throwawayiemso

I regret emphasizing stem in my comment. I meant to offer it as an example of the kind of education that may be valuable. I don't see increasing production rate as the end goal, nor any other kind of "line goes up" political objective. I recognize human flourishing happens at the confluence of factors.

Nevertheless, I see the connection as follows: we are forced to play nice with enemy nations because of our economic independence on them: we turn a blind eye to what fentanyl did to the middle/lower classes largely because nationally we have our own addiction to Chinese products. We could significantly reduce our dependency by producing homespun expertise, despite it being less efficient. I value independence first of all.

Re: modernism, I'm not qualified to comment, but I expect that's just one perspective on the causes of those wars.

Social justice fads are primarily distributed via social media. In particular, TikTok is notorious for promulgating it to K-12 age students. It displaces more meaningful media, educational and otherwise.

To reiterate: the prosperity of the country depends on young people being educated in stem fields, whereas because of TikTok they are being socialized in a different way entirely.

I'm feeling very raw about all this. I feel I need to call all that comes this app what it is: an attack on our country via its young people.

An attempt to turn the West's teenagers, especially women, into unserious and manipulable adults. In America, a non-immigrant teenager has little chance to graduate high school knowing the laws of electromagnetism, or other valuable scientific and engineering knowledge necessary for society to face its challenges. Instead, they have every chance to learn all sorts of modern inventions: genders, ever more contrived notions or identity, social justice shibboleths, etc..

The result is an American public that is profoundly unserious in its approach to the world. Factually, they rely of foreign migration to sustain their core functions: healthcare, etc... They don't solve their problems at home.

When I see TikTok I see an act of hybrid warfare. I see foreign aggression against America, no different than if that power introduced a powerful synthetic opioid into the country. Flat-out aggression isn't acceptable, so they strike at us indirectly while maintaining plausible deniability. The advertising on TikTok is valuable, so many influential individuals in business will look the other way.

Only a week ago the media were up in arms about the "revelation" that 30% of teenage girls now state they consider suicide, and a 36% increase in reported feelings of hopelessness since 2011. If politicians do not speak the truth in plain terms, truly I can only consider them traitors, and jointly responsible for the additional deaths that result.

This aggression doesn't go unnoticed!