United States builds their identity through their enemy. It started in WWII and worked so good that they almost immediately adopted communists as their new enem

United States builds their identity through their enemy. It started in WWII and worked so good that they almost immediately adopted communists as their new enemy. When Soviet Union eventually surpisingly collapsed despite US constantly proping them up as credible enemy, they started losing identity. Fortunately, accidentally seeded terrorist groups cropped up and did significant enough damage. US eagerly elevated them to the position of the new main enemy providing all the necessary PR. Even the name Al Qaeda was pretty much invented by US trying to figure out who hit them. Before US started using this name it was a name of random training camp. As nice and safe the terrorists were as an enemy, everybody knew that it won't last long. It just wasn't convincing and terrorists, apart from few events, were pretty much worthless. So US naturally picked next solid enemy, China for their next hopefully long and prosperous cold war. Having an enemy is super important for US politics, their industry and social structure. It gives them excuses for protectionism. It gives them ability to have an alternative to increasingly impoverished civilian customers when it comes to stimulating innovation and industrial growth. It allowes them to give jobs to people that in purely civilian economy wouls just raise unemployment and unrest. All the culture of US is soaked in hero/villain dynamics that consolidates society and prevents from asking too many questions in the presence of a villain. The problem now is that US is starting to drop the ball. World caught up with their advantage of being the only major economy not damaged by WWII. Unfortunately the current US enemy is on more capable side. So this time, maybe for the first time, the US is in the real danger. Maybe isolationist tendencies of Trump and his fans are not such a bad thing. Maybe US should go back to pre-wwii state. Times when US could credibly pretend they are on top of things, not just bit ahead of the pack, are pretty much over.