You seem to have normalised Government shutdowns in a way to cope with it.
But this is not normal, this does not happen in a normal government process.
It is not a signal of a failed state. It is a signal of a failed government. The solution to that is to keep having elections until you get a government that will do the work.
The signal of a failed state is the voters voting this madness in, and approving of it. A snap election in this case would likely result in more of the same. Check out the congressional approval ratings among republicans of their reps. What they are cheering on is absolutely wild.
And in those times, voters are unlikely to defect from parties just because.
Ergo, there's a succession of very weak governments that rapidly collapse.
Which doesn't seem great for governance either. Feels like a perfect system would have a better 'there is no mandate attainable, so no one gets power but a shared government is forced into office for minimum X years' numerical escape hatch.
1980's: 4 shutdowns totaling 2 days
1990's: 3 shutdowns totaling 29 days (21 of those days was when Gingrich as Speaker)
2000's: 0 (9/11 and GWoT unity?)
2010's: 3 shutdowns totaling 54 days
2020's: This one
I guess I would agree they were common but they also weren't severe until Gingrich-ism took over the GOP: putting polarization and partisanship into overdrive.