Yes, the U.S.A. is pretty bad. A lot of it has always been that way. It's just that in the past too many people were blissfully ignorant and wore rose colored glasses.
They were too influenced by all the people that always pumped the notion that the United States was "the best country in the world" to the point they blindly believed it. They often didn't notice that much of the things that were really good about it at one point have slowly eroded or are now entirely gone. In general Americans maybe more than anybody else like telling themselves they are great, no matter how true or untrue it is. I think the only thing that's changing is that more people are waking up to what's around them and realizing just how crappy things are getting. It's getting so bad even the rose colored glasses are getting their tint bleached away by the light of truth.
Then there is the fact that everyday it seems to be getting much worse not even counting the things we just pretend are good. Everyday we get more and more control over us by the elite and the rich. Our economic system is starting to collapse because too many people are so full of themselves that they can't except that it's not only no longer optimal, but that it was never fair, and is now starting to fail. The greed, selfishness, and an everybody for themselves attitude in this country is starting to take on epic proportions especially for a modern Western nation. The thought of anybody actually sacrificing, and I mean a real sacrifice, for the greater good is almost a thing of the past. All the time there is rationalizations for this or disingenuous things done to make people seem like they aren't like that. In general Americans maybe more than anybody else really like patting themselves on the back when they do some minor thing that makes them look good all the while living their lives and conducting themselves in a manner that does many times more harm than what they do to help people. We like to think of ourselves as good people, no matter how untrue it is.
More of us are starting to learn that many of the people of the United States are just as corrupt, undeserving, lazy, greedy, selfish, arrogant, blind, discriminatory, power hungry, and uncaring as most everybody else in the world and often a lot more so.
Another big problem is nobody really seems to care enough to fix the problems anymore. They either can't do it themselves, want somebody else to do it for them, don't want to do it because it might cost them personally somehow, or just don't care. The U.S.A is like a big train wreck that can be spotted coming far in the distance but nobody with the ability to do so seems to actually want to try and divert it before it happens.
Not only have we brought ourselves down we have used our influence to start bringing much of the world with us.