TikTok and America’s fake Internet Freedom War

All this shows the limits of American liberal values. We're “enlightened” and “open” so long as Americans perceive that we have total superiority.

Since my last dispatch on TikTok and the death of Silicon Valley utopianism, I had a chance to take a closer look at the language of Donald Trump’s executive order banning TikTok — and also WeChat. And I noticed some very familiar language — language that took me back to a simpler, more optimistic time for the American Empire.

Here are the relevant bits …