From Larchmonter445 at The Saker:

About American higher education, most of it is ruined by Liberal Arts and Liberalism as cult belief training. It has turned most graduates into bed-wetters, crybabies and irrational dependents with no knowledge, few skills and the inability to act without enormous support from parents and government.

Most American innovation is in software apps.

Few new durable goods are produced.

Biotechnology is the one sphere of American innovation. But it is populated by Chinese students doing the research. China also has a huge biomedical and nanotechnology base. If the politics between US and China changes, those Chinese students will go home. Reverse brain drain.

The rest of America’s vaunted higher education is really American aggressiveness. Chinese raise compliant students. They are taught by rote and by social stability to resist independent thought.

The students returning to China from the States have learned to think outside the box, to try and fail and try again. These qualities used to be the American standard. They no longer are because Liberalism is a Cult and cults abhor independent, critical thinking. Most American corporations have also tamped down individual thought. Groups, social thinking, belonging to the village has warped the energy and progress of America. Higher education will take decades to rid itself of this milieu and all the practitioners (administrators and professors).

Meanwhile, China and Russia will be growing without illusion of exceptionalism. They know who their existential enemy is (the Hegemon). They are on a psychological war footing.

Americans begin as #1 in their own mind, regardless of the facts. Delusion is why America now finds itself in deep trouble. That won’t change any too soon. Shouting USA, USA, USA feels good, but in the morning you are still looking at Satan II ICBMs and Putin is at the helm, Lavrov has dropped the hammer diplomatically, Maria Zakharova has chastised your spokespersons, and fear of Russia is greater than ever.

Americans are facing a chronic disease: cognitive dissonance. Russians are buzzing their best warships and their only way of stopping it is WW3, which ends the planet. Spending more money and hoping to outbuild the Russians and Chinese or outthink them is a game they cannot win.

The US needs a foreign policy change more than anything else.
It needs to put the Hegemon into history.

It needs to sit, talk, listen, and cooperate with the multi-polar players.
Trump has that ability and intention.

The destruction of Flynn hurts that effort. He was ballast to modulate Mattis. He was also going to uproot whole sectors of the Deep State.

Trump intends to pursue his mission. I don’t see how he can do it in meaningful manner without arranging a detente with Russia. If his next NSC advisor is aligned with his goals, he might find a path. But it won’t be soon. And it won’t be before Putin is elected President again.

It will be seen in the Pentagon plan to be delivered by March 1. I assume Mattis will want many more US boots on the ground. And he will want heavy weapons given to Syrian Kurds. That will ratchet up Turkey against the Kurds more than ever. Trump will not like that outcome.

The US simply does not understand the lay of the land. The geopolitical shape of things is beyond their understanding at present.

Like the Liberal cult ruining education, American self-delusion is their national foreign policy. Where their hegemony meets resistance, they just drop more bombs and arm more proxies or pay for more mercs. Their theory is they will remain dominant. Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Yemen and Syria disprove the theory. Ukraine works better for them, but Donbass is forever. And they apparently realize Crimea is now Russia again, so the net loss is like all the rest of their battlezones—failures.

“Maddog” is so appropriate as their new lead dog. He knows only one way, and it always loses in the end. His greatest achievement was Fallujah 2. When your great victory is immediately lost, you haven’t won. He has gone around the world and announced the US is everywhere and ready to fight everyone. Then Iran fired its ballistic missiles, North Korea saluted him with their ballistic missile and Putin fired his intermediate cruise missile. Quite an array of stunning replies.

Cognitive dissonance is the diagnosis.