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I don't feel the US being in a declining era. I don't feel it around where I live or when I go home, or when I visit other parts of the country. The US is in something of a fragile position and I think it could easily go the way of Argentina if politics stays stupid, but this would be a wholly self-inflicted wound, not the product of generational decay. The vast majority of people I encounter who think America is washed are people with either chronic depression or severe racism.
The US has the premier scientific establishment, the most powerful economy in the world, a network of alliances that sprawls over the globe, and a culture that attracts immigrants without number. The question is not "has America lost its mojo?" It is "will America shoot itself in the head?"
Writing off Art Deco immediately causes me to question your taste. Of course, I find many elements of pre-modern fashion and architecture unbearably gaudy, so your mileage may vary.
Let me offer a perhaps controversial thesis (which I'll admit I don't really believe myself, at least as an explanatory factor): monumentalism is at odds with the interest of the common citizen. Louis XIV may been Great, but he did not exactly leave France in great shape for the French. The increasingly liberalized societies of developed countries have little patience for pouring vast sums to satisfy the vanity of kings (though they have their own pathologies). Ultimately, cities are for people to live in, not architectural museums to be admired by later generations. Forgetting this seems to be an egregious problem across most of western Europe.
Some of us grew up in the Midwest and learned to hate them from experience :V
I find it funny you say this, because this has been pretty much the opposite of my experience. Southerners are polite, but - especially for men - it is an extremely brittle courtesy that falls apart the moment you step outside their fairly rigid expectations. Being easily offended is not an admirable trait, and I have always been baffled by the characterization of Southerners as nice. Maybe Texans, but my experiences in Georgia, Alabama, and South Carolina did not leave me with a favorable impression of the locals. There's an undercurrent of meanness I don't encounter anywhere else in the US, including the rudest parts of the Northeast.
The South is an odd place in that the core South is largely a decaying husk. Georgia is propped up by the growth of Atlanta (housing theory of everything wins again!), but no one thinks Alabama or Mississippi or Tennessee are going anywhere. The parts of the South that are doing well are on the periphery - Texas, Florida (though Florida has its own pile of ticking time bombs), and North Carolina - and are in many ways divergent from traditional southern culture.
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