Naw, this been a long time coming. It's what we call slow moving economic and political development.
Raegen and Thatcher were wrong, new public management was a mistake and "liberalization" really just means "let the finance industry run things - surely what will go wrong?"
So we're fucking up by not changing precedent set, what, 60-70 years ago?
We could compromise and say materialism rots everybody's brains.
I had a dream 15+ years ago where I walked onto a school bus holding a 5ft long tube of fudge striped cookies over my shoulder and Peter Jennings looked up and said "Nice strip of cookies." I was so confused, I woke up and laughed.
A serious answer. That's Peter Jennings, he was the new anchor for ABC world news in the 90's and early 2000's. The picture in question if from 9/11. I remember because it was weird to me as a teenager to see someone smoking on live TV. Later, he died from lung cancer, and he gave a statement about it when he was diagnosed talking about how he smoked for many years and that he had quit for a long time but, in his words, was "weak" on 9/11 and smoked a few cigarettes. I don't know how old you are, but if there was ever a time to be like "Whelp, might as well burn one." it was 9/11.