Militarily stretched and economically strained. That's America, superpower with its hard power dented. But there's yet-unmatched American soft power, right? Democracy and Disneyland, Madonna and McDonald's, American ideals and American idols. The 'Land of God's Plenty' - from the moral virtue it makes of pursued happiness to the amoral hyperreality of its sin cities - is more than territory geographically delimited. America is an Idea, grand and luminous as human aspiration itself. The dollar sign or New York's skyline, America bends all to its will because it beckons Siren-like, the torch of liberty in its raised hand.
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