America today is akin to the Ottoman Empire at the end of its days. Immensely important, commanding huge global influence, badly run and under mounting debt, it is not the leader of the world, but the sick man of it.
At the root of America's problems is what Americans themselves created: the knowledge economy. That economy and its associated technological advances — from outsourcing to Internet telephony — has displaced many Americans from work even as it has made companies like Apple among the world's richest and most admired.
The three-year-old economic crisis has accelerated that process, but in no way started it. As in Europe's transition from an agrarian economy to an urban powerhouse during the Industrial Revolution, there will be many whose skill sets just won't be needed in this new age. The likes of Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google put together cannot employ the people laid off by Ford and General Motors.