Is The US' Success Directly Attributable To It's Neurosis?

Bob Wright and Mickey Kaus in their recent diavlog discuss how neurotic bots, according to Austrian researchers, seemed to have a more winning personality than normal bots in the war strategy game "The Age of Mythology."

The neurotic bot was more likely than the others to distort hard facts about resources - like the amount of timber around - and flip between extremes of behaviour. And it was better than the rest.

While these findings clearly are still very tentative and do not tell us much, the findings did lead me to speculate/recall a short cartoon I had seen about American settler's seemingly overt paranoia/neurosis and I began to wonder if this continuous fear of a looming threat is an explanation for American success over the years. Then again one could also argue that our reaction to a preconceived (and possibly imagined) fear (ie terrorism) and over reaction to and mishandling of this threat could ultimately lead us to self-defeat, where we find ourselves passing the crown of hegemony on to a new global power. As the annoyingly true adage goes: only time will tell...

Brief History of America Cartoon: