Right after lead and Miley Cyrus
While I am sympathetic to what you are saying, I don't know if it's necessarily true.
Instead, what I think is happening is our world is becoming increasing complex, globalized, multi-polar, and interconnected. We try to manage that world via our political processes. The problem is human brains are not designed for a complex, globalized, multi-polar and interconnected world. Our brains are designed to work in hunter-gatherer tribes of approximately 150 people where the most complicated things in our environment are rocks, goats, and trees.
It's little wonder our political processes and our political rhetoric are as clumsy and stupid as they are. We are simply not nuerologically designed for this. That we do as well as we do is something of a minor miracle.
Really? I thought it was the only cause. (The more you know)
I don't think we can blame politics for that.
It's POSSIBLE (although evidence for such hypotheses is weak) Mass Media Culture, which provides many distorted depictions of reality and the consequences of dangerous actions, can be blamed for deceiving Michgan teenagers into thinking imbibing bleach would not seriously harm them. But it could be that some teenagers will find a way to do stupid self-destructive things, no matter steps we take to dissuade them.
Miley is also a major cause of unemployment in the construction industry....;-D....
Wow!!