America has had a rough go of it the past several years but so long as there walks among us a man who can gobble half a dozen hot dogs and buns in a minute I will remain optimistic about our nation’s future.

The more so because we have made this man not a pariah for his gluttony, but rather a celebrity for his abnormal digestive capacities.

No country can be anywhere near the brink of collapse, I submit, that is so rich in resources that it can squander so many thousands of calories on a contest, and whose citizens have ample free time to devote to such spectacles involving the wastage of processed meat and white bread.

The man of whom I write, Joey Chestnut, is a minor luminary among the galaxy of stars, to be sure.

Yet he was feted on ESPN on the nation’s 247th birthday, a level of attention the network typically reserves for the top performers in more celebrated, if less impressive in a gastric sense, competitions such as football and basketball.

Chestnut was introduced as the reigning champion of the Nathan’s Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest at Coney Island, New York, an event which he has dominated for a decade and a half, with the flavor of fanfare more typically associated with the astronauts of Apollo 11 or despotic rulers of Third World countries.

The master of ceremonies at this uniquely American competition, George Shea, waxed rhapsodic as always, his ode as impressive, in its dramatic hyperbole, as Chestnut’s consumptive abilities.

“15,000 generations of humanity, yet we have evolved not at all,” Shea intoned. “Only one man has stood to say that he will dictate what is and is not possible in this world. He does not do it for money. He does not do it for glory. He does it for his people. He does it for his country. He does it for freedom.”

And this wasn’t even Shea’s most rapturous tribute to Chestnut.

In 2015, with The Who’s “Baba O’Riley” blaring in the background, Shea marked Chestnut’s appearance by noting that “through the curtain of the aurora, a comet blazes to herald his arrival, and his victory shall be transcribed into every language known to history, including Klingon.”

This year Chestnut had to wait a couple hours as a thunderstorm drenched Coney Island.

It’s not clear whether Chestnut, in common with mere mortals, is plagued by “butterflies in the stomach” during the anticipatory moments before a major undertaking.

(Pity the butterflies, if so, even the figurative sort.)

But he was of course undeterred, going on to munch down 62 dogs and buns to win his record 16th championship.

Chestnut was awarded, as befits a conquering hero, a glittering decorative belt — the sort of accoutrement bestowed on professional wrestling and boxing champions.

It is known as the mustard belt. This seems to me as inevitable as the post-competition colonic irritation that is, happily, neither televised nor introduced by Shea.

I did not watch Chestnut’s latest triumph, as the rain delay fouled my Independence Day schedule.

I wasn’t especially interested in the 10 minutes allotted to eating, anyway, an unsettling frenzy of chewing reminiscent of what happens when a pod of great whites comes across an ailing fish.

I think spectators in the first few rows would do well to wear ponchos.

I wanted to hear Shea’s introduction.

Although I have followed, to a fashion, the Nathan’s Famous contest for years, I had somehow missed Shea’s annual spectacles, which he doesn’t reserve only for superstars such as Chestnut.

Notwithstanding the nutritional deficiencies of such contests, I find the essence of this annual event generally wholesome.

Americans’ reputation for corpulence is deserved, to be sure.

And all those unnecessary pounds contribute to the nationwide scourge of diabetes, heart disease and all manner of other potentially fatal maladies.

Yet even though we acknowledge that we ought to swap the pepperoni pizza for the salad (no dressing) more often, we Americans can’t suppress our affinity for ridiculously sublime spectacles such as competitive eating.

(There is even a professional league.)

I find this fundamentally healthy for our spirit if not our arteries.

It tells me that although we can always improve, we have licked the basic challenges to such an extent that, with most of us not needing to worry overmuch about acquiring clean water and decent shelter, we can devote some of our energies to the unnecessary and the inane.

That Joey Chestnut could trade on his abilities, which are impressive but hardly necessary for a functioning nation, to achieve modest fame and fortune, reassures me.

He is, ultimately, the product of a society which, above all else, celebrates the individual.

The Romans were gluttons, too, of course, even as their empire slouched toward dissolution. But they eroded from the top, as it were, doomed by avaricious leaders.

Joey Chestnut is something of a hero.

But he’s no Caesar.