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Bummer! The United States is in decline, no longer exceptional? Yes, even a high-profile U.S. diplomat appears to chime in! "We're neither the shining example, nor even competent meddlers. It's going to take a generation or so to reclaim American exceptionalism," according to Samantha Power, since 2013, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. Yet, has anyone spent some time abroad recently? As the best-selling Turkish-German author, Akif Pirinçci, puts it: "In Europe, the only things people nowadays are interested in is what's been thought up by "dumb" Americans - from movies to music to books, from TV formats to show types, from Google to Facebook to fashions, just about anything which tickles the mind these days bears the brand name: 'Made in America'." And the same applies around the globe. All of the above elements of influence are of the "soft" or cultural kind - and show few signs of American decline... Nonetheless, the biggest threat to any "Next American Century" may very well be in certain cultural trends, in matters of the mind...