Since the 1980's we have been drifting into a selfish emo-world of sentiment and irrationality

From The rise and fall of rationality in language by Marten Scheffer, et al.

The post-truth era has taken many by surprise. Here, we use massive language analysis to demonstrate that the rise of fact-free argumentation may perhaps be understood as part of a deeper change. After the year 1850, the use of sentiment-laden words in Google Books declined systematically, while the use of words associated with fact-based argumentation rose steadily. This pattern reversed in the 1980s, and this change accelerated around 2007, when across languages, the frequency of fact-related words dropped while emotion-laden language surged, a trend paralleled by a shift from collectivistic to individualistic language.

In other words, the Age of Enlightenment Classical Liberal world (empiricism, logic, reason, human universalism) peaked in the 1980s.  Since then we have been declining into emo-land where self-centered emotionalism and sentiment trump facts and reality.  The data says so.