Satire can make clear political points, however, as does Swift's "A Modest Proposal." I think we can take seriously _Team America_'s "message" as being something along the lines of: The world's a violent mess, and somebody's got to help clean it up, even if it's a bunch of over the top cowboys.

Global terrorists and their nation-state allies get no sympathy; they're outright evil. Yet, the movie also mocks those who attempt to respond to global terrorism: Hollywood peaceniks get it for their belief that dialogue can stop violent madmen. The film codes them not only as self-important and naive, but also anti-American. They sympathize with the enemy, even to the point of Michael Moore attempting to blow up Team America's HQ (housed in Mount Rushmore). The US as World Police, and the traditional-minded patriots (heterosexual, macho, red white and blue blooded, country-Americana ballad singing, flag waving, working class) who conventionally support that view, get it too -- especially through how Team America itself is portrayed.

Perhaps the most muddying turn in reading the target of the film's satire is that Team America is indicted for its gung-ho John Waynesque Chuck Norrisism. Action movies are self-consciously hyperbolized to this end (not to mention mocked by the very fact that the whole is done in exaggerated, silly puppetry). The Team destroys the national monuments of other nations and leaves their citizens agape at their apparent ignorance of the harm they've done. The audience is left with the sense that, in laying waste around them, Team America believes it's saved the day without any important collateral costs.

So, it's no coincidence that heterosexual tropes of male machismo are also undercut (Gary _Johnson_ has a ridiculous story of childhood trauma that provides the basis for his method acting, as does another male team member for his hatred of actors); he fellates _Spotswood_ in order to prove his team loyalty). Yet, that hardly balances out the homosexual bashing of S.A.G. being revised to F.A.G., the organization being used to figure a weak, effeminate (that is, liberal, privileged) position on a matter (dealing with global bullies) that needs (according to Parker and Stone) a more traditionally masculine response.

The movie isn't, then, a rejection of US world policing. It's an acknowledgement that, as world police, the US commits acts of destruction and that those who don't care more about that (the gung-ho patriots), in supporting US world policing, are guilty of moral blindness / ignorance. US world policing is presented as a destructive option, but the only one that can ultimately, adequately address global terrorism.