Am I the only one that feels like our society is crumbling

[world.execute(me)]

Everything just seems wrong and dysfunctional. American culture was always flawed, and I wouldn't want to go back, but it seems like something is sick in our modern society.

[Person Man]

I guess we will see in 20 years if things have returned to normal or gone the way of Russia(go out like a light bulb)  or Germany(die a fiery death). Probably things will be the same, better in some ways and worse in others.

[Cashew]

Things may be getting worse in some regards, but a lot of it is just that the media is actually bothering to cover a lot of neglected issues, thereby making it seem that all of a sudden society is collapsing.

[Deblano]

We are in a second malaise era, where instead of feeling like its "Morning in America" its instead now "Every Man for Himself".

[Storebought]

Things may be getting worse in some regards, but a lot of it is just that the media is actually bothering to cover a lot of neglected issues, thereby making it seem that all of a sudden society is collapsing.

No, things really are getting worse. Life expectancy shrank two years in a row. Our inequality-adjusted HDI has diverged so significantly from the OECD averages that we no longer really compare with them.

[junior chįmp]

$20 Trillion in debt, accelerating global warming, an entitlement system going bankrupt in 2030, polarization at an all time high, right wing nutcases absolutely losing it on a daily basis, just to name a few...yes, this is the result of nearly 4 decades now of right wing and weak leftist politics. Hopefully, we elect someone to the far left soon who's not weak to fight back against this God awful right wing pradagim we've been stuck in

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

Relevant datum:
Texas has highest maternal mortality rate in developed world, says new study
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/texas-maternal-mortality-rate-highest-in-developed-world-a7204016.html

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Republicans will keep killing mothers and children until the rest of us stop them.

[Dr. Arch]

Everything just seems wrong and dysfunctional. American culture was always flawed, and I wouldn't want to go back, but it seems like something is sick in our modern society.

Agree

[Cashew]

Things may be getting worse in some regards, but a lot of it is just that the media is actually bothering to cover a lot of neglected issues, thereby making it seem that all of a sudden society is collapsing.

No, things really are getting worse. Life expectancy shrank two years in a row. Our inequality-adjusted HDI has diverged so significantly from the OECD averages that we no longer really compare with them.

Yes, but the peoblem has been festering for a long time, and back in 2004 people were complacently letting the causes of these problems develop unimpeded. Expect nothing meaningful to be done about climate change either, only to have people stare in shock at their TV screns when it finally causes serious damage. Americans (or our ruling class) it seems have to see catastrophe for themselves before they are willing to change.

[American2020]

There's a "Malaise" and not a "Morning Amarica". It's a painful and worrying era.
Tough, this not the lone in the US history.
Major crisises have occured before: Revolution era, Civil War, Great Depression and now a mix of Great Recession and Distruss of Institution.

There're many problemes and the President doesn't seem to address the issues.

[Atlas Has Shrugged]

Oh look who suddenly cares about our crumbling moral fabrice

[world.execute(me)]

Oh look who suddenly cares about our crumbling moral fabrice

It doesn't take a genius to realize that I'm not talking about conservative pseudo morality.

[pbrower2a]

Oh look who suddenly cares about our crumbling moral fabrice

The complaints used to be lodged at poor people who had to make tough choices and often made the 'wrong' choices by middle-class standards Poor people used to be expected to endure their lot with cheerfulness, knowing that their sacrifices created the wealth that might someday trickle down. Their children had high mortality rates from malnutrition, contagious diseases, crime, and accidents (at one time a common cause of child death was getting hit by trolley cars whose  operators were directed to never stop for anything, even a child on the tracks). That attitude changed to one in which white non-WASPs began to see such inexcusable, but black children were out of sight and out of mind. Poor adults would work 70-hour workweeks and live to about 40, being broken down at age 35 -- so their children would be dragooned into work in manufacturing and mining. Child labor used to be a norm among working-class kids. Of course we now think such immoral or amoral.

By the 1960s, the share of the workforce in manufacturing started to shrink due to automation, and a job category that attracted many people with limited talent and education but paid sort-of-OK in return for grueling labor disappeared. Some people doing such work found other jobs, but many ended up permanently unemployable. Many women found themselves with unemployed and unemployable husbands, and for them welfare was a better deal for their children. The women often often made the 'wrong' choice by middle-class standards if they did not go into low-paid clerical, retailing, and restaurant work.  Well, guess what? Holding people up to the standards of people in very different economic realities has always been absurd.

For real crumbling, look to the economic and administrative elites who have set themselves as the only people who can live the American Dream (except for some well-remunerated professionals). As shareholders they have directed executives to squeeze out small-business competition (which means the loss of jobs as a consequence) while the business executives have set themselves as an exclusive elite; an analogue to that elite is the nomenklatura of Commie countries who have set themselves up as a class of administrators who grab huge salaries and other compensation while keeping others in the proletariat to be exploited as under the Marxist stereotype of capitalism. Guess what people that nomenklatura has come to resemble? The aristocratic elites that the Commies exterminated, exiled, or pauperized. America's executive elite in Corporate America has been imitated in government agencies and even in colleges, where university deans (who used to be considered academic 'trash' are establishing themselves as a sort of nomenklatura.  Now what sort of politicians would they support?

