It might stop the bleeding, but it won't repair the damage, is how I think of it.

I'm 50, and I am thinking basically "the rest of my life" is what it will take to start fixing some of this stuff, if it's even possible.

We could have had a slowly declining empire and a smooth handoff.

Instead we decided to elect a bunch of people to burn it all down and speedrun the fall of Rome.

We'll still be a world power at the end of it--in the same way France and England are world powers.