Who Won the Cold War? An Ode to 43

Tell me again who won the Cold War? As our government decided to alter the immutable in Iraq, and began feverishly shoveling our national treasure into the dust bin of history, the kind of  surges that matter took place in two emerging superpowers.  While China’s economic surge is so well accepted that success in this century has been ceded to Asia, it is less well known that Russia’s economy is booming, its middle class exploding, and traffic jams of BMW’s are a daily occurrence in Moscow. Doubters need to consider the 130,000 newly minted millionaires and the 300 hotels currently under construction there, the fact that it is the most expensive city on Earth, and the abundance of million dollar apartments. 

Meanwhile, our experiment with mindlessness as an approach to governing has failed, and with it, the even bolder experiment of a government run by and for the people. Not to worry. Russia and China are quite comfortable replacing us. My pessimism would be less profound if I had heard or read anyone who proposed a way out of the quagmire we were led into.  My beloved America, now a self-satisfied, geriatric has-been, managed to self-destruct in less time than the Roman Empire. Surge on, O Ship of State.