Troubling Times

As a nation we have not often been so at odds with each other and with the world. Iraq, Iran, gay marriage, civil liberities, the blue states and the red states, corruption in government and in corporations, the economy, social security, post 9/11 trauma, terrorism, and a decline in civil society. It does add up to a weakened society and vulnerable to those who are opportunists. We may see even more or worse in such a climate. A paragraph in the latest New Yorker magazine in a story "In Kislovodsk by Vasily Grossman writing about World War II caught my attention as applicable to our present moral climate, "When life is under threat, everything cracks and splits apart, everything turns upside down, sometimes slowly, sometimes with obstinate resistance,sometimes yielding with an ease that makes you want to laugh. But the results is always the same and exceptions may only prove the law."
We seem to be at a loss having given to others some of the matters we used to manage ourselves. A feeling of being cheated and unsafe grows day by day. Our political parties don't seem to be ours anymore. Our voices are silent and we shuffle back and forth between the opinion of others. Cruelty and loss have become routine.
Are we a broken society? Are we in decline?