For decades, we were sold a carefully crafted story of American invincibility. The narrative of an omnipotent superpower, the indispensable nation, was drilled into the global psyche through every media and cultural channel. It was a powerful, intoxicating mirage.
That story is now a corpse, rotting on the battlefields of eastern Ukraine and the strategic waters of the Strait of Hormuz. The epoch we are living through is not a temporary setback; it is a terminal diagnosis.
I believe the twin strategic failures to break Russia and now to subdue Iran have performed a brutal autopsy on the U.S. empire. They have exposed it not as an omnipotent force, but as a paper tiger -- an aging predator with dull teeth and brittle bones, whose roar is now met with defiance rather than fear. The illusion of eternal dominance has been shattered by the hammer of reality.
Trump, in essence, isn't the architect of America's new "golden age." He's the court jester of the empire's collapse.