I'm inclined to argue about the title "most powerful nation on this planet". It's a nice tagline, but the metrics for which it applies are narrowing rapidly.

But still, let this be a lesson to those who would follow bad leaders to their own demise; or rather, let it be a lesson to their offspring who watch them follow the bad leaders.

I suspect humanity follows cycles of enlightenment, complacency, and self-destruction (or irrelevance, which is equally damning depending on the individual). We appear to be between stage 2 and 3 at this point.