Banned from TikTok for the LazyTown US Community

[chuft]

My point being everyone knew it was a Chinese company.

So don't build your business around it then.

Like the gaming publisher Tencent. They have CCP officials
in every level of operation at that company. In fact, all Chinese companies are not privately owned. They
are owned and operated by the CCP.

What on earth are you talking about? No they're not. There are 265 of them whose shares trade on American stock exchanges. Not to mention all the ones only on Chinese stock exchanges.


"Since 2018, ByteDance has been in litigation with Tencent. ByteDance and its affiliates brought a series of unfair competition lawsuits against Tencent, alleging that Tencent was blocking their content."


Does that sound like both are "owned and operated by the CCP" to you? I don't know where you get this stuff.

Our government has known and allowed it to fester. Christopher Wray in that "60 minutes" goodbye interview
even stated the Chinese have malware embedded in everything. Just waiting for the right time to hit that button. He even brought up about the theft of technologies.
Again they/we've known this for years. Done nothing.

The government has done tons of things to block Chinese shenanigans, some of which I already listed in previous posts here.

I don't buy the "blame the US government for everything" line of thinking. If they move to block yet another Chinese shenanigan, your response is "they should have done it earlier" ? Sounds like they can't win.

Trump tried to ban them in 2020 with an executive order but it was blocked by the courts. In 2021-22 TikTok was in negotiations with the Biden Administration to work out security concerns but it came to nothing so the movement to ban them got underway. It's nonsense to say the US "did nothing" about TikTok until now.

https://www.recorderonline.com/news/...ef5c9df88.html

[BRBFBI]

So before the boomers, you could not marry someone of another race, live with someone without being married, use birth control pills, get an abortion, get divorced without a court case proving fault in just one partner, or engage in homosexual acts without it being a crime, nor could you marry someone of the same sex. Schools were often racially segregated, as were things like bathrooms and drinking fountains. A man could not be prosecuted for raping his wife. Ah yes, the "good old days".

I really enjoyed this entire post. Thanks for the effort you put into it, including the citations. I have very little to add, but don't take that to mean I didn't consider all of what you wrote. You said you used to be apolitical. I consider myself apolitical. Perhaps because my beliefs don't fit cleanly within the bounds of a political party in the US, or because I don't understand enough about the world to know who to support, or maybe because politics has become so divisive and pervasive that I've tuned them out.

If you look at the greatest liberal president in history, Lyndon Johnson, his greatest talent was for persuasion. He knew how to get people to agree on things and make things happen. Persuasion, not demonizing or insulting, should be the hallmark of any great politician, and is the core of effective politics in general[...]

[...]He did not accomplish these things by belittling his opponents. He was a master of persuasion. Politics is the art of the possible. It's not about ideology, it's about compromise and what can be accomplished.

I agree wholeheartedly. I think there's a sense in modern politics that if you acknowledge the other side you're giving them some sort of credibility, and that if you don't villainize them you're betraying your party. Stories of good and evil are as old as time because they're convenient ways to simplify the complexities of life. But the truth is there's no such thing as evil, only competing motivations. Most disagreements are the result of not understanding the other parties motivations.

I see this all the time at work where there's a lot of friction between organizations. People in my group have very little concept of the work done by our sister organization. They only see the tiny bit that directly affects us and assume they could learn the sister organization's job in a day and even do a much better job. These people have never been to the other facility or tried to read the book of rules they operate by, much less spent a single day training to do that job. They don't realize it's just as complex as ours. When we're given poorly done work by our sister organization people say it's because they're lazy rather than understanding it was the result of a complex situation. An obvious solution would be to cross-train people so they could have empathy for the other jobs.

It's not so easy to "cross-train" in politics, but I think living in a different culture is basically that. I've lived in a number of different places with radically different political environments. I've lived in places where I wouldn't have made a single friend if I filtered out people with political beliefs other than those to which I was accustomed. Experiences like that make it very hard to villainize people for their beliefs.

To put it another way, it's about gaining perspective. While it might be possible to cross-train at work or move to a different region, Millennials can't time travel to the mid 20th century. . . or maybe that's what a history book is for (or a chuft post).

[chuft]

As people get older they tend to vote more. There are a lot of reasons for this but mainly it comes down to realizing that voting is not some abstract act of interest in politics. It is an act of naked power, and the only power most people will ever have.

