Re: Is anything working these days? Has it ever worked?
I get the "sinking ship" feeling sometimes too, though for reasons probably quite different from your own. But if we do a quick comparison we find that if we're sinking, others are already resting on the seafloor.
I think the future will he challenging for America; it will continue to bear the standard for freedom in a world with China on the ascent and Islamic extremism becoming desperate and hence even more unpredictable and dangerous. I think "that which makes this country tick" will be more important and respected in the next 50 years than it has been in the last 50.
Has it ever worked? Yeah, pretty well, actually. Does it work today? Yeah. Pretty well, actually. :-)