Democrats Are Lying to Themselves About Why Their Party Is Collapsing
Democrats now find themselves in an approval death spiral because their strategy invariably emphasizes style over substance.Democrats now find themselves in an approval death spiral because their strategy invariably emphasizes style over substance.The Chinese demon conquering America one purse at a time
Americans are hanging Chinese monsters from their purses and calling it fashion. The Labubu doll — a deranged creature with elf ears and dead eyes — has become the latest "must-have" accessory across America.
Pop Mart’s stock price soars as millions of Americans embrace these plastic demons, never pausing to wonder why this craze came from China or what cultural current carried it across the Pacific.
China didn’t invent soft power. But it did refine it. It watched America perfect the art — how Disney enchanted, McDonald’s normalized, Levi’s symbolized.
This isn't about toys. It's about cultural dominance, and China is winning. Once the global master of soft power, America is losing its grip.
Emotional anchors
These wide-eyed mascots worm their way onto backpacks, keychains, and nightstands across America. And that’s exactly why they must be seen through a broader lens. They’re more than merchandise. They’re emotional anchors, symbols of comfort that quietly draw Americans toward Chinese brands and aesthetics.
No slogans. No speeches. Just influence, stitched with precision. These dolls act as cultural foot soldiers, normalizing Chinese imagery and planting quiet loyalty in consumers who think they’re just buying harmless fun.
Pop Mart on the march
The real brilliance lies in the infiltration method. Pop Mart isn’t just selling collectibles. It’s exporting an entire consumer experience — engineered, seductive, and unmistakably Chinese.
For the uninitiated, Pop Mart is a billion-dollar Chinese juggernaut, built on blind-box binges and dopamine-driven design. It thrives on scarcity, limited-edition drops, and the addictive thrill of not knowing which figure you’ll get.
Labubu is only one cog in this machine, part of a broader parade of designer figurines with names like Skullpanda, Dimoo, and Molly. Each one is a stylized little terror engineered to evoke affection, irony, or unease.
Pop Mart's real power comes from how it embeds itself: sleek flagship stores, mall kiosks that look more like miniature Apple stores than toy shops. Step inside and you're not just browsing. You’re surrendering — to a color scheme, a soundtrack, a purchasing rhythm designed in Beijing and deployed globally.
These pop-ups double as ideological outposts — compact, curated zones of Chinese influence. Pop Mart’s U.S. expansion moves with military precision. No franchises. No randomness. Each location is planted with precision — high-traffic zones, engineered for visibility and psychological pull. Nothing is accidental.
From the pastel glow to the minimalist layout, every detail is designed to feel cooler, smoother, and more seductive than the aging giants of American retail. Mattel trades on memory. Pop Mart manufactures it on demand. No legacy. No buildup. Just a nonstop stream of new icons for a generation raised on fast trends, fleeting attachments, and the rush of the next big thing.
RELATED: Why TikTok is a serious national security threat
Big 'Impact'
The Labubu phenomenon extends beyond individual purchases into social conditioning. These dolls create visible proof that Chinese products are desirable, trendy, and worth displaying publicly.
The strategy mirrors other Chinese incursions hiding in plain sight. Genshin Impact, a Chinese video game, has made billions from Western players, many of whom spend years immersed in Chinese mythology, aesthetics, and moral frameworks.
They’re not just playing. They’re absorbing ideas about heroism, loyalty, and fantasy shaped by Beijing, not Burbank. Millions now prefer Chinese character design over Western equivalents. Some might call it chance. I call it a calculated cultural correction.
Soft power 2.0
Then there's Shein, a company that rewired American fashion just as smoothly. What once looked exploitative now looks aspirational. Young women ditched the mall for an app that trained them to crave speed, disposability, and prices only China can deliver.
Of course, TikTok is the crown jewel. ByteDance didn’t just build an app; it created a nervous system for American youth. It slipped in unnoticed, reprogramming attention spans while quietly extracting oceans of personal data.
