Be aware I am leading you on, but would you say that was more due to the spread of alternative ideas on social media (on covid and lockdowns, gender politics, race politics, geopolitics), distrust in the political system (politicians not being true to what they promised during campaign time) or something completely different?

I'd say it's largely due to the coming of age during the Internet era where there is much more visibility into the thoughts and inner workings of our political leaders and public institutions.

Plus some notable milestones:

2001 Patriot Act - very unpatriotic and anti-american

2008 mortgage crisis - huge bailouts for large corps, nothing for regular joes

2016 election of Trump - reality TV president, collapse of "norms"

2020+ covid response - unprepared and poorly handled, contradictions and backpedaling abound

Probably lots more I'm omitting but it's much harder to make the case we're #1 these days without adding caveats and qualifiers.