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Sociology isn't my forte but I'll give it a try.
I haven't see anything that would say that western thought is in decline as it is in stagnation. In fact, I'm not even sure how thought can be in decline except at the rate of its production. I'm not so willing to give a Hegelian explanation of Art and War since it appears that we still have a strong abundance of cultural reactionaries (the FCC is probably stronger than ever after the passing of the Broadcast Decency Enforcement Act back in 2005) and we're all aware of the war (or war-like production) that we are in currently.
And I don't see how the shifting of political authority or new political alliances are the cause of the cultural malaise.
Instead, I blame post-modernism, or really the notion that we are in the tail end of anything as opposed to the beginning of something new. Many people, even politically, view the world in a post-post-post-modern light that mainfests itself in different ways; like a reluctance to conviction (artistically, this can be seen as the feeling that "everything has already been down" but also has politcal consequences), fleeing from truth all together in sake of belief (more people are becoming religious more than ever), a reliance on the past to describe modern affairs (my experience in the philosophy field has shown me that reliance on self-discovered philosophy is preferred less than referencing older philosophers... this really sucks the conviction out of philosophy and really prevents it from having the power to leak out into society), and a desire to deconstruct over constuction (this mostly seen in art and philosophy).
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