The US has not only got itself involved in far too many wars, but domestically it is struggling with an opioid crisis too. With regard to the latter, some of the chemical precursors are made illegally in China, which even Beijing wants to crack down on.

While it is in need of China's collaboration to crack down on the irresponsible entities that export these chemical compounds to be turned into Fentanyl in Mexico, especially to the Sinaloa Cartel, the US is adamant that the world be governed based on its "uni-multipolar" world order.

Within such a system, the US is always above and beyond the United Nations Security Council. Other powers must comply with the dictates of the US.

Yet the likes of Paul Kennedy at Yale University have long spoken of an "imperial stretch", going back as far back as 1988 in his magnus opus The Rise and Fall of Great Powers.

As things are, one way of assessing the plight of the US, amid a tight election, is to comprehend the state of its financial distress. This despite the fact that some of the richest billionaires are in the US.

One telltale sign of how the rich and powerful in the US, also known as the "donor class", try to game the electoral system, can be seen in the oversized role of Elon Musk. Musk has pumped US$75 million into the presidential campaign of Donald Trump; although Kamala Harris remains the one with the bigger war-chest, due to the incumbency of President Joe Biden.