Gravitas

The entire Discourse leading up to the Iraq war was just theater, of course. The war was inevitable and the Decider had already Decided.

Still "we" at least took, or pretended to take, the view that going to war was a serious endeavor with serious consequences.

 

A lot of that was, in part, self-important people imagining that newspaper columnists were the real protagonists of history. This was serious because they were serious people writing serious columns about serious things. 

Still it was seen as serious.

Decades later, it is all just pew pew pew.