All of this... I do wonder about the folks at the State Dept and CIA. Do they actually believe the pro-capitalists bullshit that you outlined above? Honestly... I kinda think they do. Unless you have a materialist / Marxist view of things, the neoliberal views you expressed are kinda the default for most Americans. So even the folks in charge of imperialism have their eyes on the wrong ball. That's something that definitely works in China's favor.
Kinda makes me think of the tech-man in the Foundation
Hober Mallow shows up to see what the Foundation is up against in the dwindling empire, finds a tech-man (a hereditary class of people who work on the reactors that power the planets). Asks him how the reactor works and the tech-man basically just says "well" then when pressed for what he'd do if a component broke, he just says "that doesn't happen!".
We've reached a level of complicity where the people who drafted the first ideas of the propaganda are long dead and no one knows how to run the machines anymore and can't imagine a world without the machines. Trapped in an empire withering away.
All of this... I do wonder about the folks at the State Dept and CIA. Do they actually believe the pro-capitalists bullshit that you outlined above? Honestly... I kinda think they do. Unless you have a materialist / Marxist view of things, the neoliberal views you expressed are kinda the default for most Americans. So even the folks in charge of imperialism have their eyes on the wrong ball. That's something that definitely works in China's favor.
Kinda makes me think of the tech-man in the Foundation
Hober Mallow shows up to see what the Foundation is up against in the dwindling empire, finds a tech-man (a hereditary class of people who work on the reactors that power the planets). Asks him how the reactor works and the tech-man basically just says "well" then when pressed for what he'd do if a component broke, he just says "that doesn't happen!".
We've reached a level of complicity where the people who drafted the first ideas of the propaganda are long dead and no one knows how to run the machines anymore and can't imagine a world without the machines. Trapped in an empire withering away.