Such shorts reinforce stereotypes concerning Muslims and Middle Easterners, depicting them as lazy, hedonistic, pleasure-seeking, easily angered, and indiscriminately and irrationally violent. Punishments for various offenses are depicted as too severe, Draconian in favoring capital punishment for the most minor of offenses. "Death is the default punishment" is a concept used to reinforce such stereotypes. The G.I. loan that financed the building of the caliph's palace fits another stereotype: that of Muslim men deriving their power from the support of the Western world. These shorts tend to make no distinctions among Arabs, Muslims, and Persians, terms which in popular culture tend to be depicted as "interchangeable".