Every swipe feeds the system, and every second scrolling further shapes reality. What teens see, what they believe, what they buy — it’s curated by a feed they don’t control, engineered by a company they don’t understand.
China didn’t invent soft power. But it did refine it. It watched America perfect the art — how Disney enchanted, McDonald’s normalized, Levi’s symbolized. These were much more than brands. They were delivery systems for values: individualism, freedom, consumer optimism. A Big Mac wasn’t just food — it was a flag. A Disney film wasn’t just entertainment — it was a sermon in Technicolor about the American dream. China took notes — then it rewrote the playbook.
It understood the power wasn’t in the message; it was in the medium. The delivery. The emotional pull. So it kept the mechanics and rebuilt the machine to serve its own ends. American consumers are outmatched not because they’re stupid, but because they’re unarmed.
They think they’re buying toys. They’re buying cultural conditioning in collectible form. This is the new battlefield. And the weapons don’t look like missiles. They look like dolls with elf ears, sleek apps, and flashing discount timers. The monster isn’t at the gates. It’s in your mall, your feed, your pocket — and now, your purse.
Why Kids Should Go Cold Turkey On Tech
After years of parents attempting to implement content controls, screen time limits, and other half measures, Morell is ready to cut the Gordian Knot.Chicken-chucking, screaming teens just might save Hollywood
Upon its release earlier this month, “A Minecraft Movie” exploded onto the scene in more ways than one. On a positive note, the film has drawn large audiences to once-empty cinemas and is on track to earn more than $1 billion globally — a welcome vital sign for the American film industry after its decline during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Unfortunately, “Minecraft” has also sparked literal explosions of chaos in theaters. Fans, overcome with excitement at scenes like a baby zombie riding a chicken or the introduction of Jack Black’s character, Steve, have reportedly screamed, hurled popcorn and toilet paper, and even tossed live chickens at the screen — leaving staff with colossal messes to clean up afterward.
For most Zoomers, passionate moments of shared interest and fun are virtually nonexistent.
According to my high school students who watched the movie and could explain this bizarre behavior, these outbursts came from people who actually liked the movie. Reading through the mediocre movie reviews, I assumed that fans were disappointed and consequently engaged in shameless hooliganism. Quite the opposite. They were expressing their excitement at the movie’s many references and Easter eggs to the beloved video game.
Reckless or simply fun?
Of course, causing a public ruckus raises concerns about today’s youths who react so strongly to an otherwise silly movie. Such outbursts suggest that the younger Zoomers have pent-up rage, lacking healthy outlets for their aggression. The recent TV series “Adolescence,” which controversially portrayed radicalized youth engaging in violent acts, may have struck closer to the truth than we’d like to admit.
Then again, there might be a good reason to see these rampant outbursts as a salutary development. Not only are young people going to movie theaters and thereby reviving a moribund entertainment industry, but they are also charging a previously stagnant environment with some much-needed energy. This isn’t the glassy-eyed, TikTok-scrolling crowd we’ve come to expect. These lively crowds of young people are sharing an intense moment with a piece of entertainment they all love — not Beatlemania, but “Minecraft mania.”
Dwindling social outlets
Older generations, which have their own experience with various social crazes that brought them and their peers together in effusive exuberance, may not understand just how special this is for young people today.
Previous generations enjoyed countless concerts, movies, video games, and even books that routinely brought together fan communities that frequently became rowdy and occasionally chaotic — and hardly any of it, even for Millennials, was coordinated through online social media.
As a Millennial myself who’s about to turn 40, I remember the insanity at the cinema when the original “Star Wars” trilogy was re-released in anticipation of the prequels. People gasped and cried when they saw a remastered Han Solo or Luke Skywalker. I can also recall driving by bookstores — before Amazon put most of them out of business — observing the long lines of “Harry Potter” devotees decked in their Hogwarts uniforms, eagerly anticipating the next book in the series. More recently, similar fan frenzies were seen with the latest Taylor Swift concert or “Avengers” movies.
