A well argued response! Thank you!
There’s nothing to argue about. Everything you are typing is supporting my point exactly. You feel uncomfortable? Welcome to how the rest of the world feels about America! We now feel this way about America, and China, and Saudi Arabia!
The only difference is now you also feel this way, because other countries have purses as large as America’s.
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Ah, I’ve worked out the disconnect. You seem to think there is a significance between private companies and governments doing or funding things. Only in America is that significant, and only to Americans when considering American companies and corporations.
In the rest of the world, the line isn’t so clear or so meaningful. And when we look at American companies, the line between the companies and American government institutions and policies is very blurry. American politicians are, to all outward appearance, 100% captured by lobbyists and other corporate interests.
To bring it back to sports, there isn’t a line between most American sporting events and the American military. There is more military presence in American sports than anywhere else in the world. Viewed from the outside, it’s just weird, and the American military isn’t looked on as a force for good, or progress, or freedom, or all the positives that Americans might feel.
One other sporting example that comes to mind was the Formula 1 event in Miami. It was a fun event, and then, on the way to the podium, Max Verstappen was put into a golf cart and given a police motorcycle escort. I literally just turned off the TV and stopped watching, partly because the whole thing was taking so long, but also because American police imagery wasn’t a giving me positive vibes. It just felt like a bummer.
I’m fairly confident you don’t actually speak for the entire rest of the world here, especially because I know lots of other people in “the rest of the world” who don’t share quite the same reductionist view.
We can, should, and do lay myriad sins at the feet of American imperialism in service to global corporations - I don’t think anyone on this forum really needs to be informed about the history of the US military-industrial-corporate complex. We know, we live in it, we get it. America bad. I agree.
But if you seriously honestly want to compare the abuses of Russia, China, and Saudi Arabia to the abuses of the US, there’s really no point in discussing this with you at all. You’re creating a false equivalence, and you know it, and we know you know it. You’re right, there’s nothing to discuss because the point you’re drawing is so obviously disingenuous that it doesn’t merit a response.
But here I am anyway, because I’m bored.
You want to talk about our absolute inability to keep our kids safe from mass shooting because “tHe SeCoNd AmEnDmEnT,” or the way we worship uniforms? Valid. But I am extremely confident that a great number of people in the “rest of the world” can insert sufficient nuance into these discussions to meaningfully distinguish between the US and China, and between the US and our global corporations. I know this because I am involved in such discussions and actually see and know people overseas who are able to see the very distinction you claim nobody sees.
At the end of the day, though, I really don’t care if you don’t feel like distinguishing between American government actions and American corporate actions. Fine, sure, we’re a corporate oligarchy - our corporate oligarchy is not committing human rights abuses nor actively censoring education on human rights abuses to the extent that China and Saudi Arabia are. We just aren’t.
I’m not saying we’re good, and we certainly have lots to answer for, and will happily engage in discussion to that effect - but I have zero patience for flagrant false equivalence.
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I haven’t once compared the abuses of the USA to those of China and Saudi Arabia. And I don’t speak for the rest of the world, of course.
Again, all I’m saying is that the concerns and feelings you’re having now, worrying about the undue influence of Saudi Arabia over sport and entertainment and culture, isn’t a new feeling in the rest of the world, particularly due to the overwhelming weight of American culture.
Edited to add a quote from my previous post about how I wasn’t comparing acts of America vs Saudi Arabia:
“The facts of what American has or hasn’t done, or what Saudi Arabia may or may not do, are irrelevant.”
I think they are quite relevant. Let us imagine that a less evil country, perhaps Denmark, were doing what Saudi Arabia is doing now. Denmark starts a new golf league to actually seriously compete with the PGA. Denmark hosts large pro-wrestling events in efforts to promote their culture via sports-washing. Denmark buys large portions of companies that hold significant sway over popular culture.
You know what my feeling would be? Joy. Relief. Hell yes. Let’s go!
It is specifically because I feel that on the scale of evil countries Saudia Arabia is somehow more evil than the already evil US that I am not comfortable with the fact that they are the ones doing this. What they have done and may or may not do is the reason these newses are bad newses. If the US was losing its dominance to some better country, I would feel completely differently.
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I’m not sure what you intended here, but you absolutely conveyed exactly that message with your posts. You need not use the exact words to convey the comparison.
