Well I can tell you 15 years ago Giuliani would have been up there with a sledgehammer himself taking it down, holding a press conference, and vowing the harshest consequences possible once the perpetrators were tracked down. By that scale can we say that the state of democracy in the US is actually greatly advanced?
I agree. The response depends on who is in charge. Maybe in a place like Berkeley, birthplace of the free speech movement, they might consider keeping the statue there.
Don't worry too much, U.S. couldn't become China in one day just like you couldn't build Rome in a day.
I notice this little detail in the Tiananmen Square protest in 1989, five years after 1984. After the students build the parts of the statute named Goddess of Democracy, the state security bureau declared that any truck drivers helping them would lose their license.[0] At first this amused me a little bit, seeing how pathetic the security bureau was, but soon I feel so frustrated and disappointed be cause it hasn't been any better about politics after 26 years. Of course they have learned how to frame citizen under the coat of "Rule by law". Government without its chain is just like the Smaug.