Yes, 50s culture was not hip. I spent most of my time while in college studying, working odd jobs, being on the ski team, and chasing girls. We had a couple of leftist agitators on campus. One, Mary Frances Berry, went on to a long career of SJW activities and is still a darling of the left. I was too busy to pay much attention. I remember it as a delightful time.

When I applied for Navy OCS in 1954, the recruiters asked me who Ho Chi Minh was. I didn’t have a clue. In fact I knew little about the USSR, China, and Communism except that they were trying to take over the world. I learned a lot about those issues in 13 years on active duty in the Navy. But my life in the Navy was insulated from what was happening in civilian culture. Once again I was pretty busy. We were in the heat of the Cold War, then Vietnam. Amazing how that works. If you stay busy at productive activities you aren’t dependent on cultural zeitgeists to have a satisfying life.

The cultural changes that occurred so swiftly seem to me to be the result of avant-garde books, art, and music which was opposed to the conformity and uptight attitudes about sex of the times. Those things drowned out the traditional values that I grew up with. Music on the radio and records, Playboy magazine, books by Allan Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac, Elvis Presley’s gyrations, the Beatles, and much more swept through the culture of the young. I was aware of it, but barely, because I was too busy doing other things.

We are what we are because we believe our way works the best for the most people – because we observe the fruits of “progressive” policies and see that they have victims more often than they have beneficiaries – but also, and more fundamentally, because we start from a position of respect for the individual and believe that all else should flow from that respect. When we succumb to the tactics of identity group grievance because they’re more satisfying, because the other side “deserves it,” or even because those tactics seem to be working for the other side… it’s risky. That’s all. We might choose to do it anyway but we shouldn’t do it with our eyes closed.

J.J. Says:
August 14th, 2017 at 10:58 pm

Huxley: “Granted not every boomer turned on, tuned in and dropped out, or however that might be formulated, but quite a lot of us did in spite off a steady diet of Mom, Apple Pie and 4th of July in our formative years.”

I graduated college in 1954. Spent the next 13 years as a Navy pilot. My last assignment was recruiting Naval Aviation Candidates from northern California colleges. It was as if I had been asleep for 12 years and awakened in a new, strange country. Having “Better Red Than Dead” or “Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh” chanted in my face by fellow citizens was like being doused with a bucket of ice water. How did my country change so quickly? …”

I’ve been trying to think of how the process which you describe came about, and it may take someone older than Huxley or I, or a bit younger than you, to do so convincingly.

To some extent I think it was part of that “ruthless criticism of everything” tactic meeting the ideal conditions of a boring and somewhat dysfunctional prosperity.

How was it that what was objectively speaking nonetheless one of civilization’s high points became the object of such general suspicion and scorn?

In part, some of the more Joan Baez-ian Ticky-Tack criticisms may have been justified. AM radio played a relentless string of corruptly formulated top 40 hits. The choice of “wingtip or penny loafers?” was taken as a serious social statement. Wiki refreshes a 4 year old’s memory by reminding us that the television line-up was 7 or 8 Warner Brothers back lot set cowboy shows recycling each others scripts, and how many ever Surfside-Sixy Hawaiian Eye detective shows.

Take something semi-worthwhile, fetishize it, and then flog both it and the society at large to death with it.

Everyone, other than guffawing prematurely pot-bellied morons sexually fixated on their 57 Chevy’s, was sick of the ritual culture. Everybody wanted not to breathe Pittsburgh’s air. It was not a big step to convincing young would-be sophisticates that Capitalism was itself responsibility for the relentless commodification of everything, everyone, and every idea.

The beauty of a leafy suburb could become a deadly boring sterility in the noonday sun for a housewife at loose ends.

Kurt Vonnegut’s cynical nihilism looked like genius.

I’m pretty sure that the relative explosion in the popularity of country music among certain elements of the population was just one of the avenues which some selected to temporarily escape from the ‘machine’, as it was described at the time.

A world of suburban brick ranch houses, growing families, and jobs for the taking, looks pretty good from down in the social justice neurosis hell-hole into which solidarity pimping sensitives and mentally ill political activists have dragged us. But while the material goods were in fact good, there was lots wrong with the common currency of the mass culture of the time.

