Sesame Street Versus The Sandbox
Both Trump and Putin believe the children are our future
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ALEX’S WEEKLY RANT!
Trump and Putin are waging a campaign to ensure loyalty for generations to come. Both have made moves to indoctrinate our youngest minds.
In May, Trump gutted the funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which supports Sesame Street. The move left Big Bird and Cookie Monster—much like many federal workers these days—wondering where their next paycheck would come from.
Trump declared PBS was “biased” and “partisan.” I assume this is because Sesame Street teaches kids woke “skills” like how to count. Clearly, this is a threat to our children, who instead should only be exposed to patriotic education and the Bible (the Trump Bible, that is).
In Russia, Putin is also shaping the minds of the future. Last month, Vladimir Solovyov, a proficient state propagandist, announced the creation of a new children’s show called “The Sandbox,” featuring baby future dictators arguing over toys—meant to represent larger geopolitical issues—in the titular sandbox.
Announcing the new show on his Telegram channel, Solovyov wrote, “It’s time to rethink children’s television… political awareness begins in infancy… patriotism is instilled from an early age, and analytical thinking is developed even before first grade. ‘Sandbox’ is not just a program – it will be a master class on the current [political] agenda in a format understandable to children. Where else can kids discuss geopolitics with the same ease as conflicts over a shovel in the sand?”
Ah, yes. Children’s favorite pastime: discussing geopolitics. I have such fond memories of chatting with the other kindergartners about Ayatollah Khomeini’s latest missives while spinning gleefully on the playground merry-go-round.
If you had a time machine, would you go back in time and kill these baby dictators?
The trailer for The Sandbox shows the baby future dictators on a video call, each with clearly identifying features and avatars. Putin is dressed in his judo outfit, with a bear and black ship on either side of him, the Kremlin in the background. Honestly, he looks a little wimpy and trying too hard to impress the other kids. His avatar is a bear in a hat with a red star. Trump, with his red tie and wispy hair, sits in a golden room, while his avatar is himself as Pope. Elon Musk—who is not a leader but is for some reason included—has whimsical hair playing with a cyber truck in what looks like SpaceX ground control. His avatar is him in an Iron Man suit (matching his real life X avatar). Turkey’s Reycip Erdogan wears a fez and looks a little bored. His avatar is a hotel? Why? Baby Kim Jong-Un has cheeks that tell us he discovered his love for cheese early. He plays with a toy rocket, while his avatar shows a mushroom cloud.
French president Emmanuel Macron is also in the show, looking studious over a map while “Granny,” as the other kids refer to Brigitte Macron, tells little Emmanuel to turn his computer off (admittedly, kind of funny).
The trailer shows the kids fighting over a shovel in the sandbox, a way to teach the younglings about conflict and war. I wonder if the show also discusses sandbox war crimes? Maybe Putin slams other kids with the shovel? And then Kim orders them buried alive in the sandbox? Good wholesome children’s programming.
I have no idea if Chinese President Xi and Iran’s Ayatollah Khamenei (who is still alive at the time of this writing) are also in this show. The trailer doesn’t show them. I assume Xi’s avatar would be Winnie the Pooh and Khamenei would be zooming from his bunker.
You know that whole discussion about if you had a time machine would you go back in time and kill baby Hitler? I really don’t know if I could off baby Kim Jong-Un and those cheeks. Baby Putin and baby Trump, however, look like they could use a punch in the nose.
Your move, Elmo
Should we attempt similar children’s programming at home? Should Kermit the Frog stop interspecies dating Miss Piggy and stop talking about his green policies? Should Oscar the Grouch reveal he is going into the landlord business with Jared Kushner, offering high-rent trash can housing or demolishing Sesame Street to develop luxury housing while displacing Rosita and her family but offering them housecleaning jobs? Should Elmo go all in on conspiracy theories? “Elmo loves the Letter Q!”
Fuck that.
Elmo is street smart. Sesame Street smart. He’s learned how to be a good, contributing member of his community. He also knows how to count, which is why he took a multimillion-dollar deal with Netflix.
It’s all fun and games until the entire next generation has no idea what is true and what is a lie
On a much more serious note: Targeting children for political indoctrination is sick and reprehensible. I’ve written extensively about authoritarian inversion of truth (see here, here, and here). Attacks on education and history are just part of that. These moves to indoctrinate children is another part of the larger strategy of becoming the sole arbiter of truth, which is necessary to maintain power.
Solovyov’s children’s programming is only one small facet of this. As I’ve written about, it is Russian policy to indoctrinate children, including those trafficked from Ukraine, to make them loyal to the state. This recent investigation by United24 Media has some grim details of children taken from their families and forced into reeducation camps under the guise of health centers and sports camps. The children are forced to speak Russian (they are punished if they speak Ukrainian), given Russified names while their pasts are rewritten to help them hate Ukraine and love Russia.
While Trump has not reached this level of information manipulation (yet), he has taken many worrying steps in that direction, as I’ve written about (see those links above).
All this to say: this problem of authoritarianism, of people starved of truth—the two go hand in hand—isn’t going away anytime soon. The next generation is already being taught a new history of today, yesterday, and even tomorrow.
THE WEEK’S LINKS
A roundup of things you should be reading
RUSSIA IS LOSING IN UKRAINE
Russia is bleeding for inches—and not winning its war (Washington Post)
RUSSIA AT WAR WITH THE WEST
Russia recruited a teenage spy. His arrest led to a crypto money trail (Reuters)
The West Is Losing the Information War (Baltic Sentinel)
EXCELLENT RESOURCES!
Just Security has launched WHAT JUST HAPPENED? as well as a litigation tracker to help readers keep up with the chaos
Alex Finley is a former officer of the CIA’s Directorate of Operations, where she served in West Africa and Europe. She writes and teaches about terrorism, disinformation / covert influence, and oligarch yachts. Her writing has appeared in Slate, Reductress, Funny or Die, POLITICO, The Center for Public Integrity, and other publications. She has spoken to the BBC, MSNBC, CNN, C-SPAN’s Washington Journal, France24, and numerous other media outlets. She was also invited once to speak at Harvard, which she now tells everyone within the first ten seconds of meeting them. She is the author of the Victor Caro series, satirical novels about the CIA. Before joining the CIA, Alex was a journalist, covering Capitol Hill, the Pentagon, and the Department of Energy. She reported on issues related to national security, intelligence, and homeland security. Did she mention she was invited to speak at Harvard?
Your article is concerning on so many levels. I have, in the distant past, always considered Russians in general as intellectuals- chess masters if you will.
More recently I have come to realize that I have misjudged Russians in general and their leadership in particular. Putin is a classic psychopath by definition and by his actions, surrounded by many of similar bent. Putin and his cabal of mentally defective individuals are, similar to Trump and his merry band of MAGATs, leading Russian into ‘quicksand’ where they will flounder and strain to survive as a nation - like America. As these two psychopaths - Trump and Putin - drag their respective nations into the toilet, I hope, and there is a glimmer of hope I think, that others step forward to replace these tired old syphilitic wrecks and that America and Russia reemerge as ‘contributors’ to civilization rather than destroyers.