Declining as in the machine that is the U.S. is broken and there is no apparent fix in sight. This generation won’t experience famine or regress into a developing nation but we will experience a decoupling of some of the preconceived notions of what being an American is.
I believe if we make some changes we can push the U.S. back to being the beacon of freedom that it has the potential to be. We have a lot of brilliant minds here.
I have a controversial hypothesis about what creates freedom in nations: it's the self sacrifice of people willing to make others free. In the US it was the independence and civil wars. Then the lazy descendants carelessly waste this freedom until none left, and the nation folds into an authoritarian black hole or enough people start the new cycle by sacrificing themselves. In some sense, creating freedom is like donating all your money to a neighbor and they dying on streets.
I believe if we make some changes we can push the U.S. back to being the beacon of freedom that it has the potential to be. We have a lot of brilliant minds here.