Anthony Pan 9 - Our Completely Wonderful Intelligent Government
https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/im-singaporean-tiktok-ceo-grilled-by-us-senator-repeatedly-over-china-connections-5040930
Some of our leaders are genuinely idiots.
One of the main events that sowed the seeds of this idea into my head was the January 31 Senate hearing about social media and its influence on children from last year due to the utterly ridiculous behavior of one specific person, that being Senator Tom Cotton.
I’m sure all of us have seen the clip but to summarize based on the transcript of the hearing, Cotton essentially tried asking the TikTok CEO Shou Chew the same question worded differently over ten different times (Hendrix et al., 2024). His questions all boiled down to the same thing: Are you Chinese? And every single time, Chew would answer that question the same way, that being telling Cotton that he was Singaporean and had no real connection to China.
Watching the clip felt like watching a child ask his parents “Are we there yet?” for the umpteenth time, only to receive the same exact answer of “Not yet” every single time. It’s hard to even fathom what Cotton could have been thinking to try to ask the same question so many times just with slightly different wording, as it was so painfully obvious what the answer to his questions regarding Chou’s nationality would be every single time.
The only possible reasoning for these questions would be that they were just the most pitiful, pathetic attempts at trying to trick Chew into admitting some sort of connection to China and the CCP in the hopes of taking action against him. To make matters even worse, the Senate hearing was about the effects of various social media platforms’ effects on children, a topic completely separate from Chew’s nationality. It seemed as if Cotton was somehow trying to prove TikTok’s identity as a national security threat through establishing it as some sort of app used by China to gather information but not only did he fail miserably at doing so, the whole ordeal was just off topic.
It is truly a mystery to me as to how people like this are able to survive in society, let alone get to positions of power that help lead the country.
https://www.techpolicy.press/transcript-us-senate-judiciary-committee-hearing-on-big-tech-and-the-online-child-sexual-exploitation-crisis/
https://apnews.com/article/tiktok-shou-chew-singapore-cotton-af72f8d53686f8bb378aec1193cdee6c
Anthony, this was a fun blog post to read. When thinking of the theme "power," one of the first things that comes up is the leaders who hold power over us and make decisions that impact people. Yet it is often disappointing to see them make poor decisions and act like "genuine idiots", such as in the Senate proceeding you described. Asking for someone's nationality to evaluate their honesty and qualification is wrong already, but doing so repeatedly shows stubborness in an incorrect view.
ReplyDeleteYou minced no words when criticizing Sen. Cotton, which I appreciate given that it is often difficult to speak about politics bluntly. Your strong word choice, such as referring to the Senator as "utterly ridiculous and comparing him to "a child," create a critical and brutally honest tone that creates no doubt as to what your opinion is. Great job writing an engaging Blog Post about an otherwise concerning issue.
Anthony: Hey Anthony, you bold was so engaging and fun to read. I completely agree with you I mean I saw the entire thing on youtube and I also felt like it's so ridiculous how they were pressurizing Senator Tom Cotton and also the part where they were trying to ask him if he was engaged with the Chinese at all or not and like he kept denying and he kept saying that he was a citizen of Singapore and he was proud to be one but this still kept questioning him and it was kind of like racist at the same time but I feel like because Trump is like a bit anti Russia China I feel like they were trying to questioning him if he was actually engaged with China or not. Because the reason they wanna ban tick tock I mean President Trump wants to ban tick tock because he's against China in my opinion and I'm not sure about it but yeah…. Your post really also made me reflect on how moments like this undermine the seriousness of important discussions and like such as like Impact of social media on children. One thing I believe you should have explored further is The type of behavior affects people's trust in government situations like how much further does it does it.
ReplyDeleteOverall, your post was well written and thoughtful. You did a great job blending humor and critique into it to keep readers engaged.