When the priority of American middle class teens is to get laid and not worried about struggling to survive like they do in Africa or Afghanistan you know the country is not in decline. Heck, even good food like apple pies get wasted (Something they don't do in Africa) you know America is not in decline and has no need to fear so called threats from China or India where people there still struggle to survive.
Africa, China and India are huge places filled with people who are rich, poor, and middle class. Lumping them in with Afghanistan, a fairly small country which has been politically unstable and without a functioning government or economy for some time, is a bit of a stretch. Yes they have social problems, but then again so does America, and Europe, and Japan, etc etc.
American and western teens and children take their prosperity for granted.
Many of them don't. There is a huge amount of poverty in America that is often invisible to people in more comfortable circumstances.
I wonder how this movie did in Africa, India and China (Yes, China is still a dirt poor country, not at all in a position to threaten the West).
The main reason the West shouldn't be worrying about a "threat" from China is because it doesn't need an outside threat, it's doing pretty well of tearing itself apart from the inside. The Brexit is an example of this. The West is fragmenting into factions that hate one another, and this kind of attitude is preventing it from taking practical, non-ideologically driven solutions that could improve its economy and social or political stability.
Jim should be sent to Africa to starve, then he would wish he never wasted that apple pie. What a spoiled prick.
Jim is a product of a toxic 90s teen culture that placed conformity, popularity, and for boys, macho manliness, above all else. His environment would have led him to be highly adverse to the idea of appearing weak or wimpy in any way, and by implication, possibly homosexual. The other boys who surround him face the same insecurities. The girls are under pressure to appear popular, beautiful and desirable, while also avoiding reputations as "sluts". Those who step outside these lines are seen as worthy of ridicule. In the almost two decades that have passed since this movie was made, a great deal has changed and for many teenagers, these lines are no longer so firmly drawn, which is the real proof that in some aspects, society is indeed improving rather than declining.
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