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by rchaud 6 days ago
School of Americas-trained death squads on one hand and hoity-toity arts and culture on the other. Soft power certainly casts a wide net.
1 comments

Yeah, good point. And I think you could probably make a fair case that the choice of where to apply that sort of ugly anti-democratic violence and subversion probably reflected culturally chauvinist and racist ideas about which cultures would be receptive to hoity toity arts and culture (European, White) and which would not (the others).

But I don't know that I find a lot of fault with, like, funding the Kenyon Review. That sort of seems like a fine thing to do. I'm not sure there's a discernible difference between that and just sort of generally funding arts and culture, which a) seems fine, but b) also certainly serves to aggrandize "our" culture and promote the glory of "our" way of life.