I think... we did not win WWII. We did not win the Cold War. At best it was a delaying action. Apparently Mankind has a “kill switch” designed so that if we got too big for our britches, we would self-destruct. It’s like a swirling storm of pure devilishness out there now and there seems to be no way for the moral majority to put these people back on their heels.
You may be onto something. Or maybe just on something.
Anyway, maybe our civilization, like others in history, grows old, decrepit, and ultimately dies of some opportunistic infection. Perhaps "civilizational telomeres" are at work.