Remember that?

Simpsons win over Kenyan carvers

By Muliro Telewa BBC News, western Kenya

A group of carvers in western Kenya are looking forward to the first Simpsons movie hitting big screens around the world, even though they are unlikely to see it.

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I have an interest in Kenyan news (as I was given this name by my Kikuyu friend).

I really posted this here to illustrate what 'soft power' is. The United States used to possess a silly ridiculous amount of the world's soft power, especially after the collapse of the U.S.S.R. Our idiots in charge can't comprehend that we already had what they wanted; we were relatively secure and had the ability to influence world events in our favor.

What we didn't export physically was more than compensated by our worldwide cultural imperialism. I used to joke in the late great 90's that the U.S. found the perfect form of imperialism, we import the world's cultural raw materials, repackage it with a shiny U.S. wrapper and sell it back to everybody. People don't often fight against what they demand, we weren't (for the most part) forcing ourselves on anyone, if you didn't want our products, you didn't buy them. No rebellions, colonial administration or other hassles.

We could've 'got in' even better with the world community post 9/11, we had their sympathy; U.S. related memorabilia could've flown off of the shelves. Unfortunately a calculated perfect storm of nepotism had occurred and we had another Bush in the White House. Instead of running with the potential windfall they sculpted it in that peculiar corporate shortsighted way to maximize profits without a thought for the context in which those profits are created or if said profits are even sustainable.

I want them (and the corporations they represent) imprisoned and stripped of their assets. Although even if that managed to pay the tab for their sand box time, they'd still owe us our soft power back. Maybe we could give them to the international courts (after we charge them). [By the way can we get some mandatory minimums for this seriously destructive white collar shit that is always orders of magnitude larger in effect than the efforts of any one thug or hustler?] We could put them in a zoo-like enclosure and subject them to the questioning and the will of the people (which they spend an inordinate amount of resources avoiding being public servants and all, matter of fact they're our resources that they are expending to avoid us [how fucked up is that?]). Every question they avoid or refuse to answer adds a week to their sentence. They be in the box forever even if they started with a two hour mandatory minimum.