FFinance

Supreme Court Upholds Major Blow To American Soft Power

  • bytady
  • January 21, 2025
  • 4 minute read
Supreme Court Upholds Major Blow To American Soft Power
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Nǐ Hǎo folks, it’s time to learn Mandarin!

For starters, Congress is scrambling now that they TikTok ban is upon us and no on swooped in to save them from their bold posturing about the social media platform that they’d hoped would be bought by a company who could spy on citizens for nice, American reasons like selling vitamin supplements or radicalizing them against wokeness:

And it looks like SCOTUS won’t be there to help them save face by declaring the ban an unconstitutional violation of free speech:

What does learning Mandarin have to do with any of this? In the days leading up to the TikTok ban, thousands of Americans decided to jump ship rather than go down with it. So many people migrated to the Chinese platform Xiaohungshu (Red Note) that it quickly became the most downloaded app. Congress cloaked their speech suppression as a matter of national security and preventing data collection, but if that was the goal they’ve failed miserably. So much data is being collected and exchanged that decades of residual Red Scare propaganda is being undone in real time.

America positions itself as a veritable land of milk and honey. Military budgets are cool and all, but significant aspect of America’s global dominance depends on it being a cultural hegemon — that’s why the Pentagon has had their hand in the Marvel universe. The government’s hard earned cultural hegemony, or soft power, is getting positively shattered as Americans flock to XHS. After less than a week on the app, day to day life is looking a lot less like “Land of the Free” and more like the land of “You live like this?”:

Remember how Trump ran on White Supremacy bringing grocery costs down and proceeded to back pedal on that promise as soon as he won? You know who is doing a phenomenal job of making it look like everyone can afford to eat healthily on a budget in China? Random Xiaohongshu users:

$6.55 would barely cover the tip if you got lunch at a sit-down spot in Manhattan! It would be one thing if 2025’s cross cultural experience only cut through the propaganda Netizens have been given about America, but the exposure is cutting through the propaganda we give ourselves. Remember the days when Fox could bring up boogeymen like the Chinese “social credit score” and normalization of child labor to scare their listers in to submission? That’s going to be a little harder to do when you hear that that’s fake straight from the horse’s mouth:

And the kicker? Americans are the ones with social credit scores — we call it a credit score. Try getting a mortgage without one. And child labor? At least two sitting justices would be totally okay with getting rid of child labor laws. For many, this has been an eye opening “Are we the bad guys?” moment.

Congress’ decision to ban TikTok is cascading so poorly that an act to extend the January 19th deadline out by 270 days to flatten the curve has already been introduced. But the damage has already been done. Even if they lift the ban entirely, some Americans will still platform jump out of spite. Ban whatever international app Americans jump to next and they risk even more discontent at a time where all of the branches have low approval ratings. We’re living in interesting times, things will eventually have to come to a head.

Chris Williams became a social media manager and assistant editor for Above the Law in June 2021. Prior to joining the staff, he moonlighted as a minor Memelord™ in the Facebook group Law School Memes for Edgy T14s. He endured Missouri long enough to graduate from Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. He is a former boatbuilder who cannot swim, a published author on critical race theory, philosophy, and humor, and has a love for cycling that occasionally annoys his peers. You can reach him by email at cwilliams@abovethelaw.com and by tweet at @WritesForRent.

For more of the latest in litigation, regulation, deals and financial services trends, sign up for Finance Docket, a partnership between Breaking Media publications Above the Law and Dealbreaker. 

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