[intended]

Whats somewhat sad though, is that for the majority of my time, America was described as the place where things "just worked".

To be fair, a lot of things do "Just work". This may just be the time Americans look to their government and decide to clean house and rehire competent people into it.

[homosaur]

They can hire all the competent people they want, the system itself has become broken. There's too little representation and too much gerrymandering. There needs to be profound systemic reforms to even begin to address what's wrong with the US government.