> The decay of the US government is visible in the crumbling infrastructure, the homeless people on the streets and in tent cities, the trash, the shitty COVID response, the partisan bickering. It has no claim to leadership, it is not inspiring to anyone whether in the US or around the world. It is in crisis and it is a cultural crisis which is very hard to fix.

You're throwing a lot of things out here, but they generally fall under being either (a) subjective, (b) deliberate policy choices by a democratically elected government, or (c) emergent properties of deliberate policy choices by a democratically elected government

Ultimately, if the people of this country don't want government spending on the sick and homeless, then it's not a decaying and illegitimate government, it is a well functioning and legitimate government as decided by a cruel populace.

Not to say the the government is perfectly legitimate, I could write an essay on issues with the way our government is structured and how certain design choices diminish citizen's representation in the government (for example: gerrymandering, first past the post electoral college allocation, and the near-permanence of effectively arbitrary state lines). But even the sum of these do not make our government illegitimate.

> it is a cultural crisis which is very hard to fix

I can agree on that much atleast.