I notice similar trends in other countries too: e.g. UK and recently Italy.

My pet theory is that people are becoming more and more selfish: countries are a lot more xenophobic than before, everyone bitches about the government one day while at the same time doing nothing to change it (a kind of resignation), the media fosters even more hatred and fights, people from high social classes don't want to give up anything to help those in lower classes (and I am not talking the excess money... I am talking things they'll actually have a utility for). And the list goes on.

So my pet theory is that this is the result of being 60+ years away from a major world war. For two reasons:

1- During a war, the hot headed people who are always looking for a fight, got a real fight they can go to. A lot of soldiers died in those wars so if the army has more hot headed people than average, more will die in proportion.

2- The memory of how much worse things can go is not live in anyone's mind anymore. Well, maybe old grannies. :) But say if you were 20 during the war, you are not going for 90! This raises the sense of entitlement and the sense that we are not in this "together", but that I only need to look after myself.

3- But most of all, during a war or in time of real crisis, humans show their good side. Once nobody has anything, people help each other: you help me rebuild my house, I help you rebuild yours, for example. This idea that you need to lose a little bit of your goods in order to get a lot more back is disappearing. Look at the whole: "Not in my backyard". One area doesn't want a nuclear reactor, another doesn't want a highway street too close, some don't want a high speed train, and others don't want the rubbish dumps... and the end result is a paralysed government where nothing can be done, and people complaining (without realising they are part of the problem).

4- We are living in a capitalistic society, and this increases people's sense that they need only to look after themselves, to look at everything as "what I pay, what I get". Of course this selfishness is what powers people to work more or harder: it's part of our nature and imho capitalist beat communism because it took it into account and tried to harness it. But still, this is the end result.

So basically I think this strong sense of entitlement and selfishness is the result of living in a capitalistic society without any major crisis, where people are told day in and day out that someone is taking away something from them and too look after themselves (immigrants and jobs, bankers and money, government and freedom, etc...).

And I doubt anything short of a disruption will make people wake up from this spiral. That could be a war (in your own soil, a far away war like Vietnam or Iraq is not quite the same). Basically you need to let it take its course, like a virus: people will get more and more selfish, more and more aggressive, until eventually we have a war/crisis and people finally understand with their own mind why shooting an immigrant (for example) is stupid and an abomination.

Than that generation and maybe the next will have been immunised against this happening again... until those people die and society is defenceless again and the story starts anew.

Sorry, a bit cynical. :(