TikTok and the Patriot Act

Will American "conservatives" never learn?

“As a dog returns to his vomit, so a fool repeats his folly”

— Biblical proverb

In a bipartisan vote (352-65), the US House of Representatives has passed a bill that “bans” TikTok in America by forcing ByteDance (TikTok’s Chinese parent company) to sell it to a US-based firm.

Joe Biden has indicated he will sign the bill, so its fate (and ours) is in the hands of the US Senate.

Interestingly, the most “libertarian” members of the House joined with some of the most “progressive” members in opposing the bill — correctly perceiving that expanding government power in this way will obviously result in abuses of said power.

Also interestingly, prominent figures such as Elon Musk, Tucker Carlson, and Donald Trump oppose the bill, citing the same concerns.

The bill’s supporters all have reasons why they believe TikTok is a threat to national security. For the purposes of this article, I don’t care about the merits of those arguments.

Instead, I want to talk about how goddamn stupid Republicans are.

While this bill explicitly names TikTok as its focus, it also includes language broad enough to allow the feds to ban plenty of other companies if they so choose. Like Twitter(X), for example.

This legislation applies to any social media company that is designated as a “foreign adversary controlled application.” “Control” in this context means satisfying one of three criteria: being headquartered in such a country; if such a country owns 20% of the app; or if the app is subject to “direction or control” of such a country.

It’s that last clause that is a loophole big enough to drive a Cybertruck through.

When I heard of the huge level of Republican support for this crappy bill, it immediately reminded me of the Patriot Act of 2001. Warmongering “conservatives” loudly pushed for the passage of massively increased government powers to assist “law enforcement” in hunting down “our enemies”.

And predictably, obviously, as sure as night follows day, as soon as left-wingers were in power, these new Patriot Act powers were turned on right-wingers.

I have a lot of philosophical problems with the left. I disagree with them strongly on very important matters. But the right is just a joke. They look like controlled opposition - or the villains in a Kayfabe storyline.

If I’m wrong and the Republicans are serious, well-intentioned folks just fighting for their stated principles — then they are idiots.

Or perhaps dogs, slinking back to their own vomit.

Either way, put not your faith in these wretches. They cannot be trusted.

Naturally,

Adam