Reply #52: The only greatness of the USA was in it's potential. And it looks like

[glitch]

that has been squandered.

Even our atrocities aren't "great", they've been well-matched by other empires and totalitarian regimes throughout history. We're just another failed state among many, yet another tragic example for the aware.

But our country was based on spectacular ideals that have been improved upon over the past 200 years. I am talking about the Iroquois system of government, ideas which help form part of the basis for the U.S. Constitution.

Our demise is only good for the rest of the planet if they learn from our failure and another, even worse new world order doesn't fill the void in the meantime.

I don't believe we've ever been a perfect model, but a lot of people had high hopes for this experiment, and put a lot of effort into making it work.

Hopefully the progressive nations have taken what we did right, and we did do quite a bit right before it started being dismantled, (public education, environmental law, social security, welfare, medicare, equal opportunity, head start, fairness doctrine, public libraries, food programs) and improve upon the model. And discard the things we did wrong (genocide, slavery, IMF, WTO, FTAs, resource exploitation, reliance on cancerous economic growth, systemic racism, walmart).

I do believe that what comes after our failed attempt at democracy will be worse if we don't work very hard and remain very aware. The post-american model holds a lot of promise. Human rights, sustainable resource economies, environmental regulation. Freely available family planning. These are all STILL minority ideals. The post-american model might very well be full-bore fascism, extreme capitalism, desertification and, back by elite demand, nuclear annihilation.