AMERICAN "IMPERIALISM"

The idea of American military or political imperialism has always been a fantasy that flies in the face of all the facts. American troops have gone all over the world in the last 50 years but have only ever been used to install or protect local self-government, not take it away. Americans just don't WANT an empire. Ideally, they just want to be left alone instead of being hated by every crazy loon around the world with nothing constructive to do. And not many imperial powers would sentence one of its soldiers to 30 years in jail for assaulting a local.

But the idea of American cultural imperialism has at least had the basis that American films etc are very popular worldwide and provide an attractive model against which local cultures often look pretty stupid even to the locals concerned. But now even that is changing. Competition with the American output has made filmmakers in India, Europe, Australia and elsewhere sit up and start producing films that people want to watch. So the popularity of American films abroad is steadily declining. Another empire lost! How sad! More here.

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