It seems to me less that the "rhetoric" has changed, than that the set of people who use bitcoin has simply greatly expanded to individuals with increasingly less revolutionary ways of interpreting the currency. The people in it from 3 years ago still have the same beliefs. The people in it from 3 months ago are digging it because it's more popular among their colleagues, and they have to justify it somehow. "Lower fees" is the only thing they can come up with.