Institutions: What are they good for?

I've been thinking a lot about institutions. The institution of marriage. Religious institutions. Educational institutions. Social institutions. Government institutions. Most people praise and honor institutions in the abstract but not when they interfere with personal desire. Take for instance marriage; most people feel marriage is a sacred institution. How many people voted for Trump because of the SCOTUS position and the dissonance of the Obergefell ruling (gay marriage)? Yet, half of marriages (hetero ones) end in divorce. The abstract of marriage is sacred; but half of us recognize it isn't as simple or desirable as that. Take religion; most people label themselves as "spiritual" and want the right to go to church, whether or not they actually go. Religious values matter, right? Be nice. Love one another. Give to charity. Except for when we are anonymous, when we can be rude or snide. And don't forget when religion becomes a club, a cultural hallmark that has nothing to do with spirituality or Jesus, God, Allah, Buddha, or whatever. In this case, we honor the "church" as a religious institution but we have trouble identifying which churches fit that and what the appropriate institutional members look like. Each person thinks it looks like theirs and not someone else's, as though it is a label one can purchase or a badge you can earn. Educational and social institutions, like schools and clubs and communities, are important. Except the voucher movement and online education are fracturing what the educational institution looks like. The same can be said for Facebook and Twitter fracturing the social institutions. If I can take my property taxes to any school or if higher education is out of reach for many then is education even an institution? Politicians control much of what we teach anyway, so it might legitimately just be an extension of the state. Social institutions of all types are collapsing - malls, social clubs, political organizations. Kid participate in competitive sports over community sports and mom and dad shop online rather than shopping together. We can't even go to the pharmacy without alcohol being sold, so almost every social occasion is lubricated and intoxicated. (Some religious groups excepted of course, but see the previous paragraph....) Government institutions include local, state, federal levels as well as the three federal branches (executive, legislative, and judicial). Also included is the right to vote and the right of free speech/free press and the right to jurisprudence. Read any news story or talk politics for 5 minutes and the damage to our perceptions of a government for the people, by the people, and of the people is shocking. Citizens were so disgusted in November of 2016 they just skipped voting. Skipped it. Or skipped the primaries that chose the final two candidates. Or maybe life just got in the way - I won't say every person skipped voting out of protest. That is self reflection and not for me to point fingers. We do know that voter ID laws and gerrymandering have skewed the right to vote and now POTUS wants an election commission. POTUS wants to limit the press and most people ridicule the media, rightly and wrongly, but never promote accountability or praise. The poor and people of color know that the law works against them. Red states are attacking blue cities and the federal government can't even agree if we need access to health care. (Cue Marie Antoinette "Let them eat cake" or as John Cornyn said, "Let them choose not to have healthcare".) Citizens do not trust nor do the believe in their government to act FOR them. So if all of these institutions are failing then what are they good for? Do we want them as a society or no? I think this is a legitimate question to ask ourselves. As much as I would like to slap a big TRUMP on this decay, it started a long time ago. Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers? McCarthyism? 1929? I am not sure when we forgot to pledge our lives, our fortunes, our sacred honor to each other in favor of the pursuit of happiness but somehow we got things mixed up and our institutions suffered for it. We better decide pretty quickly what they are good for and stand up for them without fear and without recrimination based on a foundation that strengthens institutions not weakens them.