There seems to be no instance of the media going beyond citing TikTok’s Chinese ownership to show how it’s propaganda seducing American children with membership deals in the Communist Party or even to order egg foo young from their local traiteur.

      And data mining? Even though everything points to 98-percent product pitches by a class of people calling themselves influencers who are evidence of a society failing itself, I accept that data mining could be a problem. But data mining what?

      That in the past three days alone I went on Amazon and bought tung oil, two pounds of Ukrainian kasha (my idea of staking a political position), a bottomless supply of dog rawhides or a couple bottles of Pinaud Bay Rum aftershave (in a tricky calculus of not much to shave and an estimated 3,654 days left on the planet).

      I haven’t read anywhere what is the useful data involved, or that the Chinese will one day send me messages on how to cook the Ukrainian kasha in the Pinaud Bay Rum to poison my body if not my mind. The Supreme Court’s 9-0 opinion upholding the ban on TikTok, even if Trump since has delayed the implementation of the ban, did give me genuine pause. Particularly since the liberal wing of the court signed off on a First Amendment restriction where no damage has been even alleged much less proven. 

      What do the nine justices know? On what basis did they decide unanimously that the danger to our security posed by TikTok was greater than the danger to our freedom of speech by banning it? 

      Okay, i can see that the guy on TikTok asking brain dead 20-year-olds in Times Square what state North Dakota is in and drawing blank stares must seem reassuring to the Chinese and everyone else along the Axis of Evil that the U.S. is not educating to full potential. It’s way bad publicity.

      But maybe after looking at TikTok for three minutes, Linda McMahon, who runs the World Wrestling Whatever and is the incoming Secretary of Education, might ask her boss for an increase in revenues and drafting of federal proficiency standards rather than shutting down the department. 

      The Supreme Court decided a matter of law but the subtext of the ruling more importantly and without explanation lined up with Congress’ TikTok ban passed last April: the Chinese are coming for our kids, and then for the rest of us.

      Everyone knows that. Right?