At the time, I pitied these nerds who, for all appearances, lost their minds over something seemingly insubstantial. Now, I envy them and yearn for a return to this kind of enthusiasm.
These days, pop culture has become hyper-individualized and mediated through online streaming and social media platforms. Algorithms, not authenticity, inform everyone’s taste. Nothing about it is natural or real. For most Zoomers, passionate moments of shared interest and fun are virtually nonexistent.
Zoomers don’t realize that physically gathering with fellow fans is normal and that such events add up to more than the sum of their parts. They represent rare moments of authentic public celebration. Yes, they usually center around some shallow piece of pop-culture fluff, but they generate a collective spirit that only happens when fans are allowed to “nerd out” and let go with one another for a little while.
Welcome ‘Minecraft mania’
The “Minecraft” chicken jockey mania continues this tradition. One of my students told me that watching “Minecraft” in the theater was the most fun he’s ever had at the cinema. He conceded that the movie is mostly Hollywood slop, but the audience’s reactions made it worth the annoyingly high price of admission.
He and his peers should understand the value of sharing experiences with friends and fellow fans. Active participation beats passive consumption on the couch every time.
Let the next cultural craze bring the same energy and excitement — minus the chicken feathers.
Chinese factories are using TikTok to work around retailers and tariffs — big brands say the videos are fake, sort of
Chinese factories are promoting themselves through TIkTok videos and asking American consumers to buy directly from them at a lower cost than retailers.
With President Trump recently raising tariffs on China to 245%, videos have gone viral in recent days of Chinese factories offering products in bulk and/or direct to the consumer from factories that say they supply U.S. retailers.
For example, factories claiming to supply Lululemon and Louis Vuitton have offered products at minimal costs.
As reported by the Independent, one video that garnered 10 million views said it was selling yoga pants from Lululemon for $5 instead of $100, the apparent listed price in the U.S.
Another video reportedly showed a man in a factory who claimed his Louis Vuitton bags can be sold directly to consumers across the world for $50.
Both companies reportedly told the outlet that their products are not finished in China, which raised the question of what "finished" means. Of course, many of these products and factories could be producing counterfeit products, but they also could legitimately be product suppliers that are meant to maximize profits for international retailers.
For Italian products to be labeled "100% Made in Italy" (according the official certification website), a product must be made with "exclusive designs" from Italy, built entirely in Italy, made with Italian semi-finished products, and a have a traceability process.
However, at least some of Louis Vuitton's products do not contain an official seal and simply say "made in Italy."
The Independent noted that it found at least one video that falsely claimed to be a Lululemon supplier. However, a Lululemon spokesperson told the outlet that just 3% or thereabouts of the company's finished goods are manufactured in mainland China.
The specific nature of the remark is indeed for a reason, as the provided list of manufacturing partners on the Lululemon website revealed that manufacturers from "China Mainland" were categorized separately from "Taiwan."
Other locations like Korea, Cambodia, Vietnam, and Sri Lanka appeared many times on the list of partners.
Other widely circulated video included $100 alleged Gucci products sold for just $1.49, while another factory boasted laundry pods being sold at a rate of 20 units for $1.
One auto-parts factory promoted a woman in a grime-covered location around dozens of engines who sang, "Many auto parts in my factory, if you need auto parts you can find me."
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14 states sue TikTok, claiming American teens are addicted to scrolling endlessly
More than a dozen attorneys general in the United States are suing TikTok in their jurisdictions. The new lawsuits predominantly criticize the platform's algorithm, saying it is addicting to children.
One of the litigators is New York's Letitia James, who said American teens have died or been injured due to the influence of TikTok challenges, where users are indirectly dared to follow a trend.
