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-Hunter Thompson, "Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72"
I think it's the way a lot of empires end. Everything gets easy, and without the survival element to keep people honest, over generations the people just lose touch with reality. They think migrant caravans are coming. They think all they need to do is half-ass their way through college and they deserve to get out make six figures still half-assing it. they think Trump is a genius, they think their adult kids are off the pills. The adult kids don't really grasp what the pills are really going to do to them and everyone around them, because everything's been mostly fine so far. Et cetera.
Speaking as another old guy, I wish I could disagree with you on your conclusion. 🥲
Yeah - it is more or less the way that old and previously healthy civilizations generally die. The details differ, but the overall dynsmic is fairly consistent.
As a civilization ages, the broad focus shifts from working to contribute to its well-being to living comfortably off of its established well-being to scrambling to grab as much of its diminishing well-being as possible as quickly as possible. And the US is well into that last phase.
There are only a few ways it can play out from there. The common people can force the civilization into a sort of reset, as the French did in the late 18th century, or the civilization can just go into a long, slow decline like Egypt did or it can collapse under some combination of rebellion from within and attack from without, as Rome did.
The third scenario is far and away the most likely for the US.