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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group

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To: Ilaine who wrote (90261)	4/5/2003 1:54:13 PM
From: Sun Tzu	Read Replies (1) of 281500

> you think that there are a lot of people who don't want to have any further contact with mass culture Certainly there is a lot of that. But that is not all there is to it. Content, or lack there of, is a big part of it. Ironically, the mass culture we export also drives some of its supporters against the very regimes who imported it. References to freedom of speech in Hollywood movies could persuade some that it is a good idea (I love the first amendment), yet this is not compatible with those regimes. I've seen some of the tapes from the political prisoners' trials during Shah. The one that is stuck in my mind is the confessions of a hardened gun slinging terrorist. He said that he started as a dissident asking for more social equity and less westernification, but he was poisoned for it. There he met more hard core political prisoners and came out with militant ideology. So there are many parts to it. There are those who are the Muslim equivalent of Bible thumpers. There are those who want to fight mass media (but not necessarily with guns). There are those who want more liberalization. And there are those who want TV programming to be replaced (or at least more reflective of) their traditional values (in other words they are not necessarily anti-technology). And there are even those who want more progress and modernization. All these cross currents are boiling inside oppressive regimes. Something has to give; they cannot all coexist without real democracy. As it turns out, commercial interests prefer to deal with dictatorship that can open the markets easily than deal with all these complexities, some of which runs directly against our commercial interests. So we give some dictators labels like "progressive leader" when in reality we mean he opens the markets for us. What happens under these conditions is that the most angry and the virulent strain of opposition takes the lead. It has to be so because the moderates in either camp cannot compete under those conditions. As a result the society becomes polarized. Those who strongly favor the regime go to one side and those who oppose it strongly go to the other side. You do not have many choices in opposing those regimes or changing the government. It is this bi-polarization that creates instability. In contrast in the West there are many ways to went your discontent and some of them sometimes work. This greater democracy is what is needed. And of course there needs to be improving social standards to go along with it. But there are too many factors opposing real democracy in developing countries. Only one of them is our commercial interests. The others include the stiff social structures (royal clan and all). Lack of real rule of law. Cultural incompatibilities inside those countries. And so on. People in the developing countries focus only on the first factor. Which is how America is seen responsible for all the evils of the world, especially since our commercial interests often make use of those other internal factors. This is unfair, we are only one of several factors and sometime we even do some good which goes unappreciated. But such is life. Sun Tzu

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