Is America the Greatest Nation in the World? Nope

I think maybe it's time we change our name from The United States of America to The United States of Cognitive Dissonance. On the one hand, either when we visit other countries or, weirdly enough, during sports events in-house, we can't shut up about how awesome we are, to the point that we mindlessly chant USA! USA! USA! Needless to say, people all over the world hate this annoying attitude of ours, which, depending on where you are, could actually get you killed. Our reputation precedes us...

On the other hand, and for all our presumed patriotism, nationalism, ethnocentrism (or whatever you want to call it), we also can't stop bitching about how our country has gone to hell in a hand basket. Conservatives will complain about how liberals, multiculturalists and minorities are diluting our white Christian moral fiber with their loose irreligious sexual mores and anti-capitalist socialist principles. Liberals will complain that Conservatives want to make this land, originally based on the secular principles of freedom, inalienable rights and respect for human dignity, into a shallow, materialistic, consumerist and narrow-minded puritanical theocracy not unlike a Taliban's wet dream.

And while the debates rage on, we get distracted by the rhetoric and forget to actually work to remain, or to become, the greatest nation on Earth. And guess what's happened while we weren't looking? Whatever our status or reputation may have been in the past, we have been slipping to the point where, if we look, we might not be able to recognize our reflection in the mirror...