this is not new

The American ideal has always been aspirational, with the present (in 1805 or today) often leaving something to be desired.

Is the present state of the national republic enough? Is virtue the principle of our government? Is honor? Or is ambition and avarice, adulation, baseness, covetousness, the thirst for riches, indifference concerning the means of rising and enriching, the contempt of principle, the spirit of party and of faction the motive and principle that governs?

—John Adams in February of 1805, quoted in John Adams by David McCullough

The question is, do we have the fortitude to meet our current challenges and keep moving ever-closer to the ideal?