{"id":54720,"date":"2024-12-18T01:00:20","date_gmt":"2024-12-18T06:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=54720"},"modified":"2024-12-17T10:04:10","modified_gmt":"2024-12-17T15:04:10","slug":"qotd-western-shaming-the-grass-is-always-greener-overseas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2024\/12\/18\/qotd-western-shaming-the-grass-is-always-greener-overseas\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: Western shaming &#8211; the grass is always greener overseas"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p><a href=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"float:left; padding: 0px 25px 10px 0px\" src=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"400\" height=\"400\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-48672\" srcset=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png 400w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400-150x150.png 150w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400-50x50.png 50w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" \/><\/a>In the late 1950s, many elites in the United States bought the Soviet Union line that the march of global communism would &#8220;bury&#8221; the West. Then, as Soviet power eroded in the 1980s, Japan Inc. and its ascendant model of state-sponsored industry became the preferred alternative to Western-style democratic capitalism.<\/p>\n<p>Once Japan&#8217;s economy ossified, the new utopia of the 1990s was supposedly the emerging European Union. Americans were supposed to be awed that the euro gained ground on the dollar. Europe&#8217;s borderless democratic socialism and its &#8220;soft power&#8221; were declared preferable to the reactionary U.S.<\/p>\n<p>By 2015, the EU was a mess, so China was preordained as the inevitable global superpower. American intellectuals pointed to its high-speed rail transportation, solar industries and gleaming airports, in contrast to the hollowed-out and grubby American heartland.<\/p>\n<p>Now the curtain has been pulled back on the interior rot of the Chinese Communist Party, its gulag-like re-education camps, its systematic mercantile cheating, its Orwellian surveillance apparatus, its serial public health crises and its primitive hinterland infrastructure.<\/p>\n<p>After the calcification of the Soviet Union, Japan Inc., the EU and the Chinese superpower, no one quite knows which alternative will next supposedly bury America.<\/p>\n<p>Victor Davis Hanson, <a href=\"https:\/\/townhall.com\/columnists\/victordavishanson\/2020\/01\/30\/the-cult-of-western-shaming-n2560311\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">&#8220;The Cult of Western Shaming&#8221;, <em>Townhall.com<\/em><\/a>, 2020-01-29.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the late 1950s, many elites in the United States bought the Soviet Union line that the march of global communism would &#8220;bury&#8221; the West. Then, as Soviet power eroded in the 1980s, Japan Inc. and its ascendant model of state-sponsored industry became the preferred alternative to Western-style democratic capitalism. Once Japan&#8217;s economy ossified, the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,25,7,24,28,41,1119,13],"tags":[780,337,269,433],"class_list":["post-54720","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-china","category-economics","category-history","category-japan","category-media","category-quotations","category-russia","category-usa","tag-communism","tag-eu","tag-propaganda","tag-sovietunion"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-eeA","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54720","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54720"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54720\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":93031,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54720\/revisions\/93031"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54720"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54720"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54720"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}