For many technology critics, especially patriotic ones, the passage of the House bill banning TikTok is cause for celebration. But the most important laws to keep America in the digital age are very different. It hasn’t even been drafted yet — and if Congress keeps an eye on the TikTok soap opera, it never will.
To be sure, there’s plenty of room for debate about China’s social media giants. All great criticisms are rooted in a core of truth or more. China truly is our worst digital enemy, collecting far more American data than the rest of the world combined and shamelessly using information about our intimate lives and worst proclivities. and map the constructs of psychological, social, economic and political vulnerability in unmistakable detail. The same applies to ordinary citizens and public servants.
The truth is that millions of Americans are responding to the risk that we will be enslaved to technology, an oppressive system imposed by those who seek to forcibly enslave us to an awakened religion through technology. It means that our souls are suffering from a new virtual oppression.
TikTok is just one important part of the omnivorous digital arsenal. It is also a corrosive cultural mainstream in terms of content and medium. As we all know, much of TikTok’s most famous content transcends sex, gender, and entertainment to the point where the average American wouldn’t want their kids touching a 10-foot pole. And their faces on infinite scroll, let alone consuming them inches away. And thanks to the app’s algorithms, it can guide users from common social media filler content to difficult ones with surprising speed.
But the problem goes far beyond content. Those in the know understand that users can easily bypass the standard bilge and enjoy a variety of the edgiest, hilarious, and authentically right-wing memes and shitposts. Or you can just relax with a lot of highly aesthetic and atmospheric content. The content is free of any ideological coding or psychosexual manipulation.
Nevertheless, the nature of the hybrid cyber-television medium in which TikTok operates impacts users regardless of the type of content they consume. Limit your app use, look for answers to basic life questions in apps, start your mornings with apps, and end your nights with them after bedtime. All this causes serious problems for users.
Moreover, cyber-television media, whether on TikTok or other social media apps, force users to abandon their “common,” “basic,” or “standard” self-identities, making them increasingly bespoke, ambiguous, and closed. It is clear that they are being “rewired” to support something similar. Identity involves users’ collective terminology, behaviors, imaginations, and memories, to name just a few, that are rendered incomprehensible to outsiders and that have been deemed absolutely essential to America since World War II. The widely shared and living identity that has existed is eroded. It functions as the world’s leading nation-state.
Whether or not that is actually (or even still) true, the social psychology involved in its sudden unraveling has already had dramatic consequences, and has proven to be easy to politicize and ideologicalize. It’s exacerbating a number of known divisions among Americans. That is damaging in itself, but when it comes in the form of increased power to a rival country like China that is busy reinforcing its cultural uniformity and traditionalist discipline, the cost is dizzying. Become something. And if that damage is causing Americans to forget that the ultimate damage is done by compulsively interpreting identity in terms of politics rather than relationship to God, then why should we It’s not hard to understand why many are feeling the digital age. For America, it was one of total free fall.
dance to oblivion
Add all this up, and it’s clear that burning down TikTok or forcing America’s big tech companies into a fire sale won’t solve the problems plaguing us. Unfortunately, this is why many citizens and government officials are secretly despairing about the magnitude of the problem. They believe it is already too late. Especially after the coronavirus pandemic, we have been pushed to the point of no return. There is little that can preserve our hard-won American way of life other than a few professional sports leagues, a few church congregations, and Buc-ee’s.
sufficient! Now is not the time to despair, especially if you are willing to accept the reality of how bad things are and how far it still has to go. The truth is that millions of Americans from all walks of life are responding to the risk that we will be enslaved to technology by those who seek to forcibly enslave us into an awakened religion through technology. It means that the soul is suffering from a new, oppressive virtual oppression.
But feeling bad isn’t enough to make things right. That is why some radical opponents and traditionalists look to ancient and medieval models that merge spiritual and material powers into a single theocratic authority. After all, that’s what the “left” is doing today. That would be good for Gander, right? mistaken. History amply shows that whenever the state seizes the privileges of the church, things get worse and worse, even though church and state should ideally work in harmony (and , should be harmonious, assuming neither worships or forces false gods or idols). Here in America, we must abide by the Constitution and maintain the form of government guaranteed by the Constitution, even with further amendments.
And here comes the most important piece of legislation that will keep America feeling American, both online and offline. No matter how bad TikTok is, Big Tech is in some ways even worse. Because TikTok is an integral part of the current administration’s fierce race to be both America and America. Digital church and state. This high-tech, hyper-woke cyber theocracy is grossly unconstitutional by design. And the only constitutional way to stop this is through the Digital Rights Amendment, or the Digital Rights Act, which works similarly to ensure that Americans’ ability to access and use basic digital technology is not infringed. The goal is to provide explicit comprehensive protection measures for
The Bill of Rights covers our digital rights
The idea is simple. The First and Second Amendments allow the federal government to violate or punish our fundamental rights to access and use basic tools to freely speak, associate, and protect ourselves and our loved ones. It is expressly prohibited to do so. The primary tools covered by the First Amendment are basic common communications technologies. Under the Second Amendment, these are required common weapons technologies. And, as we all know today, in the digital age, all technology is becoming increasingly “dual-use.” Almost all communications technology today is also a type of weapons technology.
Our right to access and use basic digital tools is already implicit in the First and Second Amendments. But with the grossly unconstitutional “whole-of-government, whole-of-society” digital revolution imposed on us without our vote or consent, it is time to explicitly spell out the implicit digital rights.
Some may worry that this approach is too broad. But we know that even the Bill of Rights is not immune to judicial review. In fact, it is far from judicial review. And, of course, our digital rights are limited to human American citizens and do not extend to Chinese shell companies, machine entities, or future cyborgs.
Today, it’s easy to get swayed by the uncalled for pace of technological and political change. But you don’t have to roll over and take it. And even if Congress doesn’t get the message, there are plenty of states to work with. As long as you work quickly!
