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First, what is Doom Scrolling? Well, The Other McCain has a nice description, not that there is anything nice about doom scrolling……….
Have you ever wondered why the Left hates LibsOfTikTok so much? Why did Taylor Lorenz think it was necessary to dox Chaya Raichik? All she does — the whole function of LibsOfTikTok — is reposting left-wing TikTok content to Twitter. How did that make Chaya Raichik a target of such vindictive wrath? Hold that thought for a minute, while I delve into something seemingly unrelated: Julia Steinberg’s recent column at Free Press, “Why My Generation Hates Jews.” Steinberg notes a recent poll in which 48% of 18-to-24-year-olds side with Hamas in the current Middle East conflict. Recounting various incidents on her college campus (she is a student intern at Free Press), Steinberg explains that, in her generation, “the vast majority of us were raised on Instagram and Twitter — our ideas are tweet-length and infographic-sized. And the oppressor/oppressed framework was made for us.” Then she tells us this:
After seeing a thread on X [Twitter] about how TikTok — the preferred search engine for just over half of Gen Z — is an echo chamber for virulently anti-Israel posts and how its algorithm promotes pro-Palestine content, I re-downloaded the app for the first time since Covid to see how bad it really was.
In my foray back into TikTok, I was reminded of how my friends and I would doomscroll on the app. By osmosis, we mindlessly bleated the same talking points served up to us in thirty-second videos. The same critical theory books we read championing “decolonization” and “resistance” had been distilled into the perfect format: the explainer video.
Dipping my toes back in was a wake-up call as to how sinister this information flow has become. (It’s worth noting that TikTok is owned by Chinese company ByteDance.)
Within the first minute of scrolling under a search for “Zionism” on TikTok, I saw a “Zionism Explained” video with over 125,000 views. It said that Jews are forbidden by God to have their own state, completely ignoring the fact that the State of Israel is secular. “How did this start? Let’s go back to 1897,” the video instructs. But Jewish history in Israel started thousands of years ago, not in 1897.
When I searched “history” on TikTok, a woman with the “cute freckles and lashes” filter told me and over 80,000 viewers that, in “the biggest plot twist of the century,” Jews are using their ancestors’ “tragedy to justify and inflict another Holocaust.”
Talk about some insanity, and a non-existent relationship with reality, as well as some shallow thinking skills
Got that? Jews are perpetrating “another Holocaust” — that’s what college kids believe, because TikTok told them so. Everybody knows that TikTok (like YouTube) operates on an algorithm that suggests content based on your previous viewing history. This is why YouTube keeps suggesting that I watch videos about police pursuits, the New England Patriots and classic rock (among my other favorite topics).
Sad is not even close to the word I would use for such an addiction to so-called doom scrolling. It makes you wonder how these leftists learn anything meaningful
Unlike the average 18-to-24-year-old, however, I possess a body of knowledge acquired long before TikTok existed. From an early age, I was an avid reader. After my parents bought us The World Book Encyclopedia as a Christmas gift when I was 8, I read more or less the whole encyclopedia by the time I was 12. As for the history of Israel, I watched the Yom Kippur War as it happened on TV news and read about it in the newspaper when I was 14. So anybody trying to sell me on the idea that the Palestinians (so-called) are victims of “oppression” by Israel is wasting their time — I know better. And, in general, my predisposition toward the written word (as opposed to video content) makes it more difficult for anyone to propagandize me. My body of knowledge is quite broad. I’ve read more Marx than most Marxists have.
As a kid, I read a lot, and a book I got from my parents was titled Democracy vs Communism. It was written by Kenneth Colegrove, who passed away in 1975. In his obituary, the NY Times eulogized Colegrove
Kenneth W. Colegrove, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Political Science at C. W. Post College died yesterday at his home in Butler Hall. 88 Morningside Drive. He was 88 years old.
Dr. Colegrove, who retired in 1969, suffered a stroke Sept. 3.
He had had a long career as a right‐wing political scientist. Over the years he charged that the late Senator Joseph R. McCarthy had been given unfair treatment in the press. He accused tax‐exempt foundations of supporting “leftist” educational research, and he supported the John Birch Society as a member of the editorial advisory committee of American Opinion, a Birch magazine, and as a member of the Committee Against Summit Entanglements, a Birch group.
Possibly his best‐known work was “Democracy vs. Communism,” a book published in 1957 and revised in 1961. This volume and “The Menace of Communism,” written with Prof. Hall Bartlett and published in 1962, were arranged for by the Institute of Fiscal and Political Education, a New York organization directed by a group of conservatives, educators and right‐wing supporters.
“Democracy vs. Communism” was the basis for the preparation of some 2.5 million booklets distributed to the armed forces by the Department of Defense.
Dr. Colegrove’s part in the booklets came to light after former Maj. Gen. Edwin A. Walker resigned from the Army following a reprimand for the right‐wing indoctrination of troops.
Dr. Colegrove was a 1905 graduate of Iowa State Teachers College and received an A.B. at the State University of Iowa in 1909 and a Ph.D. from Harvard in 1915. Columbia gave him an honorary D. Litt. in 1945.
He taught history at Mount Holyoke College from 1913 to 1916, and at the University of Syracuse in 1916‐19. He was assistant professor of political science at Northwestern University from 1919 to 1926 and a full professor, 1926‐52.
He was professor of political science at Queens College, 1953‐54, and professor of history and political science at C.W. Post, 1965‐69.
Dr. Colegrove was a consultant to Gen. Douglas MacArthur, the occupation commander, in Tokyo in 1946, and, earlier, to the Office of Strategic Services in Washington, from 1943 through 1945.
He leaves his widow, the former Mrs. Walter St. John; a daughter by his earlier mariage, to the fomer Louise Burrows Funkhauser, Marian Louise Blankenship; two sisters, Vellera and Catherine, and a grandson.
A funeral service will be held at St. Luke’s Chapel on the Columbia campus, Wednesday, Jan. 15, at 4 P.M.
This book was key into making me loathe Communism, and at age 9, I read it and understood just how evil Communism was, and is. A bit later, I took an interest in the War Between the States, and have read, hundreds of books on that terrible war. And today, I am still studying it. An have given several talks on different battles, generals, slavery, secession, etc. I never had Tik Tok, or social media. No cable TV until I was 16, so my educational experience is far different than today‘s kids I am sure. Apparently, today’s students and most political leaders could benefit from learning to think and learn. Tik Tok? REALLY? No wonder the left is so ignorant and perpetually aggrieved.
Go read the rest of McCain’s post. And get your kids some books!
