There's nothing wrong with being prepared, as long as you're smart about it (i've got prolly fifty pounds of beans and rice slowly killing my countertop right now, just in case I need it, and I've got some water stored up as well), but actually it goes back a bit longer than that. There was a study back in the day that found that use of words like "crisis" in news reporting went up sharply after the Soviet Union collapsed.

And I can't talk. I fell hook, line, and stinker, for the WMD bullshit, although to be fair, if I'd been Hussein back then, I would have bent over and taken it from the U.S. rather than kick the post-9/11 hornet's nest...