I've long admired James Fallows' reasoned reporting and the perspective he gains from living in Asia much of the time.
His latest piece for the Atlantic is a "good news, bad news" discussion of whether America is finally, really, going to hell. It's well worth a read.
In a nutshell, Fallows says that American society is doing what it always has: proclaiming the end of the world and reinventing itself just in time to ward off disaster. He's optimistic about our ability to keep doing that.
The government, however…
Pointing the finger squarely at the U.S. Senate, Fallows notes that Senators representing just 12% of the U.S. population can block any legislation with a filibuster. And:
The Senate’s then-famous “Gang of Six,” which controlled crucial aspects of last year’s proposed health-care legislation, came from states that together held about 3 percent of the total U.S. population; 97 percent of the public lives in states not included in that group. (Just to round this out, more than half of all Americans live in the 10 most populous states—which together account for 20 of the Senate’s 100 votes.)
Let's restate that: Senators for an eighth of the population can block anything, and Senators for a majority of the population have only a third of the votes needed to pass legislation! These are astounding statistics, and to a significant degree account for Washington's inability to address our biggest problems. Also to blame: gerrymandered districts that effectively eliminate competition for seats in Congress and the state legislatures.
Fallows gives plenty of examples of the paralysis of government contributing to national decline: the reduction of public investment in basic research, Newt Gingrich's abolishing the Office of Technology Assessment as a symbolic "cut Big Government" stroke, and so on. The bottom line is that the government has become so ossified and encrusted with special interests that all it can do is focus on trivial and symbolic issues while leaving the big challenges unaddressed.
Fallows tries to envision how we might escape from this trap. I recommend you read him.