huh, it's funny, did some research on "the good thing" and it turns out david byrne's lyrics were inspired by old chinese communist party literature. i remember doing some research on authoritarianism in america, and found surveys and sociological papers that found that america was the most culturally authoritarian-leaning of the 1st world industrial nations, to an off-the-charts degree, in total contradiction of our own view as an individualistic culture, even before the bush/911 years.
guess it was a "happy" accident byrne's cribbing of authoritarian literature sounds so incredibly american. links up pretty well with this thread: Silicon Valley Techno-Utopianism weird how we might have more in common with communist china than france or england.
― Spectrum, Sunday, 25 May 2014 05:44 (ten years ago) link