Self-Deception and Self-Destruction: How TikTok, Trade, and Vice Are Unraveling America
And how bold Americans are putting an end to the Great Unraveling
James Hickman at Sovereign Man has exposed America's susceptibility to China's hybrid warfare in his recent piece about TikTok as a weapon. I agree. Below, I lay out a path for the American people to again don our armor and take the fight to our enemies.
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James Hickman insightfully compares the cunning deceptions that hoodwinked American generals in Vietnam to similar strategies China is deploying against a similarly deluded generation of young Americans.
There is a way out, though. First, the crucible of Vietnam.
By 1970, U.S. generals in Saigon believed the war was functionally over. The Ho Chi Minh Trail had been bombed into oblivion. North Vietnam, they declared, had been severed from its supply lifelines.
One general went so far as to proclaim, “Gentlemen, what we have here is the end of North Vietnam as a viable fighting power.”
But Vietnam's patriots had other plans.
Weeks later, Fire Support Base Ripcord was under siege, overrun by enemy troops and artillery that had somehow slipped through the very jungle that was supposedly neutralized.
The generals had mistaken the silence of guerrilla warfare for victory.
They didn't grasp that an enemy who understood terrain, timing, and psychology far better than they did had outmaneuvered them.
Images courtesy of Wikiccommons.
Today, America is being outmaneuvered once again.
But this time, the jungle isn't impenetrable, and the weapons aren't AKs.
The battlefield is digital, and the cyber firepower comes from TikTok.
The Economic War You Don’t See
Hickman puts it plainly:
“This is now the guerrilla phase of the economic war.”
TikTok is no longer just a social media app. It is a battlefield.
A platform where the minds of American youth are targeted—not with bullets but with trends, challenges, memes, and lies.
A war not to destroy buildings but to collapse trust, virtue, and identity.
It’s not just the Blackout Challenge or the Benadryl Challenge.
I have not vetted it, but you might contact this law center if you need legal assistance at your own discretion.
It’s the normalization of mental illness, the glorification of dysfunction, and the endless scroll of self-worship and despair.
Christian leaders are themselves at a loss on confronting the challenge, especially when it comes to the youngest and most vulnerable on platforms like TikTok.
It’s a different story in China. There, Chinese youth are fed math, discipline, patriotism, and tradition on Douyin—their domestic version of the app.
And as Hickman notes, this is no accident. “The sudden surge in popularity wasn’t organic; it was orchestrated.”
This is a guerrilla strategy. Distract. Disrupt. Discourage. Dismay.
The ancient Sun Tzu principle: “The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.”
This Is Not China's Doing Alone
Let’s be brutally honest. TikTok is a weapon, yes.
But America has made itself a battlefield.
We built the roads of decadence.
We burned the bridges of tradition.
We replaced virtue with validation and prayer with performance.
And now we're surprised that cheap goods and psychological sabotage are weakening disastrously fragile social bonds?
Our young people inhale distractions like oxygen.
We train the young to crave attention rather than to build character.
The family is a national auto-da-fé.
Marriage? Optional.
Even the late Pope made undermining the sanctity of the family a priority.
Manhood is diminished and devalued by the state.
Femininity becomes associated with “the sacrament of abortion.”
We’ve outsourced our industry to the CCP and our souls to Baal.
And the worst part? We continue calling this liberation.
We tell ourselves that indulgence is freedom, comfort is success, and tolerance is strength.
But we are not strong. We are not free. We are exposed.
“Americans are paying thousands for a label, not for a superior product,” Hickman writes.
And it’s been true for years, perhaps decades.
Luxury brands are circling the wagons in defense.
But the definition of “Made in Europe” means a product's "last substantial transformation" must occur in the country of production. Somewhat nebulous if you ask me.
And the same can be said of us as individuals- morally and spiritually.
We’re wearing the label of ‘freedom’.
But what we actually own is our moral bankruptcy in high-end designer packaging.
The Real Virus: Vice Masquerading as Virtue
We cannot defend ourselves, let alone counterattack, by simply banning TikTok or raising tariffs.
Those are weak deflections in a war we are losing because we surrendered spiritually long ago.
The true front lines are in the minds, hearts, and homes of Americans. In our churches and at our altars. In our fasting, our prayer life, in aiding our neighbor.
But Sunday finds us at the checkout line, not before our Creator in thanksgiving.
We have chosen consumption over creation, sex over covenant, fame over faith.
We cannot blame Beijing for that.
When a people forget their ancestors, despise their traditions, and dismantle their moral architecture, they doom themselves.
And the American Constitution is a framework for a moral people, or none at all.
Remove the moral foundation, and you are left with legal anarchy—a sacred document in the hands of empty vessels ready to be filled with the latest political fashion.
The Way Forward
Let’s stop pretending that we are mere victims of foreign manipulation.
Our cowardice, compromise, and confusion have invited this collapse.
A growing number of Americans even claim they’d prefer destruction to regeneration.
But too many Americans want to build on past glory, not blindly embrace nostalgia or nationalism. We will continue to obstruct the Negationists.
We want to renew sacred bonds.
And the change begins in our hearts to create:
Marriage as a covenant, not a contract.
Family as the center of civilization.
Fathers as protectors, not punchlines.
Mothers as dignified nurturers, not hypersexualized influencers.
Work as worship.
Truth as our shield.
Because only a people grounded in truth can resist lies.
Only a people rooted in virtue can recognize vice.
Only a nation under God can stand against the principalities and powers that seek to consume it.
China did not invent our decline. They are simply exploiting it.
These Truths must be taught boldly.
Christ lays it all out: bury your willful pride, and confess your sins.
Bless your enemies. Pray for those who persecute you.
All that while living in butal honesty with yourself, your family, friends and co-workers.
It’s already happening across the country.
You are only defeated when you surrender.
But you are mightily deceived without prayer, discernment and the Gospel.
And as our enemies labor for our annhilation, here's a thought:
Self-destruction is only possible with self-deception.
Our first step out of our personal and national malaise should be this:
Stop fooling yourself. Truth is your path to power, mastery, and conquest.
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