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Been thinking about this lately in terms of Planck's Principle, summarized as, "Science progresses one funeral at a time." This time, the funeral is for the US Science Community writ large. When we rebuild, there won't be nearly as many tenured Old Heads obstructing breakthroughs from the New Heads.

Correct, we won't.

The big problem for me is there was an attempt to restructure the flaws of the constitution after the civil war yet the USA really dropped the ball during the reconstruction era. And a lot of the problems today have their roots in that failure.

We're in the path of the UK. The UK dominated the world in the 19th century, and was still a pretty BFD in the 20th, but never #1 ever again.

Arguably post-second world war European immigrants built that science. Until they accept that they will never recover.

Truly. It is time we say the thing out loud, if we want to have any hope of starting to address any of it.

After another world war, assuming we're *not* the aggressor.

As a Canadian, I was expressing what I hope Americans will do next, regardless of the outcome. I’m hoping that they won’t make restoring hegemony the goal, but rather strive to regain trust through bold and principled action. Hegemony may be dead, but leadership is still on the table.

Up until the first Trump term, I used to think, this is the USA: they have the will/potential (and resources) to bounce back after course correction over a couple of terms. It’s looking less likely every passing week. US will never be the same. At least from the perspective of rest of the world.