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I think that's representative of the level of American cultural development. Ne Zha 2 is also representative of China (it's high production value slop).
Again. What of it? Are you saying that the Canadian pivot is because they've become fans of Lin Dan? My thesis is not that the Chinese soft power is very deep (though in some segments it's growing, and it'll help product sales etc.), it's that the popularity of your national media does not translate into political allegiance. That's not how the causality flows. America did not become the Shining City Upon a Hill and the leader of the strongest military alliance in history by producing popular media slop, it's just one of the many facets of their current eminence. Great Britain's greatest media days were after the British Empire collapsed. Hong Kong out-soft-powered all of China, their content was popular in the Mainland, they still got crushed and now they pitifully complain in the UK to stop the construction of the Mega-Embassy. It's all a very big attention sink, but a very minor factor, at the end of the day.
And indeed, an overwhelming superiority in cultural exports can even undermine you. What good did BLM protests in Chelyabinsk do for the USA? Brainrotten Russian teenagers may hunt for signs of racism at home, but they know where Saint Floyd perished, and won't buy into the more carefully curated myth of Jeans, Bubblegum and Freedom like their parents did. It's actually pretty hard to have both a vibrant and a propagandistically coherent cultural scene. The dividends on having everyone just use your memes, your frameworks, your critiques, live in your world, are… unclear to me. Something something master's tool master's house? Sorry, I'm not that Kendi yet.
What was your point again?
You have no idea how little this pitiful anklebiting attempt (or whatever it was) stings. I have no need to seek or beg or whore myself out, and I could come to the US any time I wanted, welcomed and accommodated, within the last 2 years.
Pleasuring the North American crowd is beneath me. I only talk of what I find interesting. Sometimes I get carried away.
Then how did we get there? Military power alone isn't sufficient; we never conquered Europe. US GDP wasn't orders of magnitude greater that Europe's in the late 20th century. America became the Shining City Upon a Hill by producing film, TV, literature etc proclaiming itself to be so. No, cultural output isn't a geopolitical 'I WIN' button, but it's a piece of the puzzle.
I imagine it was a bit harder to spread propaganda in the age of sail, but who knows? Maybe you're right. I admit I'm ignorant as to what soft power the empire could wield in her day.
Yes, if we were playing a game of risk and you offered me a choice of a 7.5 million person city state that makes kung fu movies versus a 1.3 billion person police state I'd also choose the police state. Life isn't a Foundation novel.
But America is not HK, and...well...I guess China actually is China, but my point stands. I'd take America's soft power stat over China's any day.
Because if there's one great and terrible thing about the USA, it's that it's optimized for giving you what you want. You can have a big house in the suburbs with your own yard, you can have a giant car, you can do drugs, you can play video games for 16 hours a day, you can hire a tutor for your kid, you can get rich playing arcane financial games or spend your life moving bits around instead of manufacturing hard goods. Broadcasting that to the world makes people want to come here. People who explicitly do not want anyone else to come here are tarnishing that image because it furthers their goals.
I resent the accusation of podophilia. Feet are gross.
Regardless, it was just a joke that I thought you would find funny. You had a line 6 or 7 years ago about the tweet about BLM by some San Francisco teen thundering? trumpeting? across the Atlantic or something along those lines. I thought you'd also find it funny how quickly the child prodigy becomes the prodigal child (less the repentance) when a fickle crowd stops liking what you have to say.
As for the rest, why Argentina man? Aside from the aforementioned tango, what is there? A woman? Your other line that stuck with me was 'women demand, men provide.' Provide her the white picket fence and large backyard.
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