For more on this, I recommend Sir John Glubb's "The Fate of Empires". The short version is that every great nation has had a lifespan of approximately 250 years (or possibly 10 generations) from birth through rise and fall to death. This has happened to every nation that defined the times it lived in, minus those that got stomped on in the early stages and the USSR, sometimes multiple times (which, incidentally, is why blaming everything on JOOZ is an insufficient answer). The whitepill is that what comes after does not necessarily have to be worse, rebirths have happened, so even if this is the death of America (which turned 244 this year), there may be a new one EVOLVED BUT UNTAMED! WHERE EVERY MAN IS FREE TO THINK, TO ACT, FOR HIMSELF! on the horizon.