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Agreed. We've been in much much worse positions in the past. We will fix ourselves and _hopefully_ learn from our mistakes.

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It will take generations, if it's even possible, for the US to recover its standing in the eyes of the world, and that standing was the core of our power.

"Fixing ourselves" is critical, but just the first step. There's a huge amount of additional work after that.

The US never became the world's superpower because it did anything "moral" or had "character" or anything remotely like that. The US became the world's superpower because Europe and Japan decided to do WW2 and destroy everything, while committing atrocity after atrocity after atrocity.

It was never anything about the US per se that made it a superpower. It was to a much greater extent incredible moral, economic and military failings on the part of everyone else. From Albania to Zimbabwe, Morocco to China.

The US lost superpower status and boom. There are big shooting wars again. In Europe. In Asia. I was kind of hoping it to take at least a decade or two after the US lost control. Then again, maybe it has.

> The US never became the world's superpower because it did anything "moral" or had "character" or anything remotely like that.

I never asserted, nor do I believe, that it did.

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