But it hasn't experienced a lot of the same cultural changes that it's most significant allies have gone through. Why not? There's a number of other reasons: The Strong Link culture (ie optimize for the STRONGEST members of your society rather than the weakest) that is somewhat unique. The fact that it wasn't destroyed in WW2 is another (Though neither were Canada or Australia). The fact that it felt like it was "The Leader of The Free World" for the last 80 years (and therefore had no reason to introspect).
But I think the core of the disagreements within the US between the Left and the Right come down to easily 40-50% of the country fundamentally believes that there is a magical man in the sky who will reward them from being good (for a fairly regressive perception of good) with infinite blissful life after death. And this is what they fall back to when it comes to justifying white supremacy (in every extreme), the discrimination of the LGBTQ, immigrants, etc.
Before you get to any other matters of policy or values, this is a fairly fundamental hurdle to get past. You either believe in a magical sky monster based on faith, and consider this to be more important than anything else you might do in your finite earthly life, or you...don't. And Americans DO at a rate more than most.
Everything else flows from this. How can you even conceive of getting on the same page of what a sensible tax policy, an introspection of the culture of police, the segregation of the cities, or the crumbling education system when you can't get past a fundamental belief.
So the systems prevail. The GDP grows. And just like wars stimulate scientific progress, so does the knowledge that if you fail you will wind up dead in a ditch, inspires some great entrepreneurship and ideas. A lot of which continue to change the world.
Then people on this website and others wonder why the same parts of the country generating the highest GDP also have the most human misery on the streets. It's because it's the other side of the same coin.
Given that the religion of the US is individualism, of might-makes-right, of look-out-for-number-one, I'm not sure you can blame this on the belief of existence of God.
Indeed the -actions- of many religious Americans seems completely at odds with the tenants of their pronounced beliefs. They elected a thrice-married, self-confessed sexual-predator as president, and would like to do so again. They are anti welfare, pro gun, pro white,and so on.
By contrast, those "heathen" European states have care for the sick, care for the poor, respect for society as central pillars. They are countries (very imperfectly) following religious ideals while not having particularly religious people.
Personally I think American Christianity is an embarrassment to Christians elsewhere. Their disconect between professed beliefs, and actions is the very hypocrisy Christians are often accused of.
In the US religion and politics are tied together, which is unfortunate. There are plenty of religious Democrats, and plenty of non-hypocritical Republicans, but their voices are drowned by those with political intentions.
But make no mistake, the primary religion in the US, as evidenced by actions (not words) is money.
Those who do behave like this are obviously not the ones we hear the most noise from.
What we're dealing with is some other phenomenon which has labeled itself as "Religious" but doesn't believe in the core philosophy. People can see the value of being part of the "religion club" or "religion tribe" and realise straight away that they only have to pay lip-service to its values or that they can argue their way from the values to what they want to do with a bit of sophistry.
Hence the Spanish Inqisition, Cusades, Holy Wars, Terrorism, Subjugation of native populations, religious racists and so on.
”When asked about such tragedies Russian novelist Alexander Solzhenitsyn explained, “Men have forgotten God, that’s why all this happened.” Another preeminent Russian novelist, Fyodor Dostoyevsky explained, “If God is not, everything is permitted.”
> there is a magical man in the sky who will reward them from being good
You might want to look up Jihad.
Communism is definitely a religion as the Catholic Church has claimed for more than a century. It's an atheistic religion. It's a religion created by atheists, celebrated by atheists and defended by atheists. It comes with its own prophets and prophecies, sacred items, soteriology, hierotopy, pseudo-spirituality, pseudo-morality, pilgrimages, temples, theophany, soteriology, cultic practices, sacred texts and exegetical commentary.
Quaaludes have been effectively nonexistent globally (with the sole exception of South Africa) since the start of the 1990s and entirely because of the "War On Drugs".
The reality is that the user base shifted to MDMA based products and other options such as valium or xanax. Quaaludes aren't as enjoyable because they can easily knock you out before you have any real fun..
The US is tearing itself from the inside because of the inevitable conclusions of late stage capitalism: there is an unsustainable wealth gap, and entrenched systemic discrimination perpetuated by cultish religiosity.
Blaming China for this (or even Russia) is silly. The US is doing it to themselves. It's a Strong Link culture (vs the rest of the West which optimized for Weak Link). So it's still the best place in the world to go from nothing to riches, and stay rich.
But as a society it doesn't seem like it's salvageable without another civil war.