I liked the article so much I'm not really going to talk about it. Go read it, it is worth it. But one thing they say is that the US "appear weaker than ever" a

I liked the article so much I'm not really going to talk about it. Go read it, it is worth it. But one thing they say is that the US "appear weaker than ever" and that is underanalysing how the US's success over the last century was, in some sense, forced upon them. The main European powers neutered themselves through what looked a lot like a big civil war. This also dealt a serious blow to Russia, who then finished the job by spending decades trying to make Communism work. Japan trashed China, then China neutered itself through a big civil war, then finished the job with decades of trying to make Communism work. India was left in an odd spot after British colonialism, but they seem to have tried socialism as their major strategy and that didn't bring them up to a high living standard. Africa never got themselves organised (the Europeans may have been involved in that). The Middle East was in disarray after the Europeans had dismantled them in WWI and never got organised. So by virtue of being democratic enough that they didn't melt down, the US was left standing ascendant with a horrified expression as they tried to figure out why everyone else kept destroying their own infrastructure. "Won't someone please think of the buildings??", asked wealthy US capitalists. Really they were a bit proactive through all this, but lunatic foreign ideologies were much more of a driver than US policies. It is hard to convince large groups of humans to do sane things.