I'm not saying it's bad or good. But I wish we have less Hollywood, less Netflix, less american music, less american videogames, less imported american culture topics etc when actual local music, movies, books, games exist.
In my country, immediately after the last US backed coup, the new 'democratic' government literally ditched French and German for foreign language education from all education institutions and pushed English in every level of education. As a result, I, like millions of youth in my generation, had to learn English as a foreign language. At this point it must be noted that a decent amount of the coup leaders were military men who received additional training in the US, 'School of Americas' style.
In addition to that, the US-backed government first jailed or banned all the artists who used to create content in national, traditional formats, and instead promoted literally American music - one reason for this was the majority of those artists were left-wing, pro-people artists who opposed US corporate interests so they were detrimental to the 'new order'. Those who were not banned refused to appear in state-run channels in protest. Naturally private channels also excluded them because they were seen as 'hostile' to privatization and other US-backed policies. What was left of the creative space was wiped out by private TV and radio channels who were founded by US-friendly capital or direct US-connected investments, run by those who were educated in Angloamerican institutions, pushing either directly American artists or their imitators. It was a literal takeover of an entire country's culture.
Result? Literally a decade of uncontested American movies, series, songs in tv and radio and recorded medium, culturally imperializing around two generations and slapping a weird layer of 'American' on top of their actual cultural identity. These generations still did not recover from this cultural rape, and they are unable to fit in in their own society, leave aside anywhere abroad.
This is what happened in every other US-backed regime. Even in Europe, US-backed parties and capital literally Americanized their societies methodically by either through the local friendly capital or literally US-linked interests buying out local channels. Even in the country that I now live in, the biggest media group is still owned by a corporation that is owned by an American-German dual citizen. Leaving aside it pushes entirely American content with a few national ones sprinkled in, the news that it shoves into its programming is literally US corporate news, pushing literally the policies of the US itself.
You would think that this would be something related to the US foreign policy, mostly affecting people abroad. It was not. It was a concerted, persistent policy that targeted Americans at home as well as it targeted foreigners.
https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/democracy/the-lewis-powell-me...
The 1971 US Chamber of Commerce Lewis-Powell memo said that the then-existing popular movements like the antiwar movement etc were pushing Americans away from the 'American way of life'. And the rich who own the media and education corporations should use their corporations to condition the people back into 'the American way'. The result is the concentrated, lying corporate propaganda machine that not only pushed wars like 2003 Iraq War, but also destroyed all the humane behaviors and traditions in the US to maximize corporate profit.
...
Then there is this thing about the monetization of entire world's resources that was started by Nixon, forcing everyone to trade in dollars and providing unending capital that was created from zero-interest money inflating everything in the US economy, leading to the corporate takeover of everything abroad by US interests as well as creating phenonenon like Silicon Valley and allowing business-model-free companies that ran on endless investor cash cornering all angles of the Internet and killing off their competition including the domestic independent players, forcing everything to revolve around Silicon Valley.
Which is precisely why many non-Americans here not only speak English aside from the above cultural imperialism reasons, but also post in this forum.
But no worries - as the zero-interest economy goes away, things will change.
> I challenge anybody who downvoted this post to provide any other explanation for their decision.
Let me provide one:
A lot of Americans dont think that anyone could do a concerted, systematic sociopathy like the one I told in my post. Simply because they themselves wouldnt do such a thing, they think that those with whom they identify also wouldnt do that. Anything bad that happened to others or anything bad that is done by their establishment must be some 'coincidence' or a mistake.
This mentality is strengthened by two things: The Just World Theory and lingering Christian behavior patterns that still dominate the American public.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-world_hypothesis
The just world theory is utilized by people who need to escape reality to avoid cognitive dissonance. Because not doing so and acknowledging the evil and the evildoers in their own society would make living in that society very demoralizing and kill hopes for the future. So, any bad deed must have an explanation, any victim must have 'deserved' it, and everything must be alright with the world.
And lingering religious behavior patterns, because in Christianity, the Christian god and the faithful can do no wrong. They are the good ones. Whereas all evil is done by the unbelievers, heretics and other gods. This belief is translated to modern culture as 'being on the good side' whereas anyone else that is not 'with them' are evil. And so, Americans can do no evil whereas any evil can only be done by others. The manifestations of this can be seen in how every incident like the 2003 Iraq war is interpreted as 'a mistake', or 'an ill advised war', and in things like every US enemy being Hitler.
And these behavior patterns poison the minds of the well-intentioned Americans. Additionally a lot of Americans just flat-out keep the late 19th century manifest destiny white supremacist belief patterns - like how 'brown people' etc not being 'that important' and any bad thing happening in such countries being something unimportant even if it is done by their own establishment, hence it can be ignored.
But mainly, the obsession with being 'on the good side' and projecting every evil and ill to outside to escape cognitive dissonance totally poison the American mind and cause them to ignore even the biggest evils that are being committed in their own society - like how their country kills its own people if they cant pay for healthcare and so on....
- San Francisco housing crisis: This has been a frequent topic of discussion on HN but I don't think many people outside of San Francisco, let alone outside of USA care a lot about this
- The collapse of silicon valley bank was a huge topic on HN but it was more or less non-existent in the news in my country
- Posts about US politics, such as anything related to Trump or the American Supreme Court
- When a post is specific to a particular country, it's usually indicated in the title, except in the case of the USA
This of course is caught up in the American conflation of religion and patriotism. It is taught that America is god's preferred country, evidenced by American global hegemony proving god is on America's side. One day of the week American children might pray in church, but five days a week American children swear their allegiance to the flag in a group ritual run by government schools, very often with the "one nation, under god" clause taught to them by their teachers. The few children who resist this group ritual will often be mocked by their peers and chewed out by their teachers.