Quote Originally Posted by ICantSpellDawg View Post
Fine, so it is all perspective and we actually do not have any insurmountable problems as a nation. I just hope that the pessimism lasts for a few more months, since the U.S. is in such great shape and all and will probably never be in decline, so no real risk. If we can win the narrative in an election year that the country is going to hell in a hand-basket, we win. The administration will be serving up alot of red meat for the voters, it is already almost palpable, so if we just deny him every opportunity at success and it works, we will do well. I personally believe that the Congress serves more of a purpose at this stage in our national development in opposing as many Federal initiatives as possible anyway, so why not hyper-target the ones that the President puts out there which are almost sure to be wrongheaded. If a problem really is big enough, absolute Federal failure to resolve it may cause individuals and States to give it a shot instead of just fawning over a (perceived only, of course) failed Presidency.


Decline, as I said, is discursive and by definition it is relative. You are not improving, nor declining, simply changing. Opinions on if this is for the better or for the worse are just that - opinions. My point is not whether those things are good or bad, and you seem to have misunderstood that. my point is that the whole notion of decline (as an historiographical reading of the present relative to the past) is a vaunted idea that has no firm basis in reality. To "read" all of a nation's woes against a narrative of decline is to imbue them with a power that they do not have. We can argue individual policies all we like, but the moment they are emploted against a narrative of decline, then the debate over policy will instead become a debate over the direction of the narrative - a debate that simply deepens the dichotomy between those who think the nation is in decline and those who think that it is not.