What happens when you gut the liberal arts
Finally: an explanation for how the United States of America could elect an under-educated, grandiose, narcissist reality TV star to the presidency. Social media (especially TikTok) is a digital Petri dish for breeding them. This TikTok freak show is completely nuts.
The Guardian made the unusual move Wednesday to delete a 21-year-old letter written by Osama bin Laden from their site after several TikTokers urged followers to read the al Qaeda leader’s missive, causing “Letter to America” to go viral on the social media platform.
Guardian readers are now met with the message, “This page previously displayed a document containing, in translation, the full text of Osama bin Laden’s ‘Letter to the American people,’ as reported in the Observer on Sunday 24 November 2002. The document, which was published here on the same day, was removed on 15 November 2023.”
In a statement to TheWrap, a spokesperson for the U.K. outlet said, “The transcript published on our website 20 years ago has been widely shared on social media without the full context. Therefore we have decided to take it down and direct readers to the news article that originally contextualized it instead.”
[…]
The TikTok trend seems to have started with a video posted by Lynnette Adkins, in which she told her nearly 12 million followers, “I need everyone to stop doing what they’re doing right now and go read ‘Letter to America,’ I feel like I’m going through an existential crisis right now.”
Responses from fellow TikTokers include “my eyes have been opened.” Another user who shared the letter wrote, wrote, “We’ve been lied to our entire lives, I remember watching people cheer when Osama was found and killed.”
Ruth Ben-Ghiat (“Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present“) wonders how AI (via social media, implied) might serve the propaganda agendas of autocrats and terrorists.
I blame the dismissal of liberal arts as a waste of time and education dollars. What good is it if it doesn’t translate into a money-making career? Right now in North Carolina, Republican lawmakers are working to undermine state-supported colleges and divert funding to more trade schools. Nothing wrong with trade schools, but their focus is on breeding a pool of workers to support the economy, not on raising an electorate responsible for preserving a democratic republic. Or reading Alexander Hamilton.
If I read Ms. Adkins’ LinkedIn right, the self-employed “Content Creator” majored in marketing.