However, reasons for my beliefs are not due to a lack of knowledge of the world outside the U.S. Empires die eventually and change happens. The major power and structural problems in the U.S. are not sustainable and will eventually have to change. Whether that change comes peacefully or violently I can’t say.
One thing I wonder is, who steps up? China, for sure, though it's grappling with population decline as an existential crisis. The EU? The EU has never 'stepped up' for anything. The US sat patiently by and tried to let Europe deal with Milosevich. That utterly failed. The EU was also almost ripped apart by the greek debt crisis, so it too is having real issues.
A post US hegimon world is going to be a very different world, and not necessarily a better one.
What do you mean? NATO bombed the shit out of what became Serbia, they withdrew from Kosovo and he was arrested two years later...
Accusations of the US "in decline" were happening back in the 60's and 70's when things were much worse than they are now, like order of magnitude worse.
As I said, navel gazing and lack of perspective tend to dominate news in coverage of the US.
As I said, I can give reasons for my beliefs and those reasons are not due to ignorance.
The only information source about the US is based on comments on social media?
No wonder your view of the US is so pessimistic.
Unsurprisingly, I was a lot more informed and a _lot_ better at arguing than they were, so it was pretty trivial to completely demolish their points quickly enough that it didn't turn into "an argument", with the attendant social friction of disagreements that drag on.
I no longer spend much time around women in their early 20s, so I'm spared these extremes of ignorance, but I still occasionally come across the same tendency occasionally, albeit with a lot more maturity. The US is still something close to a global hegemon, so it's a target for hyperbolic projection by every simpleton in the world that wants to sound educated on geopolitics. Note that this also includes the best-country-in-the-world jingoists that can't recognize America's exceptional positive qualities without violently dismissing its exceptional negative qualities.
I have an uncle who's convinced that literally every conflict in the Middle East is entirely the US's fault, entirely ignoring a region that's been beset by conflict for millennia, as well as the modern borders drawn in crayon by the British on their way out. The best strategy, on HN and in real life, is to nod & smile & understand that these people have no hope of and no interest in understanding reality.
If you spend time outside the US, you'd realize the problems the US deal with are pretty similar to the problems other countries deal with.
But Americans with little knowledge of the world outside the US catastrophize what's going on the in the US - "the Republic is falling!", "it's never been this bad!", "Americans are so ignorant!" and "nobody has ever had this problem, ever!".