You may be right. I've said for years now that America is presently in decline and China is in the ascendancy. It's as Voltaire is credited as saying, "History is filled with the sound of wooden clogs going upstairs and silken slippers going downstairs," meaning that when nations rise to the top, the people begin to feel entitled and become lazy, and forget how to compete.

Our greatest strength was our tradition of immigration, of allowing anyone who came here to be truly seen by other Americans as being truly American. For instance, I could go to China or Kenya or India and become a citizen there, but I could never be accepted y the locals as being truly one of them. Only in America has that been truly attempted as a part of the national ethos. That boiling pot of races and ethnicities is seen by racists as a great weakness, but it's actually our greatest strength in the long term.

If we can reclaim that tradition after the current political travesty, we might be able to recover that tradition. But that's America's only real hope.

China, however, is taking the traditional approach of ensuring only the majority ethnic group - the Han - remain in power. They are rising, but without the constant influx of immigrants from around the world, adding energy and entrepreneurship long after the Han have become lazy, they will eventually fall.

But back to your point, I think America will recover, but we will not regain the degree of economic and cultural dominance we once had. That time is done.