An Inflection Point in the Life of America

Today, we all realized America is no longer the world's super power.

Perhaps it’s my age.

When I was young, major world events led me to ponder, how will this change the trajectory of my life?

But, tonight I found myself asking, what does this mean for the life I’ve lived?

Of the former moments, I count the US Olympic hockey team defeating the Soviet Union at Lake Placid in 1980, Ronald Reagan’s election the same year, Reagan’s speech at the Brandenburg Gate, the destruction of the Berlin Wall, and 9/11.

Of the latter, I have only one such moment: Tucker Carlson’s interview with Vladimir Putin juxtaposed with Joe Biden being declared mentally unfit to stand trial before he called a press conference to announce that Mexico shares a border with Gaza.

What I am asking myself—what we all should be asking ourselves—is how much time does our country has left? How long before it all collapses? How poor will I be when I die?

Vladimir Putin, over the course of two uninterrupted hours of conversation with the Tucker Carlson, delivered a detailed history of Russia from inception in 800-something AD to present, accurately identified the GDPs of at least a dozen countries and the aggregated GDP for BRICs and G7 countries across the past 15 years, while carefully avoided naming names or disclosing confidentialities and remaining cordial and polite when pressed to release a political hostage.

Joe Biden, on the other hand, attempted to blunt Putin’s interview by imposing a press conference at the last minute to coincide with the original airing of Putin’s interview. Biden sounded like an actor in a training film for healthcare workers on identifying dementia. Biden literally claimed he pressured Mexico’s president into opening its border with Gaza.

The Biden presser came just hours after his own DOJ announced it would not prosecute him for numerous felonies he committed as Vice President because he is mentally unfit to stand trial. The special prosecutor reported that Biden, in interviews, did not remember he had been Vice President of the United States. Here’s a snippet from the special prosecutor’s report:

The man described in that report is our Commander in Chief and Leader of the Free World.

How can one avoid the conclusion that free world is insane?

What rattled me tonight was not the realization that Putin is brilliant (if evil) or that Biden is corrupt and mentally incompetent. Every thinking person already knew that. Rather, I realized that the contrast in leaders indicates a great disparity in the countries they represent. Specifically, countries that submit to wildly incapable leaders who hate their own people never recover. Look at the western Roman Empire in the 5th century for examples. Countries recover from corrupt leaders, weak leaders, and stupid leaders. We survived Buchanan and Carter, after all. But those examples bore only one disqualifying trait, not all three. It takes only one corrupt, weak, and stupid leader to crash the whole house of cards. And we managed to put into the White House.

I was once proud that Americans chose their leaders, and I often reminded conservative friends that “God always gives us the president we deserve at the time.” I made this assertion many times during the Clinton administration, explaining that the end of the Cold War meant that we could survive a playboy president who wasn’t all that interested in running the country. (After 1994, Clinton pretty much outsourced his job to Newt Gingrich.) I cited examples of Reagan, Kennedy, Coolidge, Lincoln, Jefferson, and Washington as leaders for times when we needed change agents, and Bush (then there was only one), Eisenhower, and Grant as examples of the need for a president more laid back. (Not perfect examples, but somewhat fitting.)

That argument now comes back to haunt my memory. What does it mean that this career Washington criminal with Alzheimer’s is our president? So what if he was installed by fraud? As a nation, as a people, we have done nothing to correct that crime. As conservatives, we returned to Washington feckless, effeminate Republican “heroes” who placate us with pointless and expensive hearings while making every problem worse.

In normal cycles of history, the generation that initiated the downfall—in this case, Baby Boomers—would have been replaced by the next generation—now called Gen X—by this point, but something’s amiss in the generational cycle. The Boomers refuse to yield, and the Xers are uncharacteristically too polite to kick their asses out. Meanwhile, the following “Hero” generation—in this cycle, the Millennials—produced only a few Iraq and Afghanistan veterans to point to as examples of sacrifice for the common good. Most of the currently living Hero generation define sacrifice as bypassing their daily Starbuck’s concoction because they slept too late. And the generation behind them doesn’t have a job to be late to.

And that explains why Joe Biden is exactly the president we deserve.

But it also points to a grim future, especially in light of what we just saw in stark relief between Russian President Putin and US President Biden. While Biden frequently boasts of both personal and national greatness that never existed (at least as Biden colors them), Putin was remarkably honest and humble about Russian history and its place in the world. Putin provided perspective by describing Russia as a nation of 150 million compared to China’s 1.5 billion. Tucker did not even ask him to state Russia’s economic position, but Putin volunteered it— fifth, behind China, the US, Germany, and Japan. Rather than embarrassment, Putin was proud his motherland is in fifth place. Would Joe Biden ever admit he or the US was fifth in anything?

Which leads me to my opening point: what has my life meant?

I was a Cold Warrior—literally. I sailed nuclear submarines from 1985 through the collapse of the Soviet Union and beyond. I returned from patrol the day Desert Storm kicked off. (I got the “CNN medal,” as we called it, for watching the war on TV.) I was an America First patriot from grade school. My uncle bought me a subscription to National Review for my 8th grade graduation—not to form me or mold me, but because THAT’S ALL I WANTED. I slept with a picture of William F. Buckley over my bed, for crying out loud!

So, I have to ask, “how the hell could a country so great fall so far and so fast in just one lifetime?” And the contemplation of that question must at least allow for the grim possibility that I was wrong, at least in degree, all along. I must consider that, perhaps, my opinion of this country was too high, that its present lowly state seems so unsurprising to so many because it was never the country I remember from my youth. Joe Biden, after all, became a US Senator when I was in 4th grade. If anything, he should have been president much sooner.

I console myself, a bit, by remembering that Biden wanted to be president in 1988. He was laughed out of the primary by his own Democrat Party due to numerous documented lies, graft, and plagiarism. He was mocked by comedians, politicians, and news anchors, including Dan Rather, Peter Jennings, and Sam Donaldson. His humiliation should have driven him from public life altogether, but being too ignorant to feel shame, he, instead became chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Quite an achievement for a guy who cheated his way through law school.

I can’t possibly conclude this contemplation without a night’s sleep and some prayerful reading and reflection. But I am certain of one thing: the 21st century will not be the second American Century. Rather, the 21st century will witness a massive realignment of geopolitical power and influence such as the world has not seen since the decline of the British Empire.

And if Putin is right, our fall will be much faster than historical examples would indicate.