'America in Decline' Narrative Finally in Decline?

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"the American Empire is over and the descent is going to be horrifying" -- Chris Hedges.

the sustainability of the global imperial venture is in serious decline.  see Latin America in the 2000s and the last few years in the Middle East.  it is not in the American character to shift to cooperation in the face of waning ability to dominate, so fully expect an escalation of US-perpetrated violence likely culminating in a global holocaust in one form of another.

it is likely the 'post-civilizational' 'historians', if we can imagine such a thing, will look back at our present time as already part of an era that rendered the civilization-experiment as we know it, doomed.

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Intense psychological problems result in ideologies that prophesize "the end of the world as we know it" to minimize the cognitive dissonance between said problems and the relatively tranquil/happy/prosperous society we live in.

nonsense.  everything may appear tranquil from our post in the West, but vast swaths of the World live in squalor and violence.  this is not mere coincidence: we in the West live in relative tranquility precisely because much of the world lives in squalor and violence.  such a situation can't last for long on the evolutionary-clock.


p.s. psychological illness is a social construction.

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going from there, there is a dissonance between labeling American society as 'happy' and the sheer volume and antidepressants and psychiatric drugs that are consumed every year.  owning an iPad -- even if one does not do so via financing at Visa's or AmEx's usurious rates -- is not equal or reducible to happiness.