Western culture, and the US in particular, didn't used to be this degenerate and open about being degenerate. Yes, we have always had some kind of smut: stag flicks, porno mags, bawdy houses, blue books, art, etc. going back as far as you can think. The difference is people were discrete about it if they engaged with it. It wasn't celebrated. It wasn't made part of one's identity. It wasn't discussed in polite company. You kept it to yourself, because to be open about it meant becoming a social pariah.
Then over the past 80 years or so came the push to "break social norms" and destroy our cultural values, and it was done intentionally to erode at the very fabric of our culture. The push for more and more extreme examples of degeneracy, from acceptance of faggotry (Love is love! They aren't hurting you!), to pride parades, to pornographic materials in public schools, to accepting "polyamory", to children mutilating their genitals, to acceptance of pedophilia and zoophilia. Not to mention other things that used to be seen as unacceptable in a cultured society, like aborting a million babies or more every year, over half of marriages ending up in divorce, rampant single motherhood with children all from different fathers, throngs of homeless losers in every city shambling around like a horde of zombies instead of being chased out to the county line, criminals being treated like victims and victims being treated like criminals, the normalization of narcotics use...and it all happened because people gave up enforcing cultural/social standards. People became tolerant of what should never have been tolerated. "Eh, I don't care either way. It doesn't impact my life, so why should I care? It doesn't hurt me and it's not hurting you, so just look the other way. Who are we to tell them how they should live?" and other lazy, dismissive, weasely excuses to chip away at the social contract more and more to allow this cultural rot take hold and infect us, all to kill off Western culture entirely.
Edit: to sum up, yes, every culture has had it's smut and kinks going back to the dawn of man. But we've gone away from knowing when the appropriate time and place were for it and knowing to keep it to ourselves because it wasn't socially appropriate to be open about, to having the social contract chipped away at to the point where now seemingly nothing is off limits, including the sexualization of children. It's sick, it's wrong, and it's uncivilized.
