I am currently having a difference of agreement with a good friend I met way back in 5th grade at Tokeneke Elementary School. My friend is a TikTok aficionado. He has sent me several TikTok videos over the last year. Today, I asked him to stop.

When we spoke to each other on the phone after my request for a TikTok ban, he was curious. I told him that I think TikTok is demonic. I told him that I do not trust anything from the Chinese Communist Party. To make my position more emphatic, I told him with all the grade school voice I could summon, “TikTok has Cooties!”

As a sexagenarian nearing septuagenarian status, I can still recall recess on my elementary school playground from the recesses of my mind. We played kickball, four square, or tag to pass the time and get some exercise. We also spent some of the time teasing each other. I recall, for example, hearing something like, “So and so has cooties.” If memory serves, this was a way of accusing an elementary classmate of your sex that he or she was interested in a classmate of the opposite sex. After reading To Kill a Mockingbird, I now know this phrase has other meanings.

Am I right? Does TikTok have cooties?

Image made by Andrea Widburg using “Cooties” (edited) via PublicDomainPictures.net.

Now I could call 1-800-TicTock. If I called their customer service and asked them if TikTok has cooties, I doubt they would understand the question. If I took the time to explain my meaning, I suspect they would deny it and put me on a secret list of Americans needing re-education once they have assumed total control of the United States. Perhaps they would send an email to Merrick Garland or Chris Wray asking them to investigate me.

If anyone is still listening, I believe that the CCP is the largest slave master on earth. I believe its government suborns our politicians in Washington with money bearing the face of Chairman Mao. I believe they send their students to American colleges and universities to spy on us. I know they steal intellectual property from us. I know they spy on their own people to maintain control of them. I don’t trust anything from those wonderful folks who gave us the Wuhan Flu.

If they offered the world something positive, I would give them a hearing. When I look at the CCP, all I see are variations of coercion. They are power-hungry and refuse to allow their people the freedom God gives us.

Because of our sad history with slavery, I admire the abolitionists in the UK and the USA who fought to stop slavery. I see the CCP as slaveowners who use tanks, extensive monitoring, and all kinds of coercion to control their people. I don’t see TikTok as a warm, fuzzy, and harmless diversion. I see TikTok as head lice. It is another nefarious technique those tyrants use to gain information on their enemies. I suspect TikTok is a cyber remake of the Trojan Horse. I don’t want to open my gate to TikTok. I think TikTok has cooties!

Ned Cosby, a regular contributor to American Thinker, is a pastor, veteran Coast Guard officer, and a retired public high school teacher. His new novel OUTCRY is a love story exposing the refusal of Christian leaders to report and discipline clergy who sexually abuse our young people. This work of fiction addresses crimes that are all too real. Cosby has also written RECOLLECTIONS FROM MY FATHER’S HOUSE, tracing his own odyssey from 1954 to the present. For more info, visit Ned Cosby.