[sabj]

I think that a large part of your reaction may be that since you are away from home, you only have exposure to the more sensational / noteworthy news, which will tend to not reflect great things about what's going on.

I also found that when I was in China for a while in 2009, the 12 hour time different made America feel very, very far away, and things seemed even stranger and weirder as a result - but maybe that was just me. It made things seem feel out of touch not only by distance, but time as well.

These caveats aside, there are plenty of awful things going on in the USA right now, and huge systemic problems which are unfortunately not being approached in serious fashions. This being said, it's level of 'broken-ness' is probably not particularly greater than it was, say, last year, or the year before.