coming up on this episode of The Round Table.

We've been in Afghanistan all my adult life.

And there was always this weird cognitive dissonance

or double narrative about America for us.

And that was one that America was unassailably great,

or at least unassailably prime on the world stage.

Nobody could touch us.

We were demonstrably the number one world power

and gradually it looked like China might arise to threaten us,

but really it was taken for granted

that if you lived in America, you lived in the strongest.

And depending on where you grew up,

the best nation in the world.

And all the time that our parents told us this

because our parents had perhaps lived through a time

when it looked plausible and true,

we were also watching as it seemed everything

America did on the world stage

was kind of shooting itself in the foot.

And if you talk to people who are younger than me

who don't even remember a world pre-911,

this is even more deeply felt

...