As the house votes today to ban TikTok with broad bi-partisan politics it becomes increasingly clear to an increasingly disenfranchised electorate that their government no longer cares what they think or want.
Over the last two years, you can find many of the Congressional and Senate supporters of this bill have used it for their campaigns. Many have used it to engage with voters and supporters. There was nothing different then compared to the situation now, in fact, Trump talked about banning TikTok for the very same reasons and at that time the Democrats largely opposed it.
Now as both parties look poised to ban TikTok on “National Security” grounds, a dangerous precedent is being set. That precedent is that the government now, without support from the majority of Americans, can declare any app a threat to national security and ban it.
Of course, supporters of the legislation like Sen. Nancy Pelosi say that the bill isn’t a ban on TikTok yet the result of demands of ByteDance to sell off its interests in the app will result in the app being banned in the US if not met. This essentially boils down to a private company that isn’t doing anything different than any other social media platform being forced to comply with the US government or be banned.
This is the exact type of economic and cultural intervention that Republicans say is evil and terrible, and the type that Biden and the Democrats insist is beyond their ability to get done in any other instance. The major story here though isn’t that politicians are hypocrites who used TiKTok to win their office and are now going to ban it because it’s being used to threaten their re-elections. The real story is the growing disconnect between the American voter and their government.
Major legislation like student debt relief, universal healthcare, pharmacare, anti-monopoly expansions against tech giants, price gouging laws and so much more are barely talked about by legislators despite all of them having near or clear majority support among Americans on both sides of the political aisle.
Legislation that the government deems important is passed immediately and without much debate, yet legislation that would benefit the voters is either defeated or never proposed in any serious way at all. Not once since Obama has there been a major political push for universal healthcare of any kind despite it being one of the least contentious issues among voters enjoying 60% or more support across the US.
Then there is the frequent political betrayal of voters, most recently illustrated by Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania who campaigned on being a progressive, including explicitly calling himself one. He enjoyed the broad support of the progressive wing of the Democratic party and benefitted from the strong grassroots campaigns of the young activists making up the caucus. Yet, once in office, he betrayed the same voters and supporters who got him into office to then chase a milquetoast moderate stance which most recently is the adamant support of Israel in its war against Hamas, support which has often surpassed Pres. Biden’s own outright support.
In a country that each day experiences further and further divides across economic, social and cultural concerns it has become extremely frustrating for Americans to deal with their own system which often tells them they need to work harder, they need to save money, they need to spend money, they need to take out loans, they need to get rid of debt, they need to rent to save a house or they need to buy a house. The government at its very core has fundamentally stopped working for the majority of people and now largely serves the interests of corporations and lobbyists.
It keeps blaming average Americans for issues the government creates and then puts the burden of fixing those issues on the people and not themselves. The 2008 financial crisis was caused by the government regulating banks and underfunding regulatory bodies, in the fallout banks got bailouts and as Americans lost their homes no help arrived. The same sub-prime securities that caused that crash are already back now and those same regulatory bodies are just as under-staff as they were in 2008.
The COVID-19 pandemic was a clear and brazen display for most people globally in what our governments care about and what they don’t. Whether you support lockdowns or are an idiot, it was a necessary measure to protect people when we didn’t know what the virus was or how to defeat it yet. As economies grinded to a halt overnight it was businesses that got help first, that got loans (which were largely forgiven), and the people were an afterthought. Then the lockdowns were lifted with very little transition planning in place and infections spiked to eventually be at levels higher during the peak of the lockdown.
The truth is that millions of people died a preventable and agonizing death because the economy and money were put above human lives, and it showed just how underprepared our governments are to actually help us in more severe emergencies. As the threat of non-state actors grows in the technological age the risk of a severe human-made pandemic with higher mortality rates also grows and if anyone is under any impression other than “we will be fucked” then you have your eyes closed and ears covered.
The US government does not care about you. It does not serve you. For non-Americans in places like the United Kingdom, Canada, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand or any other place — your government doesn’t care about you. The economy is all that matters and you’re a simple number to that end. They have helped corporations crush unions, making sure our voices are small and fractured. They make people think cutting supports will help them reduce debt whilst they spend more and more anyway.
This may all seem arbitrary to TikTok possibly being banned, but it is all connected to the same fundamental issue. If Congress, the Senate and the President are willing to ignore 170 million Americans who use the app, the hundreds of thousands who make a living from the app, and the millions of businesses who use it as a platform to advertise their business; they are willing to ignore you when you oppose other rights being revoked in the name of national security.
Layman's Terms 