One way to explain the moral panics of our day: a society governed primarily by old, rich white men of European descent apprehends an economy driven by single, working moms, weighed down by unemployed single men and traumatized by the reckless mass incarceration of the poor.
Their imagined community is obsolete to an increasingly multiracial, multicultural and anti-heterosexist majority. Quite simply, the numbers do not support their story of self. (Not that they ever did.)
Meanwhile, this ruling minority are also experiencing a crisis of faith, as their religion, high finance, keeps failing to pull a rabbit out of the hat. Thus, perhaps, a great deal of panic. From Wall Street to Main Street and back.