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.