A comprehensive and insightful article Tom McTague.
American leadership is right to be questioned now, although as you say in your article there is no replacement in the wings -- neither Russia nor China have the enormous advantage of being democracies and Europe has never convincingly come together as a union because of historic cultural differences. So in a way the US retains it’s position by default.
We are currently not so much in a lull but the opposite of it -- there’s stuff flying around that we don't know what to do with — disease, race, poverty. Like Hayden in Tinker Tailor we have become attached to symbols (the aesthetic as you put it) that are not firmly fixed to reality and need to be. Unfortunately, we have two dismal heads in Donald and Joe but they are not stamped forever and more may be done than often thought (“Let’s Get Real — Joe Biden is Not up to the Job” / Houston Chronicle 5/5). Other people can stand up — governors, judges, comedians and rappers have. We are a democracy, yes? The time is ripe to take all the flying objects whirling around us — coronavirus, racial discords, inequality, dissatisfied lives — and fashion them into a new fabric for Americans (and others in the world) to greatly benefit from.
As a nation we could strive to be happier. This coupled with prosperity we can begin to dance. Our experiments and building of solutions can offer the US competence and confidence to show a better world.
