You grossly misrepresent me by asserting I am 'one of the "hate ourselves" folks'. Such a misrepresentation is inherently hateful or at the least disingenuous and not aligned with good faith and reasoned debate...nor aligned with what you claim are your own values. You infer you have fought against the excesses of western culture, then you surely know this is not a case of being 'one of the "hate ourselves" folks.' but being someone who cares about your society and looks at your own society and seeks to acknowledge and fix its excesses. You repeatedly overlook and thereby fail to refute the point that being defeated, leaves that nation under the hegemony of the nations who triumphed over them. The hegemony is imposed upon them. That is the nature of hegemony. All citizens of the hegemonic power enjoy collectively greater wealth/resources than those conquered...this cannot be avoided or ignored no matter how hard you worked to save the whales. All of us who live in the west have materially if indirectly benefited from the excessive resource capture the west has enjoyed via imperialism...you cannot honestly claim to not have.