Ask Lemmygrad

Have you ever done that thing where you kind of trip a little and you feel silly, so you go into this brisker pace for a moment, as if you meant to do it and didn't make a mistake?

That might be a little bit of a metaphorical ballpark to what the US empire is going through, but in slow-motion. They are striding along in the momentum of the previous decades, trying to hold onto, and continue to consolidate, power. The material realities of the pavement don't care; their contradictions are getting worse and China and its allies are strengthening, so they trip. But rather than admit to the error and watch where they're going, they are picking up the pace instead, trying to brazen their way through it like it was what they meant to do all along and they can silence any mockery by shouting at anybody who saw them trip. But they still have not accounted properly for the pavement. And if they keep ignoring it and continue to insist on their deluded and apocalyptic vision of total domination, their brazenness isn't going to lead to a little stumble or a gradual fade-out, it's going to be a careening fall that tears them apart from the outside, if the inside doesn't tear apart first.

(I think others have answered adequately in analysis and it is probably some of multiple things others have mentioned. I just wanted to add a more metaphorical lens. :))