Overall the strategy which Western media is operating in calling out every other country& #39;s parallel sins -- homophobia, misogyny, racism, xenophobia -- is to say that any challenge to American hegemony must take place in a purely material dimension. No moral challenge is valid.

Meaning, America& #39;s liberal elite are ready to relinquish the illusion that we are a morally exceptional place. They& #39;re content now to engage in a kind of moral MAD -- everyone is guilty of everything -- exception now is that America remains the most able and willing to change.

Thus, American decline is global decline, because America will be usurped by a rival who is just as morally bankrupt, but because it is even more ambitious and power hungry, it won& #39;t even be ready to accept any criticism as valid, the way America elites do.

Being lured into this framing of the issue is very beneficial to American hegemony, because it& #39;s erasing the entire history of American settler colonialism, slavery, and imperialism, and replacing it with a simple and satisfying story of moral equivalency.