"[2] As one source puts it, "[t]he vibrancy of youth, and the thrill of experiencing things for the first time, creates a 'memory bump' compared with which later life does seem a bit drab.
"[8] Gopnick suggests that "the idea of our decline is emotionally magnetic, because life is a long slide down, and the plateau just passed is easier to love than the one coming up."
"[4] Similarly, Robert Kagan has expressed concern that Americans are "in danger of committing pre-emptive superpower suicide out of a misplaced fear of their own declining power.
"[10] Barbara MacQuade argues that declinism is a central tactic of authoritarians, who spread disinformation about a bleak future to then appeal to nostalgia and tradition to build support.
[12] The "spirit" of fin de siècle often refers to the cultural hallmarks that were recognized as prominent in the 1880s and 1890s, including ennui, cynicism, pessimism, and "a widespread belief that civilization leads to decadence".
[16] The fin-de-siècle generation supported emotionalism, irrationalism, subjectivism, and vitalism,[17] while the mindset of the age saw civilization as being in a crisis that required a massive and total solution.
[16] The themes of fin de siècle political culture were very controversial and have been cited as a major influence on fascism[16][17] and as a generator of the science of geopolitics, including the theory of Lebensraum.
However, one after another of those concerns, Hanson points out, proved unfounded: "Fascism was crushed; Communism imploded; Japan is aging and shrinking; the European Union is cracking apart.
Robert Kagan has noted, for example, that the pundit Fareed Zakaria, who in 2004 "described the United States as enjoying a 'comprehensive uni-polarity' unlike anything seen since Rome", had by 2008 begun "writing about the 'post-American world' and 'the rise of the rest.
Tombs however, concluded that "Declinism is at best a distortion of reality" and noted that Britain is still considered a great power by modern standards, even with the dissolution of empire.
[26] French declinism has been related to the counter-Enlightenment of the early 19th century and to the late 1970s with the end of three decades of economic growth after World War II.