America’s First Mind may be a little dim
US president seems to regard the content of TikTok as the sluiceway to Chinese propaganda
Local punters have been able to sample just what Donald Trump’s increasingly unhinged trade war with China will taste like.The general consensus is likely to be "unpleasant".Citing privacy concerns, Trump took aim at TikTok first, issuing what South Africans of a certain age would remember as a banning order which tried to do what it said on the box: silence it. An impossible task, really, like shovelling out the Augean stables, because for every TikTok that gets banned, there are another dozen waiting to rise up and claim our ever-shrinking ability to think.That Trump and his advisers would regard the ludicrous video content on TikTok as the sluiceway to a Three Gorges Dam-worth of Chinese propaganda designed to take over America’s minds says a lot about the current state of America’s First Mind than it does about videos of people feeding chewy toffees to their dogs. (I made that up: I haven’t actually seen that on TikTok, but what’s the bet somebody has?)The move that has surely c...
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