[slibhb]

> Not true. Some, like myself, love the idea of the shining city on the hill, although we often find the behavior of the actual city less than shining.

Your first sentence says "not true". Your second sentence says "true".

Your dislike of the current US regime/behavior causes you to forcast the decline of US influence. I'm not saying you should like current US behavior, just that there isn't good evidence for any decline.

These things are hard to predict. The most likely situation is not decline: it is continuity, where the US retains its global influence for the time being.

[adamc]

Ignores the totally exceptional nature of some of the US changes/instabilities of this administration. I say "not true" because that is my read of where things are going, regardless of preferences.

[peder]

Yep, and nobody ever goes on these types of threads and says the EU is collapsing, even though there's demonstrable evidence that things are not going great for the EU (the UK left, there is virtually zero economic dynamism or tech investment, Russia has seized 1/3 of Ukraine who was trying to join the EU, and the continent has no money, no navies and terrible demographics to compete globally in the next century). People gloss over issues about the EU because it aligns more closely with their political beliefs.