“It was the mainstreaming of soft-core smut as empowerment.”

The United States wielded the most powerful, sophisticated military in the world—a fact that could make or break the power of any regime or dynasty, not just in the Middle East, but across the globe. But it wasn’t just bombs or politics that spread American power. It was the export of distraction. If it wasn’t a proxy war between Christianity and Islam uniting the elites of Washington, London, and Riyadh, then it was something else entirely—something far more seductive. It was sitcoms that glorified moral decay, reality TV as ideology. It was the mainstreaming of soft-core smut as empowerment.