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First off I think it's good that the author distinguishes between 'greatness' and subjective preference but I think the entire analysis is overly quantitative. It's a very long piece so I'll just take one example, the power and influence across the world: >"One may of course argue that this situation is changing, albeit slowly, but at the moment the contrast is startling: the sphere of Russian influence does quite reach Kyiv (about 150 miles from the Russian border) and the sphere of Chinese influence does not quite reach Taipei (about the same distance, but over water), but American influence evidently reaches both despite the former being 4,300 miles and the latter 6,500 miles away from American shores." While that is true one can't talk about influence without talking about depth and quality. Russia and China have more limited reach, but the countries where in particular Russia has had an influence, Russian culture deeply permeates. One only needs to visit Kazakhstan to see the influence from its very system of politics at the top and well into the private homes. US influence around the world is wide but often times quite shallow. It's mirrored in military disappointments despite overwhelming power. Vietnam, Afghanistan recently, and so on. Same in the sphere of culture. Despite the overwhelming dominance of the US and the UK as well and, the Chinese haven't all become American, as people are noticing now, despite what they thought in the 90s. Even South America diverges pretty widely from the US compared to say, Russia and its direct periphery. And I think this is to an extent true within the US as well. The author rightfully points out the dominance of US education in sheer numbers, but the US also seems to have unique troubles to translate this into social tools. For all the high quality of top tier American education and money, it hasn't necessarily created exceptional outcomes broadly, even compared to much poorer nations. There's a thinness to American exceptionalism that is often masked by the focus on numbers and size. While the country is exceptionally rich, the life expectancy is not exceptionally high, but lower than in Cuba. And I think articles like this which pretend to be objective do intentionally wave that aside. |