"Is This the End of the US Empire?"

The demise of the American Enterprise, the US Empire, has been ballyhooed since the very first ballys in stars & stripes were freshly hooed. The signs were there, are there... and thanks to non-stop, custom-made media content flushing out our ocular and aural units on a near continual basis, the signs have never been louder in our collective subjective reckoning. But is that sensible or just submission to the repetition of sensory overload? 

Is the US Empire collapsing before our eyes or are our very eyes collapsing?