All three major powers want to recreate dreams of past glories that are largely fiction. And they're dangerous to us all.
China wants to be the Middle Kingdom, the ruler of everything between heaven and earth. Russia dreams of its empires under the Soviets and Tsars.
The US dreams of its glory days after WWII, when most of the world's manufacturing was destroyed, the US taxpayers had fed US corporations billions of dollars to manufacture a way to victory, and its excess manufacturing powered postwar development. For a short time (until manufacturing outside the US was rebuilt) the US was heaven for white Christian men in the US. Working women were forced back into the home, the jobs of black and minority workers and their businesses were destroyed (as happened after WWI), and in a dawning consumer age the white man ruled supreme in the US.
It's not the misogyny and racism implicit in the US 1950s fantasy that is so dangerous. It's the unthinking privilege of white men who took the credit for everything, while massively supported by taxpayers under a leftist Democrat government and a vast army of hardworking women, Latinos, African Americans and others.
Even now, absolute clowns put their hands up to rule in the US because they think, "Hey, I'm a white guy in a suit. I can do anything." The consequence of privilege is incompetence and corruption. In the US we're now seeing that on a colossal, catastrophic level.
For the whole of my life, when asked to choose between the US, China and Russia, I would choose the US. I'm now looking for a fourth option.