Jack L Warner and Lyndon Johnson on the one hand, or Obama and commissar Lena Dunham on the other.

There has to be another life-way alternative. And there obviously is. But maybe not in a ‘that’s how we care for each other’ asylum that includes them in, or takes them seriously as political and moral peers.

Uh, yeah? Or did I miss something? Because you seem to be including yourself when you talk about Dems here.

You assumed I was a mindless Democrat because I positioned myself as not “one of the flock” and challenged the “All Democrats are Evil, all Republicans are Saints” posts above.
This is the kind of us-versus-them thinking that I’m pointing out. You are assuming because I’m critiquing certain behaviors on “your side” (our side?) — which both sides are exhibiting right now, that I’m negative or hostile. Far be it.

Well, no. What I said was that your side, the Left, is the one demonizing us in order to justify committing violence against us. We haven’t been doing that to them, though that’s starting to change.

My point is that “us” and “them” are not homogeneous binary sides. That hostile words polarize and drive reasonable people to unreasonable positions.

Sure, and “us” and “them” eventually become rigid and then fracture.

You’ve accused me of supporting violence, when in fact my literal words are denouncing and challenging violence. Because you assumed that my critique of strategy was a denouncement of principle.

No, I said you need to be giving your spiel to the other side, not us.

As an open-minded conservative, what would be your response if you went to a liberal blog and were treated like that? Wouldn’t you naturally assume that all liberals are angry and unwelcoming people?

Yes and that would just confirm what I already knew about them. I’ve hung out on liberal blogs, been the token conservative, etc. Plenty of my friends and family are liberal.

Assuming that I were an open-minded liberal and was coming here to, say, get the other side of the story — what would be my natural response to such an attack?

It’s funny. ‘Somebody’ came here a while back, being the friendly liberal guy, open-minded and chipper. Within a couple of days, he was trying to neo to ban me for being a Nazi. Iow, the scenario you came up with has already been tried here, and we see how it turns out.

lol! Sean, do you think I’m a democrat?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not offended or angry because I know (more or less) what you see.

You assumed I was a mindless Democrat because I positioned myself as not “one of the flock” and challenged the “All Democrats are Evil, all Republicans are Saints” posts above.

This is the kind of us-versus-them thinking that I’m pointing out. You are assuming because I’m critiquing certain behaviors on “your side” (our side?) – which both sides are exhibiting right now, that I’m negative or hostile. Far be it.

My point is that “us” and “them” are not homogeneous binary sides. That hostile words polarize and drive reasonable people to unreasonable positions.

You’ve accused me of supporting violence, when in fact my literal words are denouncing and challenging violence. Because you assumed that my critique of strategy was a denouncement of principle.

As an open-minded conservative, what would be your response if you went to a liberal blog and were treated like that? Wouldn’t you naturally assume that all liberals are angry and unwelcoming people? Assuming that I were an open-minded liberal and was coming here to, say, get the other side of the story – what would be my natural response to such an attack?

I graduated college in 1954. Spent the next 13 years as a Navy pilot. My last assignment was recruiting Naval Aviation Candidates from northern California colleges. It was as if I had been asleep for 12 years and awakened in a new, strange country. Having “Better Red Than Dead” or “Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh” chanted in my face by fellow citizens was like being doused with a bucket of ice water. How did my country change so quickly? The civics and American history lessons were apparently being drowned out by the counter culture. Who cared about patriotism when you could feel smarter than your parents and be cool. Rejection of the values that allowed the U.S. to win WWII were proceeding at an astounding pace. The few students that would talk with me quoted their Profs as sources for their knowledge that the Viet Cong were “agrarian reformers,” that the U.S. was after Vietnam’s oil, that Ho Chi Minh was a great democratic reformer, etc. Maybe you didn’t have any such profs, but most California schools were loaded with them. Additionally, drugs and sex seemed to be an irresistible draw to bring people into the anti-American movement.

Many young people jumped into the movement with glee. Maybe you were one of them. Those who were inherently open minded eventually moved out. Like Neo, like Vanderleun, like Bookworm, like Michael Medved, and many more.