Call this a pet theory. I’ve been wondering how boomers inherited pure Americana, yet turned into this majority that despised their own children and country, rebelling against their namesake. We already know Fabian socialism was fighting a quiet war over government control since right before the world wars, that the churches were being indoctrinated by Zionism during the same time frame.
What isn’t quite as clear is how the boomers became quasi hedonist/ nihilists which only solidified over time. There’s multiple facets you could point to like the sexual “revolution”, drug use, hippy culture, etc. these however don’t explain NeoConservatism which was/is overwhelmingly supported by Boomers, or how community disappeared overnight during the boomers reign as adults.
I would argue something different, the fallout of communism/ socialism in America created a fallout from tribalism/ community as a second order effect. “Rugged individualism” became nihilistic individualism which neocons embraced in totality, “you are only responsible for yourself, heritage means nothing, blah blah bootstraps”. This was/is the defining creed of the boomer “right”. This is where the “propositional nation” and “creedal nation” nonsense comes from. This is also why the left and right were nearly indistinguishable on immigration where H1Bs and illegal amnesty were actual neocon babies. (Reagan said he would grant amnesty years before the bill and “dem betrayal”, George Sr favored a second wave of amnesty, etc).
So you might think on the flip side of neocon boomers, the neoliberals, that if they were opposing force that they would be the “communal” party. Which is partly true, this is why leftists of the time created the NIMBY laws and why even today the wealthy left lives in overwhelmingly majority white gated neighborhoods. What the neoliberals would not do, however is support Americana, that was their great evil, and the best way to destroy it was “diversity”/ multiculturalism. It is societal nihilism versus individual nihilism.
This also supports why both the boomer left and right despises Nazis in totality and was their unifier. The neocon right sees Nazis as racial socialists, which is in opposition their founding myth of nihilistic individualism. The neoliberal left sees Nazis as racial nationalists, which is in opposition to their founding myth of societal nihilism.
I think this is a solid point. I'd also add that Vietnam was a huge betrayal of the country and in particular boomer men. The betrayers, shockingly, were the Greatest Generation. Kennedy, a GG member despite his youth at the time, was swayed into Vietnam and murdered before he could pull us out. Subsequently we went into a war where 60,000 young men died for nothing and we ultimately lost to the communists.
For context about 7,000+ men died in Iraq and Afghanistan. Vietnam was 10x the amount, and there was a draft. The conflict was just as pointless, if not more so. Hills were taken at huge costs, then given up, just to be retaken again. The Vietnamese side we were fighting for was ruled by a brutal dictator that was making monks self-immolate in protest. The casus belli for the war was a complete lie. Elite kids were able to sit the war out. Etc.
Vietnam for many boomers, especially the kind that were inclined towards hippie stuff, was the point when they realized the system did not care about them. This greatly encouraged nihilistic thinking.
Speaking of Vietnam, guess who trained and armed Ho Chi Man during WWII? How much of America's problems during the last century was because of Interventionism, and continues to be.
Ukrainian nationalists who survive the war with Russia are going to become marauding terrorists pissed that the US and Europe used their country as a pawn.
We armed him after pissing him off at the Paris peace talks in '19/'20, meaning that he turned on us. Thanks, Wilson.
I often wonder just how much of Vietnam being a nightmarish failure was planned over a “happy accident”.
The OSS/CIA was running around Vietnam since immediately after WWII.
We fucking offered Vietnam, on a platter, to the Chinese. They turned it down. That pretty much set up the next 30 years of their story. You tell someone like Bell helicopter that they're going to sell billions over the next few years to the government in war contracts and they'll even help you set it all up.
The imperial playbook runs far deeper than most people realize.
Thich Quan Duc was South Vietnamese...