It's an interesting time in the shining city on the hill, as the world can see. This isn't an accidental executive -- when a preponderance of hundreds of millions have to cast their vote, the verdict is never not meaningful.
At the end of the sixteenth century, the travelling theatre in England changed. People now had to pay to get in. (This resulted in a few brawls.) The theatre started to be staged in guild halls and commercial centers, and the audience strained to show as many outward signs of wealth as they possibly could. In the well-told tale, this has a lot to do with the Reformation.
If you believe that the having of money and power are good in themselves, and sufficient for the devotion of a life's work, you will make a certain kind of world. In a prosperous society, this ostentatious flaunting of wealth and power might seem like an effective mechanism for keeping the factories churning and the trucks of frozen hamburgers rolling. But correlation is not causation. And when even the philosophers become pragmatic about the relationship between civic ideals and industrial prosperity, the proposition that life is a game, with the goal being to acquire wealth and powerful positions, and that success in this game writes both the rules of the game and the meaning of the game, begins to sink its deeper roots among the hundreds of millions.
Ground yourself in the truth of your being each day, and you will come to know the character of the times.