When you vote, you are not trying to persuade anyone of anything. You are not writing an essay for how you think things should be. You are not donating money that will be spent on ads trying to persuade people of how things should be. You are not in any way trying to convince someone else how things should be.

What you are doing is trying to put someone into power who can use the force of law, the power of their office, to make things the way you think they should be. To pass laws, or issue orders, that will impose your view of how things should be on everyone else, whether they like it or not. And those laws and orders will be enforced by people with guns - with physical force - with all the resources of the government at their disposal.

That is what voting really is. You are trying to impose your views on everyone, including people who would be bitterly opposed to them. And if you don't vote, you are conceding that power, that control of the people who have the authority to use force, to somebody else who does vote. Somebody who quite likely does not have your best interests at heart, and who, through voting, will impose their views on you.

To vote is to exercise political power. For most people, it's the only way they can.



People who already have a lot of power - "soft" power, like a lot of money or a crowd of devoted followers, or hard power, like being in office already - have incentive to discourage political activity in the general population. They prefer that most people be passive and just let them assume or keep power.

Here is a very short video that I found interesting on the difference between Soviet and Russian propaganda exploring this aim of making most people apolitical. (Ironically I think this was originally a TikTok video or whatever you call TikTok content.)

I can certainly understand how someone in the current US environment is apolitical. If things get as bad as I think they're going to get, being apolitical may well be the ultimate survival skill, as it is in Putin's Russia. Having political opinions can be downright dangerous, and has been many times in history.


Nonetheless, you may find the following essays worthwhile. One party has deliberately been working for decades to undermine the public's faith in government as an institution, because they see government as something that gets between rich people and what they want to do, and which stops religious extremists from carrying out their agendas. It's a strategy designed to make people apolitical by making them lose faith in government, and think both parties are equally bad, so they don't vote. If government is weakened and disrespected, it leaves all the real power to the rich and their corporations, and nobody is there to stop religious extremism.

It is best to read them in order. The first was published 13 years before the second.

https://truthout.org/articles/goodby...left-the-cult/

https://www.salon.com/2024/11/17/goo...the-last-time/


These are not cheerful essays. The second in particular draws a grim conclusion that I had already drawn myself. But they are very informative as to how we got where we are.




I must respectfully disagree with you about evil. I think some people are indeed quite evil, history is filled with examples, as is the current day. I actually asked my psychiatrist about this once. He is a forensic psychiatrist who testifies at criminal trials. I asked him, "Given your education and experience - are some people just, well, evil?"

His answer? "Absolutely."

[DrFauligstein]

I am truly pleasantly surprised seeing such a topic being discussed in-depth. As someone who is quite politically active myself, especially in a currently polarized country like in Germany, it is very hard not to be stigmatized for holding certain opinions (in which discriminatory ones obviously do not count) or belonging to a certain party. You can get chastized simply by association without having chances to explain yourself and, depending on how rabid the climate is, all sides will be at each other's throats, which is a troubling development not just localized in my own country. In such instances I can quite understand people being apolitical, or as it has been said previously, the party system in the US not helping fitting neatly, or simply lack of information, which is totally legitimate.

The biggest problem lies in proper communication between groups, the more a group is uncompromising or radical in their beliefs, the easier it is for them to be despised, as it also reflects in their treatment of other groups. But unfortunately, even hate has become an acceptable motivation for some to vote a certain way, without having read fully into any party, simply out of sheer emotionality and protest. While none can say that emotions are bad per se in this case, as many values we hold may or may not result from sentiments, they should be in unison with our train of thought. There it requires one to fully read into what so and so party espouses and what concrete policy it wishes to put forward, but many unfortunately just let hate decide in my country's instance.

Democracy has always been a fickle institution, easy to be abused by demagogues and armchair dictators alike, even today. Political failures from mainstream parties, but also the divisive nature of social media in its treatment of the youth and everyone else involved, are prime factors on which misinformation, hate and demagoguery can grow. In such instances, we need to be examples of not falling into such traps and if one is willing to become politically active, always seek the truth and don't let your own maxims create a tunnel-visioned future. And yet at the same time, stand against evil where we see it, but only in confirmed cases. When we want to convince people of something, demonizing is most definitely not the right way, yet sometimes, people feel pressured to do so when they have been a victim of it. Being truthful, integral in character and courteous are the ways to go.

