I'm very sorry for your grandfather @Interfearance, life is fragile.
You didn't ask me for advice or opinion, but you do indeed sound like you have a lot of anger pinned up, understandably so. Go mourn your grandfather, go be there for your family, trust me they need you. Go hug your grandmother (I'm sure she's going through a lot right now). I haven't been able to go home in nearly 2 years now, I would give anything right now to be able to hug my grandmother for just 30 seconds, she's in her 80's now and looked after me my whole childhood. We should never take family or loved ones for granted.
As for this country, I don't necessarily believe it's falling apart, it's just incredibly divided and until regular people regain their ability for listening and to have dialogue, it will never get better. So there's a lot the individual can do still, but to despair or to blame is seldom a viable way for a bright future, quite the contrary. If this year proved anything to us, is that things can always get worse, we could be in Venezuela or NK right now, yet we're sitting on our sofas, in air conditioned rooms blaming the world for everything that happens through our expensive smart phones.
Growing up, I had the fortune and opportunity of listening to chatter by a lot of old people. They talked about wars, famine, the horror's of fascist and communist governments in mid 20th century Europe and even though I didn't live through it, I'm thankful for this second hand absorption of appreciation and knowledge. My grandfather would say that as a child, he couldn't wait for Christmas because he would always get a new pair of shoes, and my mother would say that as a child she couldn't wait for Christmas because she would always get a chocolate bar. Can we even fathom that nowadays? A life where you only get a pair of shoes a year, or a generation later you're lucky if you get a candy bar per year?
Nowadays, many of our struggles is not due to too little, but due to too much. Too much technology exposure, too much information, too much politics, too much hate, too much finger pointing, too much 24 hour news cycle, too much materialism and too little time spent on things that matter or on self betterment. Many people I know haven't seen the sun in months and spend their days refreshing the news, no wonder we're all depressed.
As you think, you become. We gotta be strong and build a better tomorrow, dont wait for 25.