I'm going to anger people by saying this, but New York (although it's still one of the best places to live in the US) is essentially a Southern city at this point. What's the first thing you do every month? Pay an enormous rent check to someone who's had real estate in the family for over 100 years. What's the first thing you are asked in "casual" conversation? "What do you do?" Or, "What is your position in society?" And "those who matter" still go to cotillions and keep to themselves and shoot quail in the Hamptons.
What do I mean by the South winning, culturally speaking? I mean that this is a society run according to position, authority, and entrenchment rather than the talent and courage to have and share the right ideas. The country is run by private-sector bureaucrats who've discovered ways to capture value generated from the labor of others.
We're not a "really fucked up species". Humans are not naturally good or evil. They're naturally unskilled-- ignorant, deluded, and often incompetent, but not evil. The purpose of civilization is to maintain the knowledge that helps people do the right thing. Unfortunately, societies become corrupt rapidly and develop elites that have defined themselves by doing the wrong thing, and then those wrong things begin to define the social tone and corruption sets in. Civilization is a storehouse of knowledge that helps people figure out what the right thing to do is, but societies are incentive systems that usually encourage doing the wrong thing.