[chuft]

I am truly pleasantly surprised seeing such a topic being discussed in-depth. As someone who is quite politically active myself, especially in a currently polarized country like in Germany, it is very hard not to be stigmatized for holding certain opinions (in which discriminatory ones obviously do not count) or belonging to a certain party.
...
Democracy has always been a fickle institution, easy to be abused by demagogues and armchair dictators alike, even today.

Thanks for that, it is always interesting to get the perspective of those in other countries. In the US it's something we rarely get. I have a few comments.


Demagogues

The Framers of the US Constitution of the US were educated men and understood the lessons from the past. The "mother city" of democracy was of course Athens, Greece. This amazing city-state, in the 5th century BCE, repulsed an invasion from the despotic Persian Empire, giving rise to the idea that a relatively small number of free men were worth many times their number of slave soldiers. Athens produced some of the most amazing things in history - its architecture (the inspiration for the US Capitol), the plays of Aristophanes, the philosophy of Plato and Socrates and Aristotle, the history of Thucydides, the mathematics of Pythagoras, the medicine of Hippocrates (the Hippocratic Oath is still in use today), and of course the concept of democracy itself. All this from a city of 50,000 citizens. The average modern city of 50,000, or 500,000, or even 5,000,000 has produced nothing like any of these accomplishments. To study Athens is to continually be amazed that so much brilliance could come from so few people.

Yet Athens brought disaster upon itself. After the Persians had been defeated, the Athenians turned what had been a temporary alliance against the Persians - the Delian League of Greek city-states - into an unwilling empire, subject to taxation to pay for Athens' fleet. A rivalry ensued with the other major power in Greece, Sparta, which had a very unusual militaristic society and form of government (involving 2 kings). After Athens had suppressed revolts from various cities in its empire when they tried to break free, some called for help from Sparta, and war with Sparta and its allies eventually broke out. This war lasted about 28 years. A plague, made far worse by the siege of Athens by Sparta, killed many of Athens' best and brightest including their military and political leader Pericles. The Athenians (always acting by democratic vote) continued to make unwise decisions, such as engaging in the disastrous Sicilian Expedition, until finally in a cataclysmic event, their navy was destroyed and they had to surrender or face starvation due to blockade and siege.

The Framers saw that democracy does not always produce wise choices. When they went to create a new form of government after breaking free from the monarchy of Britain, they wanted democratic features but also checks and balances to keep demagoguery in check. Demagogues - politicians who could control relatively ignorant masses of people with their rhetoric - were seen as to blame for the fall of Athenian democracy. The Framers were greatly concerned with the threat of demagoguery, especially with regard to foreign interference in US elections.

For the office of President, the highest office in the land, special procedures were put in place as extra measures against demagoguery and foreign influence. An Electoral College was established each election, whose members would select the President. The members of that institution were to be selected by each State. This was initially done by each State's Legislature but that quickly changed to popular elections. The Electors had special requirements to prevent sitting politicians from serving also as Electors. These topics are explored by Alexander Hamilton in Federalist Paper #68. The concept was that popular elections would be held, but the Electors would be free to choose the actual President once they met and discussed matters. The will of the people was not the overriding principle here, since they were held to be subject to influence by demagogues. The Electors were supposed to be wise, experienced men who would overrule the popular vote if necessary to avoid putting a bad man in office.

Things changed. The right to vote, once limited to white male landowners (seen as having a stake in maintaining stability and order), was gradually broadened to include more and more groups. Political parties, nonexistent at the time the Constitution was signed, arose. Restrictions on "faithless Electors" also arose, binding Electors (on the first round of voting anyway) to vote for the candidate they had been elected to support. As a result the Electoral College changed from an independent body that was the last line of defense against a bad choice by the masses, to a slate of political party members who, in addition to being chosen by their party only if they were considered partisan and politically reliable, were eventually bound by law to vote for their party's candidate. Effectively the Electoral College was deprived of its primary function of being a safeguard against bad choices by the public. Its main effect now is to give disproportional power to rural, lightly populated states due to how the number of Electors is determined. For this reason one of the main US parties wants to maintain it at all costs, while the other, and independents, see it as no longer serving a useful purpose. The protection from demagogues, as we have seen recently, is gone.




As for the question of polarization, one might wonder why things are so polarized. This is not as new as it might appear. Things were certainly polarized in the years leading up to the US Civil War. And they were polarized at other times too, such as during the Vietnam War. I think the main factor in today's polarization - in addition of course to the echo chambers created by internet social media - is the rise of identity politics.

