What's frustrating is that the US has so many good things going for it that it, but it can't really improve as a country the way it is, it can only go downwards. They don't have enough people with the mindset of doing things for the common good.It's interesting you say that about the "empire in decline"... I have said that for about 10 years. What's worse is that their empire is not going gracefully into that good night like the British Empire did... they are going kicking and screaming like the Roman Empire did, and we all know what happened there (they took the entire European, Near Eastern, and North African worlds with them along with several other empires [Garamantes, Parthia, etc]). With our knowledge of history, this American collapse can be avoided, but likely won't be, especially due to widespread emergence of extremist social media and those flames being stoked by Russian and Chinese interests trying to destabilize American society.
The thing that scares me most is this whole decided media situation, and even worse, the emerging media that amounts to basically propaganda (One America, Newsmaxx, etc..). It's one thing to have a segment of the population that is ant-govt and believing conspiracies, etc.. but it's another thing to have millions upon millions who do. It scares the heck out of me, and makes me thing things are going tom go south for those guys. It also worries me about us having the same issue up here at some point. I look at the ant-mask rally yesterday and wonder how many of those were influenced by American media and Trump.