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[Auto Slaughter]

Original ad - Parody Remix

The U.S. political right has come out with another blatantly racist message; in a television ad that started airing today, a Chinese professor in Beijing in the year 2030 is telling the story of how the United States collapsed due to - gasp - too much public spending!  Oh, and by the way, the government trying to fix healthcare is super duper bad, and you know what's really super duper bad?  Taxing corporations!  The ad ends with the professor looking into the camera and gloating about how "we own them now", that the Chinese basically took over the U.S. afterwards.

So, vote Republican and be really, really afraid of the Chinese.  The ad is here.

It's stupid in more ways than it's possible to list... like, does this mean that we should become Communists?  And why would the Chinese be bothered about "government takeover of industries and healthcare" or say that it leads to the downfall of nations when they're, uh, Communists, and that's pretty much what they do?  (Excepting the quasi-capitalist reforms since Deng Xiaoping's 1992 "Southern tour", of course.)

But most of all, why would they be all confused about the "so-called stimulus spending" and again pin the downfall of the U.S. on that when the Chinese government put out a bigger stimulus package than the U.S. did during the recent recession?  The Chinese put out a stimulus equivalent to about 18% of the country's GDP.  The U.S. stimulus was about 5% of our GDP.  The Chinese economy is much healthier and has much better growth than that of the U.S. now, go figure.  (Though to be fair they were going like gangbusters before the economic crisis too.)

Aaaanyways, although I find the original ad stupid and annoying, the real reason I'm making this post is to link to this parody remix of it, which I think is brilliant.  Someone replaced the subtitles à la Downfall.  The makers of the original commercial, the group "Citizens Against Government Waste" which of course isn't grassroots but was created by a billionaire industrialist during the Eighties, has already gotten the parody taken down from Youtube in several places.

So in case it gets taken down here's the text of the original...

Beijing, China, 2030 AD

Why do great nations fail? The ancient Greeks... the Roman Empire... the British Empire... and the United States of America. They all make the same mistakes, turning their back on the principles that made them great.

America tried to spend and tax itself out of a great recession. Enormous so-called "stimulus" spending, massive changes to health care, government takeovers of private industries, and crushing debt. Of course, we owned most of their debt, so now they work for us.

and here's the text of the parody...

Beijing, China, 2030 AD

Why do great nations fail? The ancient Greeks... the Roman Empire... the British Empire... and the United States of America. They all make the same mistakes.

The rich bought control of the government and media and distracted the people with spectacle while they stole the nation's wealth. Eventually there were only the poor and the rich. The new poor grew angry, so the rich betrayed the government they controlled, hiding in and fueling the angry crowd.

Friends inside kept the government powerless but just to be safe they manufactured fear of a foreign devil. But who's stupid enough to fall for that one again?

[Nikov]

Wait, I thought Republicans were evil because they were possibly accepting campaign money from foreign sources which very well might include Chinese interests although we have no evidence of this beyond that some Republican PAC's don't keep track of donators information if the amount is below $100 as they are allowed to according to campaign finance law.

[Auto Slaughter]

Believe me, Republicans (or truthfully, most politicians) would have no qualms about taking secret donations from the Chinese government on one hand and making ads like this at the same time.

[Earthquake Damage]

Gentlemen, the derp has hit the fan.

Actually, it did that years ago.  We're just officially acknowledging it now.

[Nikov]

I looked through your post history and judging by your view on GM salmon and business in general...

Yeah. We might as well not.

[Auto Slaughter]

I looked through your post history and judging by your view on GM salmon and business in general...

Yeah. We might as well not.

I also crack the shells of my hard-boiled eggs at the big end, so you're probably right.

[Nikov]

I looked through your post history and judging by your view on GM salmon and business in general...

Yeah. We might as well not.

I also crack the shells of my hard-boiled eggs at the big end, so you're probably right.

Monster.

[Auto Slaughter]

I also crack the shells of my hard-boiled eggs at the big end, so you're probably right.

Monster.

I take it then that you are a Little Endian?  Ingénu!

[ChairmanPoo]

Funny how things seem to work in circles, right?

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

We are back at late 19th century propaganda.

[Nikov]

Omgz racist.

[Auto Slaughter]

We are back at late 19th century propaganda.

Well it takes them a long time to get here, y'know.  I mean they're coming all the way from China.

[Shade-o]

I'd like to hear more about this ancient Greek nation. It sounds like an intriguing concept.

[Nikov]

The concept of a nation as a group other than strictly a governed state actually predates the idea of nations being governed state. For example, long before Germany it was broadly thought there was a pan-Germanic nation of all German-speaking peoples. So there most certainly was a Greek nation, even if it comprised of rival city-states, because of a large population identifying themselves as group transcending strictly political boundries.

[Auto Slaughter]

I would have thought that the reference was to the Hellenic empires rather than the city-states era.  (But I don't really know much at all about Greek history, so I could easily be wrong.)

[scriver]

Alexander's Macedonia.

And Nikov, pan-nationalism is so 19th century. Yes, nationalism is a long standing concept, but back in the day, your nationalist loyalty were to the city state/petty nation, not the "culture" group. Absorption of "lesser" nationalities takes either a long time or an active PR strategy.