Being England or whatever isn’t the end of the world, there is life after global hegemony, but e.g. the USA should be realistic about the fact that e.g. shit like a legislature whose job is to get nothing done isn’t how you win in full-contact sports.
For all its innumerable faults, flaws, and outright human rights violations: the West of the latter 20th century seemed like a plausible v0.0.1 of some future, hypothetical, benevolent society. Sucked ass if you were a minority but there was movement on that, real wages seemed to be trending ok, technological innovation was on point. It looked to be going somewhere.
I’m not sure when it all went sideways, but the PRC is looking more than happy to design the future, and it seems unclear at best if that would be a net win in the “get to Star Trek as fast as possible” game.