"Is America trying to win a culture victory?"

In the civilization games, one of the options to win is to assimilate other nations into submission through overwhelming cultural export. The game lampshades that it's primarily american culture, with one of the AI leaders taunts being "Our people are buying your blue jeans and listening to your pop music... I worry the rest of the world will fall under the influence of your culture."

I think it could be interesting to look at how pervasive American culture has become globally, touching upon cargo cults and the pervasiveness of big brands, then ask whether that has diminished in recent years as peoples sensibilities have changed and the global perception of America has shifted post war -- or is it still growing better than ever? Finally, what would be the end state of all this, has the internet made it more difficult for America to win a complete takeover or has it made it easier for other cultures to fight back, what would a victory or a defeat look like?

I recently read Larry Niven's Ringworld and one of the things that struck me was how instant global teleportation had blended cultures together into one mono-culture, leaving there to be little variation with each hub city across the world having the exact same stores and selling the exact same products. With how fast shipping, travel and communication are now I think he was pretty spot on, though it still feels like America is dominating other cultures contributions to this.