The United States might be stumbling toward a decline from which few great powers have ever recovered.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

It’s part of a series of reports commissioned by the Pentagon office to assess the United States’ competitive position as it faces a rising China.

The opening chapter explains America’s problem starkly: “Its competitive position is threatened both from within (in terms of slowing productivity growth, an aging population, a polarized political system, and an increasingly corrupted information environment) and outside (in terms of a rising direct challenge from China and declining deference to U.S. power from dozens of developing nations).”

“The essential problem is seen in starkly different terms by different segments of society and groups of political leaders.” There’s a right-wing narrative of decline and a left-wing one.

“Addiction to luxury and decadence,” “failure to keep pace with … technological demands,” “ossified” bureaucracy, “loss of civic virtue,” “military overstretch,” “self-interested and warring elites,” “unsustainable environmental practices.” Does that sound like any country you know?

Unfortunately, on this “fix it” checklist, the Rand authors rate U.S. performance in 2024 as “weak,” “threatened” or, at best, “mixed.” If we look honestly in the national mirror, we’re all likely to share that assessment.

“Progressives had a ‘yearning for rebirth’ and sought to inject ‘some visceral vitality into a modern culture that had seemed brittle and about to collapse,’” note the Rand authors, quoting historian Jackson Lears.

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