Barbara Tuckman is more famous for writing the Guns of August, but she also wrote the the Proud Tower[0] about the (European) world in the 25 years leading up to WWI, and in the concluding chapter she talks about how before the war the people thought they were good, they were proud of the society they had built, but that didn't survive the war, and it /never/ came back at least of Europe. And I mean the book was written in 1996, so any memories of the war are both eclipsed by WWII and burried with a few old people.

I don't think the social capital shifted so much in the US, certainly there are more people being administrators than there was before, but notice how much people like Elon Musk, or the flowers left outside Apple Stores when Steve Jobs died.

[0] https://www.amazon.com/Proud-Tower-Portrait-Before-1890-1914...