From my understanding, the US is particularly bad right now for various reasons. One is that after we eliminated party bosses, there was no one who really went around to gather the strength of the moderate voters. Party bosses made their money by getting as many people onboard as possible. Now both parties operate off zealotry, so you instead get the people who are most passionate about what they do.
A second is that online media has done two things; it has slowly whittled away the time we spend with one another, but also connecting us to strangers we don't know. That discourages social courtesy, while also putting us in a situation where we don't really comprehend the opponent as human, but rather an enemy to be defeated. Thus we are both less civilized and encouraged to be barbaric. Not made any better by feeds focusing on providing the most clicks, which encourages both one-sided information sources to each side, with the exception being news that produces high levels of outrage. And said outrage works to also break down social connections, as you are more constantly angry and in fact, addicted to the anger.
The third is that the USA is going through a social-economic re-alignment at the same time that it is also reaching the end of its institutional alignment. The microchip has passed the apex of its economic production value. That doesn't make it outdated technology, but it is no longer new technology. And without it, the economy is withering. At the same time, the geopolitical situation has left much of the former blue collar middle class without jobs, which heightens the pain. This is as the institutions have become ineffective at managing the system. This last piece is the so called "Deep State Dilemma".
The Deep State's problem is not its size. If I am correctly informed, it has not grown in size considerably for the past few decades. The problem with the Deep State is that it is too complex and its existence makes legislation complex. The common voter can no longer understand or plausibly read through legislation because it is too complicated. And once its shoved through the Deep State, it grows even more complex. To make matters even worse, most of the Deep State is supported and aided by experts/technocrats, who are the current economic victors and wish to remain so.
And within those technocrats is another problem; they are presented and idolized as people who obtain their positions through experience and skill. This experience and skill has produced a great deal of benefit, but most of the people in this field are hedgehogs; that is to say, they generally only understand their own field of expertise and none other. Nor is it easy for them to learn a second field, because the amount of time and energy to do so is immense. These technocrats are thus often working at cross purposes even when intending not to.
There also exists a second flaw with technocrats; their elites and thinkers tend to be...liberal. And that sort of policy is expected to be carried down the ranks. Education in universities and institutions are now liberal and you are expected to conform to this model. The ideology here is also at cross purpose with what many liberals intend to do. Liberals intend to make the world better, but they give the opposite effect or impression to others. To a poor white guy who wants to get educated or some form of state assistance, technocrats are cold and harsh. Because those technocrats prefer to help those who they feel (being primarily driven by compassion) are the most victimized; minorities and women. And they tend to treat poorly those who they feel were given more or victimized others; white straight men. And in the process, they even fail to help minorities or women, because many of their own elitist requirements naturally weed out minorities (and sometimes women).
To get into Harvard, you need to have a mile-long list of good works and educational accomplishments. And yet, most minorities cannot achieve this. They do not have the parents or resources to produce good cover letters to gain attention of recruiters. They do not have the time to take band lesson or to travel to Paris and learn about liberal ideology. Or to donate their time and energy towards a charity. Minorities are the perfect student for Harvard in theory, but not in practice. Instead, they are generally weeded out.
The result is that technocrats appear to be impersonal and hypocritical to those who most need their help. Especially because most of those technocrats are immune to the immediate problems of their own political and economic policies. They are generally the last to suffer. And it is these people who tend to work for the state (which needs lots of experts to keep it running) and therefore throw their full weight against anything that challenges their power and vision for society.
Therefore, you have a growing pressure that cannot be relieved until all of these are solved. I cannot foresee or even guess how this will happen. The new technology I'm betting on is 3D printing. It's still crude, but it could revolutionize our economy the same way the microchip and the car did. The American institutions must either reform to make themselves less complicated and more responsive to local concerns--or the American voters will simply strip away powers from the Feds until they're no longer able to bother them.
As for the Catholic Church, it has been in a steady decline for the past half century. This comes from three main problems. The first is a problem that the Church itself created. Christians believed that they could get closer to God through understanding truth (as opposed to Islam, where you must look to the past to understand God). That created a society that believed in science. That was such a fantastic invention that the discovers of truth reshaped all of society; creating new modes of transport, communications, weapons, and tools. But it also caused the eye of science to turn itself towards that which inspired it and declare that it was false.
