askchapo

I have a very similar "drank the kool-aid" vibes based theory, too. The current crop in charge charge had over 3 decades of post-Soviet collapse to be mediocre and actually take to heart the exceptionalism narrative and a sort of complacency that follows.

My read is this: American exceptional used to mean "if America tries it does the best" and now it means to them "America is the best and therefore doesn't have to try." A failure to adapt, as you pointed out. Without something to constantly check itself against the systems and those that control them have become calcified and lost the dynamism that they relied on to stay competitive.

This rot has set in across the board, from domestic and foreign policy, corporate practice, tech development, everything. In this case specifically, intelligence and espionage that hovers in the gray area between hard and soft power.

There is a micro development parallel that can be pointed to within the 2 dominant political parties but most clearly within the Republican party. Where previously they used AM radio types and pretended to pay homage to evangelical talking points the party is now rife with the people who came up drinking that ideological slop. They don't know or don't care that this was all a big game being played to dupe the rubes. One of the fatal flaws of cynically using something like religion as a means to power is that once the cynics die off you're stuck with True Believers replacing them.