My goodness! Look around you.
Have you noticed how some people have such big heads that they think they know everything and are much better than anyone else, whereas they really lack basic common sense?
The United States of America is much like this and it is such a shame because the nation has the power to be the best in the world if it would simply tolerate other opinions and admit that it is NOT the best of anything.
One problem is that despite the low value of the dollar, many individuals in the USA are wealthy enough that they lack meaningful objectives. They are bored. They fill their time in following any stupid meaningless fad that takes their fancy without measuring what they do against the realities of this world.
Take the woman who started PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals), for example, and the mindless people who have followed her lead as if her message was a religion. She had time on her hands and she turned her love of animals into a senseless crusade that put animals ahead of mankind. She opposes even the milking of cows let alone eating beef or using laboratory rats to provide medical information for the benefit of the human species.
The facts are that a hierarchy of species inhabits this world and the hierarchy is arranged in levels of dominance and utility. Man' has achieved a position at the top of the mammal chain and has the right to use other mammals for food, for recreation, for transport and/or for research. When another animal achieves dominance they may have equal rights over man but that hasn't yet happened.
Another example: take those environmental activists who follow false prophets like Al Gore and his Greenpeace managers. They actually fervently believe, without of course studying the issue, than the human population of this world has something to do with the current global warming trend resulting from solar periodicity. It has become their religion to such an extent that they believe that if they recycle a Coke plastic bottle they are helping to save the planet.
We have far too many people in our population who have nothing better to do than to interfere with other people's lives. They really have nothing better to do.
Other nations have larger problems to solve than the latest solar fad. China has an immense population (five times ours) to care for. It principally needs power but it also needs connectivity (an electrical grid), national transport, food supply lines, communications, manufacturing and internal trade.
Yet, China, with all these needs is destined to exceed the United States in global power within a couple of decades. The reason is that they are focused on real priorities while this country fiddles with non-issues like man's effect on global warming while Rome (Washington) burns.
California, for example, is the United States in extremis. The State is involved in so many non-issues like ozone pollution, the use of water, illegal immigrants, homosexual unions, electric cars and the like, while they buy water from Canada, proliferate swimming pools, buy nuclear generated electricity from neighboring states, hire nannies and gardeners on street corners, and refuse rational energy policies. It is the epitome of the behavior that led to the decline of Rome.
California is the lunatic fringe of our country but the rest of the United States is not far behind.