Not the person you’re responding to, but it’s hard as an American to see our country as decadent. The majority of us poors are barely making it paycheck to paycheck and don’t experience anything you might call decadent. For the record I agree with you that on the world stage decadence is a valid adjective for the state of the US, but I don’t know that I’d have that perspective if I never lived outside of the US and never got to see it from the outside looking in