Of course -- people who believe that no human suffering can ever be in excess so long as there is a profit to be derived from it. Between the owners and executives, those are the people who get the largesse for funding right-wing pols who got in even  before Donald Trump promised to 'make America great again'. Sure -- great for the Master Class and horrible for everyone else. Add to the elites the operators of right-wing advocacy groups like Club for Growth, FreedomWorks, the National Chamber of Commerce (not to be confused with the local Chambers of Commerce), the National Right-to-Work Committee, and numerous advocates for one industry. The Republican Party is about where the once-maligned John Birch Society used to be... but it now seems as if America follows its lead. 

Above all, America somehow ends up with a President with ties to Organized Crime (organized crime long being something that Big Business and prominent people wanted to have nothing to do with), calls any media criticism of him 'fake news', uses Orwellian Newspeak, surrounds himself with yes-men to the exclusion of all else, and has bragged about grabbing women by their crotches.

So what about religion? Nothing about this fits the teachings of any prophet from Moses, Confucius, Zoroaster, or the Buddha in antiquity to Joseph Smith or Elijah Muhammad in more recent times. But given a choice between personal indulgence that runs afoul of religious doctrine and personal practice, many choose to follow their appetites and push religious obedience upon the proles. So it is soft standards for the elites and a demand for rigid compliance by the masses, hypocrisy at its most sordid.

We are approaching a breaking point for the survival either of economic mastery or the  heritage of liberal democracy. One is likely to break because the two are incompatible. Maybe it is not so ominous as the divide that Abraham Lincoln saw between a nation half-free and half-slave... but it is still a divide between a Master Class responsible to none but itself and everyone else who must suffer for that Master Class with unbroken obedience and no sign of discontent. The Master Class could not keep its secrets forever. (This goes for 'Harvey Swinestein' for his casting couch, too, as he was part of the cultural elite). 

Elites have been able to cover up their abusive and destructive behavior, especially sexual harassment, until recently.

[here2view]

I've been feeling like this since I woke up on November 9th, 2016.

[PragmaticPopulist]

It can be easy to conclude that American society is damaged beyond repair, but then I think back to times like the civil war and civil rights movement, where there were similar deep divisions in our society, and try to be optimistic that the country will come out of it stronger. If I were pessimistic about the future, what be the point of sticking up for my ideals?

[Person Man]

It can be easy to conclude that American society is damaged beyond repair, but then I think back to times like the civil war and civil rights movement, where there were similar deep divisions in our society, and try to be optimistic that the country will come out of it stronger. If I were pessimistic about the future, what be the point of sticking up for my ideals?

That maybe it will soon be the time to start over?

[pbrower2a]

First, we need to realize that we have a problem. We are like alcoholics who can't lay off the liquor even if we know that it is destroying the family finances, getting us into fights, compromising our judgment so that we can be seduced into family-wrecking one-night-stands, impairing our health (I had an uncle who died of alcoholic cirrhosis, and it was not pretty), putting us at risk of vehicle crashes or wandering into a lethal encounter with a vehicle while wandering drunk into the street...  If a spouse, the habitual drunkard puts the family in frequent fear of the call at 2AM that something horrible has happened.

We have amoral and immoral elites running things, we have a president devoid of conscience, we have epidemics of drugs, we underfund schools in which teachers are afraid to push any values at all, we have mass media that promote grossly-amoral behavior, and we think debt a good way to harness young adults to Corporate America...

First we need to recognize that we have a problem. The bartender and the liquor-store clerk will not tell us what we need to know.

[Beet]

No, you aren't the only one. It's been going downhill since the early 2000s, and the decline accelerated around 2014-15.

[All Along The Watchtower]

Yes, you're the only one who's ever had this view.

[publicunofficial]

Oh look who suddenly cares about our crumbling moral fabrice

Except we don't attribute the crumbling moral fabrice to the brown people and the women who yell at me on the internet, like a child would.

[ProudModerate2]

I've been feeling like this since I woke up on November 9th, 2016.

Yep .... agree.
Russia got exactly what it was looking for.
A dysfunctional clown running (and ruining) our nation, and destroying US relations with our allies.
The Russians are celebrating and drinking Vodka.
While at home, the narcissist Orange Slug really/truly believes that he is the best president this country has ever seen.
Thank you GOP ... great job !

[KingSweden]

Oh look who suddenly cares about our crumbling moral fabrice

Except we don't attribute the crumbling moral fabrice to the brown people and the women who yell at me on the internet, like a child would.

[kyc0705]

We lack the objectivity to examine our current period in context, but history (even the history of our own nation) tells us that sometimes, things need to get really bad before they can get better. Where's the bottom? Are we there? I don't know.

[gerritcole]

lol people who live in a bubble and never struggled for anything coming in and saying society is crumbling. go buy your $5 latte and $10 toast and opine about the fall of america

[President Johnson]

I agree, and it is not just America. Recent trends I witness with concern in Germany are a dramatic increase of violence against emergency doctors and personell, firefighters and police officers and rubbernecking on street accidents (rather than helping people). And hatespeech on the internet in general. Just recently, we had many misogynist hate comments against a female commentator of a Campions League soccer game on television. Only because the commentator was not a man.