I have been revisiting the Star Wars films with my teenage son, who seems to have gotten a new appreciation for them, from when he was little. While watching them, I realized that what happened in those stories, though science fantasy, is happening in the real world. A republic, morphing into an evil empire, right before our eyes.
I came of age during the cold war, and served in the military on the tail end of it, in to the GW1 and Somalia era. The US was never squeaky clean, or acted in a truly altruistic fashion. On the balance sheet, though, we were the good guys more often than not. It hurts me to the very core of my soul to admit that is not the case anymore. Because of the actions of the US government, we are no longer the good guys on the world stage. I'm not sure there are any "good guys" (in regards to governments) out there anymore.