In normal politics, you might have an issue, and reasonable people can disagree on it without the disagreements becoming heated. For example, the budget. Let's say the government is spending more than it is taking in. One party might say "our current programs are important, let us raise more revenue by increasing income taxes on the wealthy" and the other might say "No, let us cut programs until we are spending within the limits of our revenue." These kinds of disagreements can be negotiated and compromised on, such that perhaps some programs might be examined and found to be outdated, wasteful, or benefiting only small groups, so the first party might be willing to make some cuts, and in return, the other party might agree to a small increase in taxes to maintain a stable fiscal situation.

But when issues arise from one's identity, it is entirely different. Take abortion for example. If one party says "We are women, and the government should not be able to force us to have babies we don't want to have, we are not incubators, our bodies are our own, hands off" and the other party says "We are Christians, we believe fetuses are babies, we cannot allow murdering babies, it is a horrible sin" then all possibility of compromise tends to disappear. Neither side can compromise without compromising on their own sense of identity, and no one wants to do that. This in turn trickles over into what used to be the areas of reasonable debate like the budget. Now one party wants to fund Planned Parenthood to assist poor women who want (or need) abortions, while the other wants to cut funding to Planned Parenthood as part of their strategy to reduce abortions. Soon all politics become contaminated by identity issues and nobody wants to compromise on anything, seeing the other side as unreasonable people whose mind cannot be changed rather than someone with a different point of view worth talking to.

I think at least part of the blame lies on the US Supreme Court. By handing liberals so many total, unqualified victories in the 1960s and 1970s, the Court, meaning well, actually short-circuited the normal (slow) process of negotiation and compromise that occurs when things have to be worked out by Congress / the state Legislatures. As a result liberals became used to getting their own way with no need to compromise, and the other side felt their only recourse was to try to pack the Supreme Court with Justices who shared their own politics, and overturn the decisions that way. I think if some of these issues had been worked out through negotiation the old fashioned way, with compromises by both sides that each could live with, the result would have taken longer and would unfold slowly over time, but things would be much less heated today.

But maybe not. Identity politics is very divisive and the internet has made it worse, since you can easily find others with your "identity" and what might have been a minor part of your personality can grow until it is an essential part of your sense of self, something you can't compromise on at all.

[DrFauligstein]

Yes, you are indubitably right about that with regards to polarization. Identity politics tie in with social policies and amongst other things the whole debacle with conservatism and progressivism. In such instances, it is almost nigh impossible to convince other people if they already hold an opposing view, like in the case of abortion. It truly does seem that the US system became a shadow of its former self, more dedicated towards party politics like in the case of the electors and well, the lack of real alternatives in the two-party framework. That small history lesson does give a valuable insight into the system as it was. We for that matter barely learn anything about this in Germany, so bully for you!

With such things happening, I somewhat envy apolitical people, they take the situation as is and would (usually) be alright with them, unless said politics resulted in some dastardly change or intervention in their lives, though I must say this is a big assumption on my end and I am not certain if this is true for most, so do forgive me. As for me, who is very passionate about politics, philosophy and history, I barely cannot stand not being in touch with it and this of course can become an issue when meeting new people, who put the opinions of a person on a higher pedestal than the person themself. Many people here for example avoid dating anyone from certain political camps for example. Generally I do keep politics out of most things, unless it is warranted and the person I talk to is a reliable conversation partner in such regards.

Yes, it certainly does hold true that when politics become personal, my hopes for a decent dialogue may be for naught, but I guess such is the nature of such issues as you said. The imposition of one's own vision for an entire country, which always come at the cost of those who did not see it as such. Nontheless, despite all opposition, I do try to maintain all manner of dignity, courteousness and righteousness, as we all bleed the same blood and are all part of the human race. Usually its why I stay out of social media and remain a keen, open-eyed observer not gonna lie, as it engulfs all the things it touches on in flames.

Lastly, echo chambers are the worst things to exist. While having a safe space with like-minded people is generally a good prospect, conversations with a multitude of people of different backgrounds is a large step towards maturity and development that one should never miss. We can only hope for the future that things cool down, but as it seems, we reach breaking points more and more.

[chuft]

In the US too I think dating someone from the other party has become almost nonexistent for those with a political consciousness. Apolitical people may have a larger dating pool in this regard.



Going further, since 2016, the year Trump won his first term, it has been quite common for people to cease contact with old friends and even family members due to politics. And now people are moving to other states based, often, on politics. There is a "self sorting" going on politically. One of the top requirements people list when looking for places to retire for example is wanting to move to an area and preferably a state where the population has similar political beliefs.


In my state of Florida for example, due to the prominent actions of Governor DeSantis, an enormous number of Republicans moved here in the last four years. Voter suppression efforts also took place to discourage registration of black voters, who typically register as Democrats. Democrats began moving to other states to escape the unfriendly atmosphere DeSantis' laws and regulations created, such as forcing transgender people to have their birth gender on their ID, banning mask mandates by local governments in times of outbreaks, and heavily restricting abortions to the first six weeks of pregnancy. This was the result:





As late as 2020 there were more Democrats than Republicans. Now there are 1.2 million more Republicans than Democrats. In four years. Astounding. Note this was driven primarily by people moving here (and some fleeing) not by people changing parties.





Some of these are children, independents not in any political party etc. so the numbers will not match the exact growth in Republicans.


The US has for a long time had an anti-intellectual culture. This disrespect for learning and knowledge, particularly of the liberal arts and history, has had consequences. To take abortion as an example: few people are aware that abortion was primarily a Catholic issue until 50 years ago. Evangelical Protestants did not have any particular view on it. This anti-abortion rhetoric and political behavior by them is a very recent thing. There is nothing in the Bible about abortion and many women who get abortions are themselves Christians. If people could discuss things rationally and examine the bases for their own beliefs some might realize they are being manipulated by others for political purposes and that their religion actually does not say anything on the topic, and they have more in common with the other side than they think.

The US is a very odd place in that people love technology but do not respect science. They want the gun but disrespect the gunsmith. While that is nothing new, it has definitely gotten worse in recent decades. Most younger people I know think a college degree should strictly be for gaining job skills. They have no understanding of the importance of critical thinking, which is the goal of a liberal arts education. What they really want is training, though they do not realize the difference. Such people are easily manipulated by social media and disinformation/propaganda, to bring the discussion back to the thread title.

[chuft]

And propaganda is very much part of this issue. From yesterday:



Washington, D.C. – Today, U.S. Senator Susan Collins issued the following statement on TikTok:

“TikTok is enjoyed by millions of Americans. The problem is not the platform but rather its control by the Chinese Communist Party. The huge bipartisan majority that passed this law is not looking to ban TikTok; it is looking to prevent the Chinese government from using the popular social media site as a propaganda platform and as an espionage tool to collect extensive personal information on Americans. All ByteDance has to do is agree to a sale that satisfies the law’s divestment requirements – something that it could do at a significant profit – and TikTok would be able to continue to be enjoyed by millions of Americans.”


https://www.collins.senate.gov/newsr...ment-on-tiktok

[DrFauligstein]

Huh, who would've thunk the bible did not condemn it. But yeah, that just goes to show how deep this political rivalry can go, hell, I didn't even think that it could be that bad. Though I myself must say that if someone is that hellbent on remaining with their values and cutting off contact with those who do not share them, especially when it comes to dating, I would definitely distance myself from them, because that is just an obnoxious character.

To be fair, the anti-intellectual culture of the US has also become known in Europe, besides the old clichés of rednecks, gun-nuts and geographically incompetent people. If anyone here ever heard of the game Postal 2, it really satirizes a lot of these aspects and is one of my favorite games. I myself am studying to become a school-teacher in English and Philosophy and as such one really needs to humble oneself to analyze these affairs properly and god I fear how the next generation will be once I am a teacher. Hopefully not radically politicized on either side of the spectrum or, when we look at what recent social media trends are, nutcases, because they will be the most impressionable to such a vitrolic environment.

I myself never used TikTok and deemed a lot of the content to be utter trash, but at the same time I am a hypocrite for saying so when I scroll through reels and shorts from time to time, as it is practically the same format of content. But it goes to show how something as a supposedly harmless app being instrumentalized for such purposes.

[chuft]

Democrats rarely have Republicans as romantic partners and vice versa, study finds



LOL. Look at those flags. "(Photo credit: Adobe Firefly)"

More AI slop.

[DrFauligstein]

Sometimes AI truly is a double-edged sword. Here we have great work coming out thanks to Pooky's efforts and there we have news/media outlets being too lazy to find actual pics. Hm, LazyNews.

[chuft]

More like too cheap