Let’s please remember the particular American academic culture. It looks funny and very attractive when shown in Indiana Jones movies or something like that, with a rosy flavor. But IRL plenty of people important in that and, well, directing the development of said culture are power-tripping rockstar-feeling idiots. If you compare American professors to German professors, you might see an ocean of cultural difference.

People who make up said power are the very ones undoing it.

The US doesn’t make anything and a lot of what it does make is bullshit like the entire corn industry. Much of the “value” in the US is speculative and, for lack of a better way of putting it, a complete and utter fantasy. As soon as that house of cards starts to become unstable and the world moves away from the USD then the US economy is going to implode so hard that it would make a black hole blush.

That’s just the latter part of any cycle of life and power. You conquer reputation and eventually you start using it to reinforce the actual value, and that leads to increasing degradation.