The second problem is split into two parts. The first was the split within the Church; the Protestants. The Protestants abandoned the wisdom and historical knowledge of the Church in preference for their own interpretations of the Bible, which became the sole source of religion (in theory) for them. This meant that for every question, there were a hundred answers vying for legitimacy. In the Church, one question had one answer or otherwise at least a limited amount of answers acceptable to the Church. The matter was studied, debated, and prayed upon. With Protestants, whomever shouted the loudest tended to be right.
The second issue were social malcontents. When social malcontents wished to take shots at Christianity, they would disguise it as shots against the Church. What Protestants would have considered out of bounds if directed at the faith, became acceptable when veiled as an attack upon the institution of the Faith. Organized and harmonized religion was degraded by social malcontents and the unwitting aid of protestants. And so, when the time came for social malcontents to turn their arguments against the Protestants, the Protestants had neither the coherency nor the depth of understanding to counter them.
The Creationist Movement was a disaster to Christianity. It allowed for uneducated (mostly American) pastors to gain the loudest voice at the table because they generated the most outrageous news. Their uneducated attempts at denouncing science as a religion and insisting that the Bible was scientific was both absurd and pathetic at once. The Church, which might have been able to supply a proper debating partner for someone like Dawkins, was generally ignored in favor of uneducated zealots insisting that the world was made in seven days and so on and so forth. These pastors were not trained or experienced in addressing controversies in scripture and so made fools of themselves. Indeed, one must wonder at the intentional malice on the part of TV executives to focus on these buffoons rather than Orthodox sources (or otherwise more educated scholars) to address the apparent paradoxes in the faith.
And that brings us to the last and final problem. Christianity appeared out of step with the concerns of the common man. There is really nothing too alluring about praying and being pious when you can have quick and easy dopamine hits through a device. That started with TV and computers, then worked its way into mobile devices. The result is that people are not going to social events as often as they once had; instead they get easy dopamine hits by arguing online, trying to date online, movies, and video games. These dopamine hits are addictive; after you get a high, you keep going back for more. Even if it's stupid.
An excellent example is online debating and online dating. Online debating is generally about you engaging with a total stranger, over a subject you don't agree on, and hammering them with insults and "facts" until one side gives up--and believing yourself to be the victor regardless of who does give up. The result is you constantly being angry and even being addicted to the anger, because you're searching for the victory feeling when you convince yourself you win.
Online dating involves you getting dopamine hits that lead to constant disappointment. Men will often be led on by women who are looking for better options and aren't really attracted to you because they only see two aspects of you; your looks and your wealth. Therefore, most men are excluded in that dating scene or else don't make it very far. On the flip side, those women are then seemingly betrayed by the few men all the women find universally attractive enough to meet, because those men get the most attention and will ghost most women.
The key problem appears to be the issue that the women never experience the charisma, personality, or other forms of attraction that is experienced in person. Worse, there always appears to be a greener pasture right next to those said men, so there's no reason for women to "settle". The men end up feeling dejected because they feel the game is rigged and the women feel dejected because they're quickly dumped in favor of the hottest girls. It's a constant race to the top and right off a cliff. And despite that, men and women keep going back to it, because the brief and easy dopamine hits that you feel when someone 'likes' or 'favorites' you is intense enough to keep you hooked.
All that activity is isolating and imbittering people against society, which is what the Church and the Faith is reliant upon.
What the Church needs to address these problems two-fold.
First, it must be heard over the Protestant groups in Europe and in America. And it must do so by presenting itself as a plausible supplier to the skepticism that has been thrown at the feet of Christianity. Normally, I think this would be impossible. The media is more happy to watch a shitshow debate between Creationists and Anti-Christians than to listen to the more sensible teachings of the Church. However, the SJWS pretty much disposed of those same Anti-Christians the moment they didn't appear useful to their own personal goals. That's forced a great deal of Anti-Christians to think in terms of culture and society. It's less important now who has the facts, but who is better for society.
Second, the Church must feel relevant to the common man again. That might be achieved by creating activity groups and actively trawling for people. Especially in the wake of the Wuhan Virus, people are looking for ways to create closer bonds with each other and the Church might be the group that can best take advantage of it. Creating activity groups and encouraging dating would network those individuals through the Church and the Faith, not through things like video games and debate forums.
But that's just my two cents.
