If the boomers had not freaked out in the 1960s would we be living in the Jetsons style future today?
Of course this raises the question of whether it was their freaking out was what caused the change or if events like the JFK assassination and Vietnam caused the freak out, which were not events in their control.
Either way I see a lot of value to the way American culture was in the 1950s and question the boomers decision to basically tear it all down.
Eh, I think the Boomers freaking out in the 1960's by itself wasn't enough to cause the big change
The Boomer counterculture of the 1960's and 1970's made sense in the context of the time, with the Cold War, the assassination of JFK, and the uproar over Vietnam War and the racial tension of the time. The hyper-conformity of the 1950's and early 1960's seemed to be a pointless waste of time for this generation that grew up being told to "Duck and Cover!" when the Soviets would inevitably drop The Big One and end it all.
Nah, what really caused the change was the double-whammy of the Boomers freaking out in the 1960's and then having a second freak out in the opposite direction during the 1980's. The whole "Yippie to Yuppie" movement was also the main origin point of the Religious Right of the 80's and 90's, and the Neoconservatives as well.
Basically, you had the cynical Generation X seeing the Boomers "sell out" during their latchkey kid childhoods, and Gen X became largely cynical and apathetic as a result.
Meanwhile the Millennials became warped by growing up under Gen X and Late Boomer helicopter parents that coddled them and also grew up seeing Bible-thumping traditionalist nutcases telling them that wearing Halloween costumes and playing video games would send them to eternal damnation and that a vast global network of powerful Satanic pedophile gangs ran TSR, Def Jam Records, Proctor & Gamble, Sony, and the local daycare center.
There's a reason why so many Millennials ended up becoming either SJW's or euphoric fedora man atheists, and a lot of it had to do with the Boomers "selling out" and spearheading the rise of both the Religious Right, and more importantly, the neoconservative and neoliberal movements under Reagan, Clinton, and the Bushes. Part of this was due to the Boomers becoming older and many of them realizing that the counterculture and New Left of the 1960's and 1970's had gone too far and needed to be reined in, but they overdid it when they went from Yippie to Yuppie.
The Boomers started a counterculture movement in the 1960's and then it got out of hand in the 1970's, so they massively over-corrected in the 1980's and 1990's, which was why Gen X ended up as cynical apathetic slackers and the Millennials became utterly broken and dysfunctional to the point of being arguably the most failed generation of Americans in living memory.
