The US has done and still does plenty of censoring. The land of Playboy and Hustler goes looney every time there's a story about sex or nudity, especially when

The US has done and still does plenty of censoring. The land of Playboy and Hustler goes looney every time there's a story about sex or nudity, especially when teenagers are involved. Around the same time period that American culture dominated the world, the FCC had a heavy hand in broadcast content with the implicit intention of aligning said content to socially desirable goals. That's only changed slightly over the past decade and, coincidentally, just as streaming was taking off. I agree with you that the US doesn't need China's help to destroy itself. For that matter, it doesn't need anyone's help. However, "unfettered consumption" has nothing to do with it. Japan, Korea, and, until recently, Hong Kong are the posterchildren for unfettered consumption and yet the former two still have a stable societies the respects tradition and civility in debilitating excess. All three of these societies invest in education to a point of creating suicide-inducing hyper-competitiveness in their students. Ultimately, one's values belong to oneself. The best thing about the US is that one is allowed to choose his values and is not obligated to follow the herd. Respect is a conscious decision and neither an edict handed down from high society nor a dictate delivered from the grave.