Veronica: We are still the top nation but we are rapidly declining.
US popular culture is incredibly stupid, as debased as it's been since the 19th century. The politicians more corrupt than ever, the abject population driven indoors by enfeebling technology, the public discourse hobbled by resentful ethnic, religious, and political mobs who scream, pule, and whine at each other while contesting bogus issues. Aging idiot hippies teach feckless cant to youth with the attention span of fruit flies, the highways roar with angry, trapped commuters speeding home to forget their lives, and subliterate felons earn millions by playing games while wearing armored pajamas. Yes it's all garbage everywhere and it's all in decline everywhere and it always was and is even more so now.
However, the reference to "top nation" might have you jollying along if you were familiar with that classic gag tome, _1066 And All That: A Memorable History of England_ by Sellar and Yeatman. (I have the EP Dutton tenth edition, 1931, which is worse for wear.) The Romans are the first to be accounted top nation "due to their classical education."
The book concludes:
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Chapter LXII
A Bad Thing
America was thus clearly top nation, and
History came to a .
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