Wars the US waged in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, and Pakistan following September 11, 2001 caused at least 4.5 million deaths and displaced 38 to 60 million people, with 7.6 million children starving today, according to studies by Brown University.
There is an American culture of world-historical importance. It’s just not the white culture. Black music for instance has unparalleled influence partly because of its quality. White music culture has made no contributions to modern (including popular art) equal to, say, Jazz, Blues, Gospel, RnB, Hip-Hop, detroit techno, chicago house…I could go on. Of course white people in general, especially the bourgeois, have little to no access to or knowedge of these cultures, unless its been given to them through a gentrified, fetishized filter that doesn’t understand the value of these musical traditions. Alternatively they treat is as jokey party music for them to sniff coke to.
Apart from that I agree that the mainstream of American culture is literal proof of the decadence of a civilization.
I’d also say that apart from key land needing to be returned to give to native americans and key minorities, the most important thing is that there is equitable land and housing reform that ensures an equitable distribution and standard of living for everyone in the broader working class, though this doesn’t preclude certain groups being given more immediate priority.
But yeh America is satanic. Literal Mammon worshipers.
Yeah you got it. American white bourgeois society is a virus. And you’re right, all the unique music that came out of the USA is a product of oppressed minorities. Even pasty white conservative country music is a perverse mockery of southern/appalachian folk music that has roots in African and Celtic traditions. The banjo is an African instrument for instance.
White suburbs are a genuine blight and their expansion is cooking the planet.
Yeah I mean if we were being more fair we would not only have to trace these genres genealogically through Jazz to blues and gospel, ragtime, and also to Caribbean and Spanish music (especially for alot of rhythmic ideas) and also West African music (blues, pentatonic scales), but also recognize that European classical music also had deep influence on early black american music.
The only country music I’ve ever unironically enjoyed was bluegrass, and that confirms our point. That being said I’m nothing of an aficionado of this stuff so I dont doubt there’s decent stuff I dont know.
But yh white suburbs are really where culture goes to die. It reminds of a comment Pasolini once made, that only the lower classes and the upper classes in history have produced real culture. The middle classes have been cultureless on average.