I surely think a lot of popular culture is stupid/a waste of time, but as long as I (and others) have the freedom to freely chose more "fruitful" things to do with our time - then what's the big deal?
Do you? All it takes is social and cultural ostracism? That seems a bit expensive for something that should be very cheap if not freely encouraged.
Do you have the freedom to choose more fruitful housing architecture, or just a slightly different shade of beige? Can you marry whomever you please in any state you like? Can you teach your children your religion, or none at all, or will state sponsored schools tell them some creation myths are more equal that others? If there's one core value of all conformists, its trying to legislate their conformity, which is in direct opposition to your supposed freedom.
This is aside from PR issues, the embrace extend extinguish model of civil liberties. We'll kill brown people and take their oil because they hate our freedumbs. Whoops, that was an epic fail. Well guess we don't need this "freedom" thing anymore. No problemo, "Survivor" is on tonight so its all good.
You have less freedom than you think. Timesinks are addictive. We've all clicked on a link-bait headline, even though we knew it would waste our time, because the text was so enticing. And most can remember playing a boring video game longer than they wanted because they were distracted by some manipulative aspect of the game (need another level / badge / chicken on my farm). It's gotten so bad, people regularly refer to MMORPGS as "skinner-boxes."
With effort, and focus, we all can give up today's addictive timesinks. But when we're assaulted by the timesinks on an hourly basis, it's not as easy as you think.
Should the government ban stupid stuff in order to force people into "more satisfying pleasures" though a "moral ecology" that discourages addictive/pointless things?
The problem is that it reduces the capability of the population as a whole to make informed political decisions. The more distracted we are by superficial things, the less outrage we might express over abuses of power.
In other words, if more than half of our country buys into pure hedonism over critical thought, then there's ample room for democracy to fail.
