Fair point.
Personally, I’ve always thought that our mideast plan should involve setting up heavily fortified broadcast towers and streaming an endless parade of Baywatch and 90210 reruns. In a decade or so, you’d have a whole generation who see Islam’s rigidity as an obstacle to becoming rich suburbanites.
I mean, really- Glasnost was largely driven by people who coveted black market Levis and Beatles bootlegs…
I like the fact they get called Isil - it’s a sound alike for Izal the worst toilet paper ever made. It had the consistancy of baking parchement and a surface akin to teflon.
“Santorum.”
When Boeing, Sikorsky, Colt et al lobby for war, they have to have a named bogeyman. “Some rapscallions” doesn’t get them up The Hill.
Only in the westernised world!
A fair point!
Well, that will probably happen. As Uncle Karl observed, capitalism (and industrialism) destroy traditional cultures, or rather, replace them with a new culture in which only money relationships matter. People resist the transition for many reasons, sometimes violently, but they also want the goodies and the good times, and so they are gradually subverted.
Dude, they already HAVE that, in abundance. Much of the urban middle east that is not an active combat zone is pretty modern, in terms of consumer capitalism… There is constroversy over some of the changes happening in Mecca (the holiest city in Islam) where the Saudis are basically turning it into a giant mall around the Mosque where the Kaaba is located. Part of the reason that groups like ISIS is able to drum up support is because of the embrace of consumer capitalism with continued social repression of minority groups.
All of the Osirans should be feared.
Some people claim that a state is defined by sovereignty, as the liberal idea of the social contract has certain unfortunate political implications.
True.
Now to be fair, I was being slightly tongue in cheek about the actual shows- Although I am absolutely serious about a full scale media war to win the hearts and minds away from the fanatics. It’s not just about flooding them with images of capitalism and consumer goods, but with women being able to go and do and wear whatever they want, and people living together peacefully despite their differences. Honestly, Buffy and Star Trek would be the actual shows at the top of my list.
Of course, I think what we’re seeing now would get worse- There’s always a backlash about change. The hope is that it’s perpetrated by fewer and fewer people who are thought of as less and less acceptable by the majority.
But really, if global warming and fast food teach us anything, it’s that the right kind of advertising can convince you to kill yourself with a smile on your face better than anyone. I would genuinely love to see that force used to promote peace, tolerance, and higher learning.
Actually, it’s always been part of our policy, at least since the Cold War - we have been deeply concerned with hearts and mind issue for 70 years now - there is a ton of scholarship on the cultural cold war in fact, as a global phenomenon and I’m sure there is a ton of work on western pop culture in the middle east (I can look some books up if you’re interested in this topic). The fact is that people often embrace what works for them and reject what doesn’t and they interpret culture through their own social and cultural lenses. The messages we take away from our culture can be interpreted in very different ways in other places.
I think that the adoption of fast food is less about choice and more about diminishing choices globally. When more people move off the land, they need someone else to provide food for them, couple that with people having longer periods of labor in an industrial economy, and that opens up a space for american fast food to rush in and provide an exotic alternative (I know, it’s weird to think of fast food as exotic, but it would be in another culture).
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