy is 'dealt with' because the country is 'more democratic'.
But the external enemies never stop coming up as they are manufactured by the establishment itself, based on real threats or, if none exist, made-up threats (at one point in mid to late 2000s they even went to the extent of talking about an extraterrestrial threat, which nobody bought so they had to drop it), and the fake democracy at home never allows the public to change anything. So things stay as they are at home, with the US govt. raping its citizens directly or by outsourcing it to private corporations and everyone just gets on with their lives in this horrible pandemonium - but at least feeling good about themselves because they live in 'the best country in the world', 'most advanced democracy', 'the shining beacon of freedom and prosperity'.