I assume Tom Cotton isn't this ignorant -- he was smart enough to get into Harvard, as well as Harvard Law -- so these questions probably signal something else.
The Right is applauding him, for "unrelentingly grilling" the CEO of TikTok, but the rest of us are bemused and a little queasy.
He's also a little confused about the post hoc ergo facto hoc fallacy.
Bear in mind, these are supposed to be hearings over child safety. He doesn't ask anything about that; instead, his aim seems to be to blame TikTok for teens who shoot themselves. It's not the easy availability of guns that lead to that, Tom wants us to believe, but TikTok videos.
Which is an argument I'm seeing a lot on the Right. Nothing the GOP is doing, or conservative parents are doing, or religious parents are doing, is leading to depressed or distressed children. Laws, no. It's them Chinese comnist and that libral media!
Tom Cotton is a real prize, by the way. He's one of our senators here in Arkansas.
He -- of course -- rabidly opposes SNAP; he denies that systemic racism exists -- even though he has benefited from such racism -- and he supports putting even more people in prison. He rabidly opposes marriage equality and Obamacare. He opposes stem-cell research. He opposes closing Guantanamo Bay, and in fact thinks we should send more people there to be held indefinitely and tortured.
He's pro-religious liberty, so long as it's his religion people belong to, and so long as he can use the religious liberty argument to hurt LGBTQ people and liberals in general.
He thinks slavery was a necessary evil. (I don't need to point out that Cotton's ancestors held slaves, and that at least some of his generational wealth is derived from slavery.)
He wants journalists who write articles that support Palestinians over Israelis investigated by the Justice department, to see if they're committing "federal crimes." This is especially hilarious given his actions in 2015, writing a letter to people we were then at war with, telling them not to trust the President.
He also supports waterboarding, claiming it is not torture; and -- here's something scary -- was considered by Trump as a potential nominee for the Supreme Court seat eventually given to Amy Coney Barrett.
It might be he's hoping for Trump's re-election, and a second shot at a Supreme Court seat. It might be he has bigger plan. He has ambitions to be president someday, I do know that. Since he's about as charismatic as a Q-tip, I cling to the hope that no matter how xenophobic he is, that won't ever happen.
Fingers crossed.
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