[Quantum]

What's wrong with safeguarding Bolivia from degenerate influences of the United States? I wouldn't wish any country to emulate such a sick, destructive society that will only last a few decades before destroying itself and every vestige of culture. The Bolivians already have a unique culture and should modernise in their own terms without resorting to adopting every aspect of popular American culture.

[youtube]bPLvd54wfaI[/youtube]

Bolivians don't have to look outside the West to emulate great cultures. They could emulate countries with a deeper and richer civilisation such as France and Germany or even their former colonial masters Spain but even these countries were conquered by the pernicious influence of American culture, which makes it hard for Bolivians to avoid this filth that is invaded virtually every country in the world.

[Social_Critic]

Quantum, I can't visualize Bolivians eating saurkraut and drinking lager beer, wearing leatherhosen, or buying German products in general. It's not practical for them.

Also, the Bolivians don't really have a unique culture. Bolivia is fairly heterogeneus and the Bolivians in the highlands are quite different from the ones around Santa Cruz. Finally, if you are saying "Bolivian culture" is that of the Aymara and Quechua who live above the 3500 meter line, that culture is the result of Spanish colonization (I assume you don't really believe they were wearing skirts and little hats before the Spanish arrived). Their culture, before the Spanish conquest, was the result of Inca conquest and rule, and that really wasn't worth much. Most of them were treated like slaves.

So if we take off the romantic blanket you want to put over Bolivia, then the argument about Coca Cola - which has already been debunked, making this thread somewhat baseless - becomes fairly inane and insubstancial. I don't particularly like to see the world take on a uniform sameness, mostly because I like to travel and also because I think there's value in diversity. But the leftish blather about eliminating "imperialist influence" is merely hot air. And your romantic ideas about the world are really nice, hang on to them if you can, but they don't fit reality. It's the 21st century.

I also don't see the relevance of the prostitute clip. If the chick is going to sell hereself cheap, she'll do it for a big mac, or for a guinea pig, or cash. That's got nothing to do with Bolivia banning Coca Cola. Cuban prostitutes living in Castro's wonderland are famous around the world for being pretty, very flexible, and cost very little. I'm told some will do it for a bar of soap. When I was little Castro came into Havana rambling on about the abuse of the masses and yackety yack bleedi blah blah. So I suppose we can start a thread about women being abused and being led to prostitution by economic hardship, and I can bring the Cuban case over and over and over again. And over and over and over. It'll never end.

[Quantum]

But the leftish blather about eliminating "imperialist influence" is merely hot air.

Jeez, you liberals just don't get it. Hating barbaric American culture isn't leftism at all and if that makes me a leftist then Hitler, Mussolini and Tojo are leftists and I would be happy to associate myself with them.

Clearly the wrong side lost the war as this shitty culture wouldn't have developed with an Axis victory and nobody around the would be wearing saggy pants, listening to gangsta rap and obesity wouldn't be as widespread since fascists promoted public health and wouldn't have tolerated cultural degeneracy. The only good thing about it is that it's weak and will be overrun by a vigorous culture in a few decades.

[Social_Critic]

Wow, you must be living in a US ghetto? I'm visiting the US and I haven't heard any "gangsta rap", and nobody wears saggy pants around here. Fascism isn't necessarily that interested in public health, and I noticed Mr Bloomberg in NY is so interested in reducing obesity he just controlled the size of soft drink servings in public places.

So your whole mishmash about being anti US sure sounds weird, my friend. I see this more from the commies, but I suppose right wingers outside the US can share the same feelings. After all, both communism and fasicsm are joined at the hip, they are about control of the individual, imposition of rules by force, and of course they work very hard to perpetuate themselves.

Humanity does have an out, though, people like me are born once in a while, and we are the kamikazes who destroy your social structures. I can't claim to be that effective, but I do sit here and send my little squirts of water at your rocks, and erode, and erode, and erode. Eventually, all your regimes fall.