According to the BBC, James cited a 15-year-old boy who died doing a "subway surfing" challenge in Manhattan by attempting to ride atop a moving subway car. The boy's mother found TikTok videos of the same nature on his phone.
"TikTok knows that compulsive use of and other harmful effects of its platform are wreaking havoc on the mental health of millions of American children and teenagers," the New York lawsuit argued.
The document continued, "Despite such documented knowledge, TikTok continually misrepresents its platform as 'safe' [and] 'appropriate for children and teenagers.'"
The lawsuits claim that the algorithm, the "For You" feed on TikTok, uses design features that make children addicted to the platform. The features in question include the ability to scroll endlessly, push notifications, and face filters that create allegedly unattainable appearances.
The 14 states suing TikTok include California, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Mississippi, New York, New Jersey, North Carolina, Oregon, South Carolina, Vermont, and Washington, along with the District of Columbia.
In D.C., Attorney General Brian Schwalb called the algorithm "dopamine-inducing" and said it is intentionally addictive to trap users into excessive consumption of the app.
Schwalb also argued that TikTok does this knowing that it will lead to "profound psychological and physiological harms," the Associated Press reported. The issues listed include anxiety, depression, and body dysmorphia.
"[TikTok] is profiting off the fact that it's addicting young people to its platform," Schwalb said.
In response, TikTok spokesman Alex Haurek said the company strongly disagrees with the lawsuits' claims, which he called "inaccurate and misleading."
"We're proud of and remain deeply committed to the work we've done to protect teens and we will continue to update and improve our product," Haurek said.
He added, "We've endeavored to work with the attorneys general for over two years, and it is incredibly disappointing they have taken this step rather than work with us on constructive solutions to industry-wide challenges."
TikTok does not allow children under 13 to sign up and restricts some content for those under 18.
The lawsuits call for TikTok to stop using the aforementioned features and also for the company to pay monetary fines for its alleged illegal and damaging practices.
At the same time, TikTok faces a U.S. ban if parent company ByteDance does not sell the company by mid-January 2025, in accordance with federal laws. The company is challenging the ruling in a Washington appeals court.
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Why TikTok is a serious national security threat
President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump may have conducted their presidencies quite differently, but they shared the same skepticism of TikTok.
TikTok, the widely used social media platform owned by Chinese company ByteDance, has received mounting criticism in recent years from American public officials for its connections with the Communist Party of China.
President Trump signed an executive order to force TikTok to separate from ByteDance. The move was ultimately blocked by a U.S. federal judge in 2020. But this year, President Biden signed a “TikTok Ban Bill,” which requires ByteDance to sell TikTok to an American company or face expulsion from U.S. app stores.
Mike Solana, founder of Pirate Wires and chief marketing officer at Founders Fund, joined James Poulos to share why he thinks TikTok poses a serious national security threat:
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Despite spending no more than 10 minutes on TikTok a day, Solana said he grew concerned with a potent, recurring feature on the app. No matter what, it served him an ad displaying an image of an impoverished Gaza. "It comes back relentlessly, the exact same ad, every single day. You're forced to look at it.” Who determines which images are selected to bombard American viewers? “I think that's something that our government should care about," Solana said.
Social media changes the way people think, he continued. “It shapes your sense of what is the perspective you're supposed to have,” much as advertising forces you to “look around subconsciously for cues on what to believe. ... The more people who are doing something, the more you feel that's what you should do and/or how you should feel even if you are fiercely independent.”
To hear more of what Mike Solana had to say about AI, social media, Bitcoin, and more, watch the full episode of "Zero Hour" with James Poulos.
America was convinced tech would complete our mastery of the world. Instead, we got catastrophe — constant crises from politics and the economy down to the spiritual fiber of our being. Time’s up for the era we grew up in. How do we pick ourselves up and begin again? To find out, visionary author and media theorist James Poulos cracks open the minds — and hearts — of today’s top figures in politics, tech, ideas, and culture on "Zero Hour" on BlazeTV.
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