Well, I'm not a European or an American so my own national penis remains unaffected, however...
Your lead is waning not because America is doing less science but because everyone else is doing more. American scientific dominance lasted from the 1930s 'til circa now, but that was only because Europe (previous title holder from the 15th century onward, at the very least) had mostly blown itself up and the rest of the world was far too poor. It's not a good or a natural state of affairs if a tiny minority of the world's population are doing all the scientific heavy lifting, so it's a great thing that other countries are starting to pick up some of the white man's burden.
As for the superconducting supercollider: meh, I'd rather see a thousand small scientific projects than one ridiculously expensive one. Who cares what country it's built in?
> As for the superconducting supercollider: meh, I'd rather see a thousand small scientific projects than one ridiculously expensive one.
It's perfectly fine to not think the SCC is worth the money, but it doesn't make much sense to me to have an a-priori preference about the size distribution of your scientific projects. The optimal size distribution should be very sensitive to open scientific questions and the expected returns on investment.
The reason the LHC exists is because the question it intends to answer is profound, not because $6 billion is a roughly the right amount that should be spent on the largest particle physics project. The reason the ISS was a waste is because the science was fantastically uninteresting for the money, not because $100 billion is too much to have concentrated in one place.
Your lead is waning not because America is doing less science but because everyone else is doing more. American scientific dominance lasted from the 1930s 'til circa now, but that was only because Europe (previous title holder from the 15th century onward, at the very least) had mostly blown itself up and the rest of the world was far too poor. It's not a good or a natural state of affairs if a tiny minority of the world's population are doing all the scientific heavy lifting, so it's a great thing that other countries are starting to pick up some of the white man's burden.
As for the superconducting supercollider: meh, I'd rather see a thousand small scientific projects than one ridiculously expensive one. Who cares what country it's built in?