When people are expressing concerns about the possibility of the insertion of particularly destructive propaganda from specific notorious countries, and you say “lol that’s how we feel about the US,” you have literally compared US culture to that propaganda. The disconnect you alluded to is arising because, if indeed you are not making that comparison, then you’re bringing up a tangential topic in the discussion, and people are confused about why we’re discussing police escorts alongside human rights abuses.
Police escorts in sporting events are indeed a bummer. Human rights abuses are an abhorrent tragedy, not a “bummer” or “some unsavory influence.” I’m not sure why you’d bring up one when the conversation was about the other.
Obviously I have no idea how it feels to grow up and live in a non-American country and feel the intrusion of American culture into my daily life, so I can’t argue with your personal lived experience. I mean if I’m sick of American exceptionalism and the dominance of American news in the global news cycle, I assume that non-Americans have been there for a long time. I really don’t blame the global community for being fed up with our bullshit.
I feel like we’re talking about very different things here.
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I’m talking about the unlimited financial resources of Saudi Arabia to buy stakes in and influence in sports and media.
I’m trying not to compare human rights abuses, but just so you know, when issues with Saudi Arabia and China are brought up, there are many “where do you draw the line” arguments made, and the most common county cited closest to the line is the USA. Starting a war? What invading Iraq? Human rights? Why does the USA have the largest prison population? Etc.
Now I don’t agree with those comparisons. But it’s not a coincidence that it is most often the USA that is brought up as “what about” example.
My point is that, from outside the USA, the uncomfortableness of a global influence over sport and media, isn’t a NEW feeling. It is a familiar feeling. There is more concern over Saudi Arabia, of course, so while the feeling might be greater, it’s not new.
An analogy is the feeling I had when Trump won the election to become president. It felt VERY familiar, because I’d had something similar the morning after the Brexit vote. In fact, the Brexit vote kinda prepared me emotionally for the news of Trump’s victory.
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Interesting article which touches on some recent conversation here:
In a 1916 speech, President Woodrow Wilson instructed his country’s filmmakers to “make this world more comfortable and more happy and convert them to the principles of America.” The film industry’s leading lobbyist boasted that he represented “an adjunct of the State Department.”
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Is that that Bari Weiss?
Yeah, that’s that Bari Weiss.
Uh-ho. I just linked to an extract from a book by Erich Schwartzel, but I didn’t do any research on him or whoever linked to his book. Who is Bari Weiss and should I be concerned?
Ex-NYT columnist who is notorious for a number of reasons, the top three among which being that she claims to be left because she’s anti-trump, but is conservative enough to fit in with the likes of Jordan Peterson, the Koch brothers(who also fund number 3, among others), the usual constellation of weirdos with that lot(more than a few of whom she’s either professionally connected with, or just personal friends with.)
She also left the NYT after spending a week slagging off her co-workers and got told to stop, as well as getting called out by a fellow editor for telling some pretty absurd lies about what was going on at the paper, the combination of which caused her to leave in a big huff, complete with a long, lie-filled “I’m leaving because I’m just so persecuted here” letter.
Last of all, and her most recent big thing, is she’s started a non-accredited university in Texas, which she claims is about freedom, but is mostly just a combination of Prager U(The famous extreme-right non-university) and a Diploma mill. Basically the only non-shite academic who was listed has already quit(Because he figured out the joint was full to bursting with Nazi fucks), and it’s funded by a small herd of rich far-right figures, ranging from the aforementioned Kochs, to trash vampire Peter Thiel, and Sillicon valley VC and quasi-white supremacist Jon Lonsdale.
Okay. Well this book extract was just included in my Google News feed along with other movie stuff from the likes of iO9 and Deadline. I didn’t even look at the URL when I posted it. Not sure why Google’s algorithm would include it among general news and review sites.
To be clear, the book extract isn’t anything Bari Weiss wrote.
Yeah, it’s kind of a baffling one. But, that’s the way the Algo crumbles, I guess. And yeah, it woulda been easy to miss, I can’t say with confidence I would have caught it myself - In fact, I’m not sure I wouldn’t have even thought about it, if I wasn’t already primed to look for it going in.
FINALLY!
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The moment when you realize you can not trust those who show good intentions.
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While we’re on shitty Unity news.