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MEGATRENDS March 20, 2024: 1. The Real Story Behind the TikTok Ban; 2. PE Firms & The Privatization of Public Services

What is behind the TikTok ban? The word is out: AIPAC pressure on a wildly popular social media platform critical of US-Israel policy in Gaza, Trump-GOP Clown show, PE buying hospital & doctor networks as "options" for profit & greed as "The Privatization of Public Services" trend of US Disaster Capitalism; drug-frenzied billionaires who fancy fascism, and other clear-minded critics of The Empire 2024 in Election Year 2024 generating a better vision for the 21st century. Healthy social psychology! So for tens of millions of savvy Gen Z and younger TikTok users, the ban wasn’t rocket science. The present empire-maintenance crew are thin-skinned and want to extinguish their critics.

But a sign of how clueless House members are inside their Beltway Bubble: After voting for the TikTok ban, NC Democratic Congressman Jeff Jackson "apologized" to his disappointed TikTok fans on last weekend, ineptly trying to “explain” his vote. A voice in my head uttered: "Dude, when you're in a hole, stop digging!" But the longer he went on, the more I realized: the Faust story 2024! Jackson had been one of the most effective members of Congress to communicate with voters on social media, including TikTok. But when he voted to ban the app “unless the Chinese company ByteDance sells its stake”, many of his 2.5 million TikTok followers turned on him. TikTokers called his vote “intensely disingenuous” and said he was a” hypocrite” and should delete his account. Jackson has lost 250,000 followers since then. Jackson apologized, but not the for vote itself. As a member of Congress, Jackson said he has heard “alarming” briefings on TikTok—not realizing that the CIA, FBI, NSA had called “the threat” a canard.------------------------------

In an interview with Developmental Psychopathologist Dr. Sherika Hill, she discusses the high rates of depression among youth in the 12-20 age group, a high rate unique to the US, fears that are highly correlated with gun violence as the largest cause of death among US youth. Her work on a state board for public funding for programs to increase public safety, combining youth focus on self-determination, social action and academic excellence, push back came from board members who lacked coherent vision and problem solving, that such "disruptive" philosophy might threaten the funding flow to the board as "too radical". Moreover, such visionary social & medical psychology work was running up against a national corporate environment that could be summarized as "The Privatization of Public Services", a national trend--the morphing of Affordable Care Act into an unaffordable and corrupt profit-first system--Disaster Capitalism at its Worst--run by for-profit insurance companies, of increased compartmentalization of medical labor increasingly focused on hyper-documentation to the exclusion of connect time with their patients; where PE firms are buying up massive swathes of hospitals & medical infrastructure on credit, then borrowing billions on credit--like buying "options" or bets based on projected future value--leveraging interest payments by staffing cuts that result in reduced quality of care-giving. PE firms are rapidly acquiring physician practices, gaining significant market share in many cities and boosting medical prices in an array of specialties, according to an academic study released Monday. Dr. Sherika Hill articulates her frustration in the institutional inertia of corporate capitalism that intersects with institutional racism, the two major historical drivers as impediments to progress towards the institutional promise of "a more perfect union" embedded in our Constitution. Under-the-radar luminaries like Dr. Sherika Hill still believe in those values, values that serve as the basis for her work in Socialized medicine and Developmental Psychopathology.