It's fucking wild how Trump has really shown that we are to pay no mind to the man behind the curtain.
Whole fucking thing is a sham, it really was made up as as we went along.
It’s always been that way, the difference is that most people agreed that this was (not this particular situation) how things would work. In order for a society to function at a high level (or any level really) the people of said society must agree on norms, institutions, and rules/laws. Without that trust it becomes a society that resigns itself to being ruled by whoever has the resources and power and it then becomes a fight for resources and power.
It was a good run but I can point to a few things that led us to where we are today:
Having moral principals that we strive for as a country but that we didn’t adhere to in order to appease and avoid tough decisions, such as supporting slavery and the idea that black people were not equal to white men. This led to a lot of bad compromises and a civil war but it also it created an environment where future immigrants were also treated as lessors. This made us susceptible to “otherizing”.
A lack of trust in the American people and relying on a non elected group of people to pick the president has resulted in presidencies that by all accounts were failures, not only in what they achieved but how they negatively impacted America(ns).
Third: by allowing Congress to pass a law that violated the constitution and put an arbitrary restriction on the amount of house representatives meant representation would go to the extremes, with only the most active of voters getting representation. It also led to gerrymandering of voters in order to retain power.
Fourth: the filibuster or super majority requirement in the senate further eroded states ability to be represented and for more complicated and needed legislation to get passed and instead of creating an environment where compromise was necessary it did the opposite where no compromise was given because not compromising resulted in not getting things passed.
Lastly I think our ultimate downfall was that there were no checks or restrictions on money and access to politicians. The constitution explicitly gave the right for the people to lobby their representatives but without restrictions, the people’s voice could easily be out-lobbied by the rich and big business or industries. The fact that businesses have more rights and override individual liberties is also a huge issue.
There are a lot of other issues but I think the above would have fixed or subdued other issues that have caused problems (such as a dysfunctional Congress and a Supreme Court who clearly makes shit up to get the outcome they want or the MIC).