More and more people are outwardly saying that they don’t believe the govt or the media, but they still haven’t gone further to question who exactly has been telling them about China or the DPRK. I think Sinophobia appeals to the average USian’s superiority complex. It takes some measure of humility to try to unpack that much propaganda. I’m still trying to do it after years and years.
For sure, nobody wants to believe that their country is the one that’s backwards. That’s what makes propaganda so easy to do, people want to believe it.
As I’ve said before, the big problem is that most Americans assume that ‘if we can’t do it, then it can’t be done.’ Low crime, well funded public housing? Nope, it’s all ‘but the projects’ this and ‘projects’ that, ignoring the fact that in China your housing representative literally lives in the block with you. But of course that’s ‘too much government interference’ ‘cant have a nanny state’.
Literally people just back themselves into an ideological corner where no solution is good enough so the only solution is to do nothing and let the private sector figure it out, as if they don’t become just as much of an oppressive force in their solutions.
More and more people are outwardly saying that they don’t believe the govt or the media, but they still haven’t gone further to question who exactly has been telling them about China or the DPRK. I think Sinophobia appeals to the average USian’s superiority complex. It takes some measure of humility to try to unpack that much propaganda. I’m still trying to do it after years and years.
For sure, nobody wants to believe that their country is the one that’s backwards. That’s what makes propaganda so easy to do, people want to believe it.
As I’ve said before, the big problem is that most Americans assume that ‘if we can’t do it, then it can’t be done.’ Low crime, well funded public housing? Nope, it’s all ‘but the projects’ this and ‘projects’ that, ignoring the fact that in China your housing representative literally lives in the block with you. But of course that’s ‘too much government interference’ ‘cant have a nanny state’.
Literally people just back themselves into an ideological corner where no solution is good enough so the only solution is to do nothing and let the private sector figure it out, as if they don’t become just as much of an oppressive force in their solutions.
I think this essay expands on your point of view.