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I wonder why, precisely, this fills me with such dread. It& #39;s the natural order of things for nations and empires to rise and decline. It makes no more sense to protest than to argue against death. https://twitter.com/ClaireBerlinski/status/1277184913893134336">https://twitter.com/ClaireBer...
In fact, I wonder if my outrage at American decline is just that--a protest against death. Perhaps we want our countries to be immortal precisely because we aren& #39;t.
One part of me thinks, "No, you& #39;re outraged because an American-led order would be more pacific, benevolent, and enlightened than the chaos and war that inevitably ensues when an empire collapses--and God help us all, in the nuclear age. It& #39;s logical."
But another part of me knows that I& #39;m taking this *really* personally. Too personally. All major emotions are personal. I& #39;m outraged because the United States is losing power in a grotesque, humiliating way--a narcissistic wound of the first order.
And outraged because the United States and I are, if not the same thing, too close to disentwine.
Anyway. There& #39;s a large literature connecting "humiliating loss" to the onset of major depression and generalized anxiety. See, e.g., https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/fullarticle/207719.">https://jamanetwork.com/journals/...
Anyway. There& #39;s a large literature connecting "humiliating loss" to the onset of major depression and generalized anxiety. See, e.g., https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/fullarticle/207719.">https://jamanetwork.com/journals/...
If you& #39;re an American who isn& #39;t feeling a massive sense of humiliating loss, you& #39;re *really* not paying attention. For your mental health, don& #39;t. But if you& #39;re feeling depressed and anxious, consider that idea: We& #39;ve experienced an almost primal humiliating loss.
It doesn& #39;t get more humiliating, for an American, than "realizing you& #39;ve become yet another third-world basket case country that& #39;s not even very powerful anymore."
The idea that we& #39;re the greatest empire ever to bestride the globe--and a *good* one, too (or at least, a hell of a lot better than the alternatives)--is baked deep into our collective and individual sense of ourselves. We& #39;re not that, anymore.
We& #39;re not even good at self-government anymore. We don& #39;t seem to be doing so well at freely exercising our God-given rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The rest of the world looks at us in horror and pity.
I swallowed the America Kool-Aid. I believed all of it. I still do. I don& #39;t think I& #39;m the only one left, but "people who believe America was the greatest political experiment in human history" are obviously a minority now. Most of my fellow citizens have gone nuts.
We grieve losses, but when these losses are humiliating, we become depressed and anxious. That& #39;s something different. This is, for 320 million Americans, one of the most humiliating and cataclysmic losses imaginable--the idea of an exceptional America that leads the world, gone.
