I saw the Democrats have planned five responses to the 45th President’s address, so I figured one more wouldn’t further splinter the country…

But it is a country towards the end. Whether you’re talking the Incas, Rome or the English; all dynasties have a shelf life. And we’ve had a good run as a country, haven’t we?

Built on the belief that all men are created equal despite only considering those with slaves worthy. That was the foundation the Founding Fathers built this country on…and despite the hypocrisy, there’s still few other places I would rather be.

But regardless of your feelings about the state of the country, we’re closing in on about 250 years and it’s clearly the down side of our run. And this has nothing to do with the man in 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

In fact, the prestige linked with that position has been lessened ever since Bill Clinton got caught doing what numerous others within that office have likely done before him. Only he got caught and wasn’t allowed to lie his way out.

His predecessor, George Bush, was treated and seen as a buffoon; looking past the fact that he graduated from Yale and was found competent enough to be a state governor.

And the first president that wasn’t a white male dealt with those that questioned whether he was even a legal citizen of the same country he had been entrusted to lead. So of course a businessman who had played the public persona of rich buffoon for close to 20 years won’t get the respect the position deserves.

But I repeat, it’s not his fault that the country is on the back side of a Hall of Fame career. It’s jut the overall history of it. Reigns come to an end and looking back, we had a good run didn’t we?

We started out shipping cotton and tabacco across the globe in the late 18th century, backed by pure profits since over 60 percent of the workforce wasn’t being paid. It took close to a century to break that up, but the excess wealth was put to work, allowed the freedom to explore and create.

That run lasted a century before an expensive civil war killed more people than all the other conflicts combined. The results were a lack of free labor, but there was still more land to take from their previous owners at no cost…and lo and behold, there’s gold in dem dare hills.

Gold and oil and lumber and coal. We sent those same ships to all corners of the globe and exported these items to everyone for roughly another century, but then something happened.

We didn’t clear the mountains of gold, but moved away from that as the standard. Lumber is a finite item, especially when your population grows exponentially and needs shelter for their young. Oil and coal are dirty substances in more ways than the obvious and now we are left clean.

Clean of a reasonable export and a reason to remain in the forefront of a worldwide culture. Because at the end of the day, I ask a simple question – What as a country do we export to the world?

(Take your time thinking of an answer. I’ll wait.)

According to The Balance, our largest subcategory of export at a cost of $121 billion is commercial airplanes. In other words, we export other people’s ability to quickly get from Point A to Point B. That is obviously transportation, but I argue that it’s a version of our true main export – entertainment.

We export over $80 billion in  telecommunications and electric apparatus, which sounds like hi-tech talk for gizmos and gadgets. Televisions, cell phones, mobile devices. Items we’ve convinced ourselves are completely necessary, but truly serve to entertain us.

We marvel at the amount we pay to our top exports. In a few days, millions around the world will gather and watch the Super Bowl with million dollar gladiators carefully crashing into one another.

There will be million dollar advertisements for Hollywood movies starring million dollar actors and the executive producers will be upset if it doesn’t make $100 million dollars.

The bulk of that will come from those within this country, living in the top 1% of the world’s economy. But a fair portion will come from those that imported it into their country. It’s the only thing we do, it will be our ultimate downfall and sadly, that’s the truth.