Expected American Decline and the False Dawn

An incandescent light bulb, almost always, burns its brightest just before it fails completely and loses its all of original purpose by, thus, becoming just junk.   So many people, these days, are predicting the decline of America such that what remains more interesting is the opposite view, meaning those who see a great future ahead. 

Only if they can be reasonably refuted can there be established the basic validity of the contention that, as with the destruction of the Roman Empire, the USA has seen better days and, moreover, the future will witness its nadir as a society, culture, and, especially, a civilization.

American Exceptionalism Thesis Explored

The common thread of the pro-progress view is that the predictors of degradation and destruction have been around for a rather long time, even dating back to the colonial era.   This misses, quite deliberately it is suspected, the entire main point of those who contend for decline.   Mere subjectivistic opinions, of course, come and go with the flow of history, so, yes, that is not any great news.   

Only if one were to be a holder of the “American exceptionalism” thesis could it be said that this nation is always somehow exempt from the “laws” of history.  Now, there are, in fact, no true or such supposed laws that exist.

What is more prosaically meant is that all nations, especially as empires, go through mostly predictable  phases, some phases, for most nations and empires, are usually terminal in nature.   It is as easy as saying that what goes up must come down, as it is to claim that fundamental developmental laws, poetically speaking, govern the “lives” of nations.   Of course, again, nations do not literally have lives as such.  

The heuristic point, which ought to be well understood in historical context, as to its proper content, refers to such matters as how there tend to be empirically-based limits to the expansionary powers of countries, especially when they pursue imperialistic ambitions by becoming world-class powers.

There are traditional, aggressive warlike states seeking conquest, and nontraditional, meaning only economically, socially and/or culturally expansionary, powers that have or will politically exist in the world.  

America is of the latter variety, but it exists as a true imperium nonetheless, due to the scope of its domination of the world, though not for the physical conquest, meaning the permanent occupation and rulership, of any nations as a true conquering power; it is not, therefore, a traditional imperial entity seeking the typical or necessary enslavement of peoples for the aggrandizement of the mother country.