Would a serious country have run up a national debt of now almost $30.5 trillion during times of relative peace and prosperity?

Would a serious country have used that borrowed money to feather its nest with a profusion of cheap consumer goods and other markers of material prosperity, goods produced by a ruthless foreign power employing what amounts to slave labor?

Would a serious country have leaders so deeply preoccupied with domestic wrangling and partisan advantage that they fail to see that the rest of the world is watching and taking note, and that the hostile powers of the world are even now calculating the possibilities that such feckless leadership has opened up for them?

Would a serious country actively seek to demoralize its police forces and undermine the authority of parents? Would it promulgate arbitrary and contradictory policies regarding public health, causing angry divisions in the land and distrust of authority that will take years to heal—if it ever does?

Would a serious country allow a 20-year investment in Afghanistan to go up in smoke? Would it abandon the Afghans who had trusted in its protection, along with a major air base and $90 billion of weaponry—an amount larger than the annual military budget of all but two countries in the world?