And my more thinky, less piratical (though still, alas, sleepy) thing to say is that I get kind of horrified by the fragility of national identity. It's so annoying when people say, 'oh, I don't really feel like I have a culture/national identity' because that's such a luxury, for your identity to be so strong it's invisible to you. And yeah, I feel that it does sort of come down to product -- what people consume, what you're able to export of yourself, and what other people choose to pick up and export -- and the 'saleable' side of a culture can start to alter the cultural identity of the people within.

Uh. I need to sleep. Really, really sleep. But what you said got in my head a bit. Oh dear, oh well.