Well, this was fun while it lasted. With the election of Donald J. Trump as the 45th president of the United States, among various other current events, things certainly look grim. Once truly towering, the "Great American Experiment” has taken on all the complexity of an eighth-grader’s baking soda volcano in a matter of months. Fundamentals such as a free and vibrant press and the accountability of elected officials have been called into serious question. Things are not much better across the pond, as Brexit, terrorism and a rise in radical nationalism rock Europe. The time has come to wonder whether the United States and the West have entered a decline reminiscent of the Great Depression, or, perhaps more dramatically, the collapse of the Roman Empire.

A theme of polarization in the West is becoming clear as segments of Western society retreat into their comfortable corners. The first evidence of decline is macro, in the way nations relate to one another. International meddling in United States elections, a widening trade deficit with traditionally non-Western countries, Trump’s mostly isolationist stance and China’s global posturing as a superpower all point to a downward turn in Western global power. The second is micro, or how countries relate to themselves internally. Heightened nationalist sentiment both in the U.S. and Europe, a severe income gap and plummeting faith in government hint that the West is beginning to splinter within its own borders.

The diminished ability for a country to properly conduct its own affairs is an obvious indicator of lessening global power. A joint report from the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI confirmed evidence of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election, according to a Jan. 6 PBS article. It is difficult to overstate the precedent Russia has set. Running a fair, democratic election is one of the elements that typically differentiates the developing world from established Western powers.

Europe, too, is not immune to Russia’s tampering. Germany, Holland and France have all been hit with Russian-orchestrated fake news campaigns, according to a Jan. 24 Telegraph article. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, for example, was subject to a particularly virulent torrent of fabricated stories that attacked her credibility, refugee policy and proposed sanctions against Russia.

China, an eminent global superpower, appears to have outfoxed the United States at every turn. The U.S. trade deficit with China, or the amount that we buy from China relative to how much we sell to it, is $367 billion, according a Jan. 9 article in The Balance. This means that we import a tremendous amount of Chinese goods and sell back relatively little, making us dependent on China.

Though President Trump took a strongly anti-China posture in his campaign, his withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership places the United States at a distinct disadvantage, according to Edward Alden of the Council on Foreign Relations. The TPP was a type of leverage against China in order to prevent the country from hogging even more manufacturing employment and economic share. Though the trade agreement could have hurt U.S. manufacturing employment, on the macro scale, the U.S. withdrawal from the TPP gives China unchecked access to employers seeking a cheap labor market.

Additionally, the military maneuvers that China has taken in the South China Sea and Russia’s hand in propping up Bashar Al-Assad’s regime in Syria are both cause for concern. Both of these moves signal an increasing air of military involvement from both superpowers. The outcome is a significantly more obsolete United States. Naturally, more non-Western military involvement in regions that have traditionally been under the United States’ watchful eye would indicate that the country is beginning to become more irrelevant in terms of foreign affairs.

Internally, the West is not fairing much better. Far-right nationalist sentiment is bubbling to the forefront on the international stage. France’s Marine Le Pen, Holland’s Geert Wilders and a slew of other far-right populist leaders have risen to national prominence in their respective countries on the back of anti-migrant sentiment. These figures applauded Trump’s victory because he has expressed similar views in his campaign, according to a Jan. 21 Washington Post article. Much of this language is reminiscent of the white nationalist movement in the United States. The National Policy Institute, a white nationalist think tank emboldened by the rise of Trump, considers immigration and high minority birth rates the main causes of white “dispossession,” or lack of having a totally white homeland, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. Though xenophobia has always been a problem in U.S. history, it seems to have re-emerged as a powerful and more open force post-Trump. Consider the rise of Stephen Bannon, a trumpet for the frequently xenophobic alt-right movement, to Chief Strategist to the president.

Another hallmark of democratic cultural decline is the emergence of a tiny, supremely wealthy upper class and an enormous but desperately impoverished lower class. Healthy cultures usually feature a prominent middle class. In 2013, the top one percent of American earners took home 20.1 percent of all household income, according to the Economic Progress Institute. The gap in both earnings and culture between the highest-earning one percent and the other 99 percent constitutes yet another division that threatens to send the West into a downward spiral.

Finally, American trust in the federal government continues to crater at historically low levels. This remains true regardless of generation, race, political affiliation or education level, according to a 2015 Pew Research study. Twenty percent of the survey population expressed trust in the government — a figure dramatically smaller than 1964’s 75 percent. A lack of trust in the institutions that Americans once held sacred is indicative of a major cultural shift. This mindset certainly points to a decline in American idealism and spirit, if not a decline in government operations as a whole. The mindset itself, however, is not completely unwarranted, as frequent federal government shutdowns and the general inefficacy of Congress have run rampant in recent years.

These great schisms have permeated the West culturally, manifesting as a sense of tribalism, the idea that one must look out for his or her own — not first but only.

Though the West itself seems to be on a downward trend, this decline is not irreversible. One of the easiest ways to prevent Western decline is through the constant spread of objective, factual information about current events. Many are misled on social media by biased, erroneous, or even blatantly false news stories that run using unverified or unverifiable sources. It is far too easy to become lost in our own “information bubbles,” in which the ideas that each side accepts as factual are not echoed or even considered by the other side. Before we can correct the current Western slide in culture and world affairs, we must emerge from our fractured culture bubbles and use the language of cold, objective fact over fiery emotional rhetoric. Only in this way will the West begin to patch itself together, instead of drawing further and further apart.