Is the 60s "counterculture" responsible for a lot todays "alt right?"

[JohnT]

My apologies, I forgot what forum we were in.

Citations that the “Me Generation”…

Me generation

… as they were called in the 1970s, are considered selfish in their totality:

How baby boomers became the most selfish generation

Paul Begala weighs in:

The Worst Generation

Here’s an analysis of Boomer selfishness from a conservative viewpoint:

The Conservative Case Against the Boomers

Even the British recognize the issue:

Baby boomers are the winners who have taken it all – now it’s time they gave...

Thomas Wolfe explored this idea back in 1976 in his essay The Me Decade and the Third Great Awakening which I haven’t read in 30 years at least (until now, that is, tbf), but his general theses was that America was so wealthy that the old-style communal politics was dead, allowing people to focus on themselves instead of society.

He also goes into a lot of drug hooey, but it was Thomas Wolfe in the 70s. Let me quote and tell me this doesn’t sound like intellectual MAGA:

The saga of the Me Decade begins with one of those facts that is so big and so obvious (like the Big Dipper), no one ever comments on it anymore. Namely: the 30-year boom. Wartime spending in the United States in the 1940s touched off a boom that has continued for more than 30 years. It has pumped money into every class level of the population on a scale without parallel in any country in history. True, nothing has solved the plight of those at the very bottom, the chronically unemployed of the slums. Nevertheless, in Compton, California, today it is possible for a family at the very lowest class level, which is known in America today as “on welfare,” to draw an income of $8,000 a year entirely from public sources. This is more than most British newspaper columnists and Italian factory foremen make, even allowing for differences in living costs. In America truck drivers, mechanics, factory workers, policemen, firemen, and garbagemen make so much money—$15,000 to $20,000 (or more) per year is not uncommon—that the word proletarian can no longer be used in this country with a straight face. So one now says lower middle class. One can’t even call workingmen blue collar any longer. They all have on collars like Joe Namath’s or Johnny Bench’s or Walt Frazier’s. They all have on $35 Superstar Qiana sport shirts with elephant collars and 1940s Airbrush Wallpaper Flowers Buncha Grapes and Seashell designs all over them.

He was this close to spitting out the phrase ‘welfare queen’. The appeals to base consumerism is, honestly, shocking - I had forgotten about it when I started this reply. But he also goes into just how Boomer hippies threw themselves into Evangelical Christianity:

What the Urban Young People want from religion is a little Hallelujah! … and talking in tongues! … Praise God! Precisely that! In the most prestigious divinity schools today, Catholic. Presbyterian, and Episcopal, the avant-garde movement, the leading edge, is “charismatic Christianity” … featuring talking in tongues, ululation, visions, holy rolling, and other nonrational, even antirational, practices. Some of the most respectable old-line Protestant congregations, in the most placid suburban settings, have begun to split into the Charismatics and the Easter Christians (“All they care about is being seen in church on Easter”). The Easter Christians still usually control the main Sunday-morning service—but the Charismatics take over on Sunday evening and do the holy roll.

This curious development has breathed new life into the existing Fundamentalists, theosophists, and older salvation seekers of all sorts. Ten years ago, if anyone of wealth, power, or renown had publicly “announced for Christ,” people would have looked at him as if his nose had been eaten away by weevils. Today it happens regularly … Harold Hughes resigns from the U.S. Senate to become an evangelist … Jim Irwin, the astronaut, teams up with a Baptist evangelist in an organization called High Flight … singers like Pat Boone and Anita Bryant announce for Jesus … Charles Colson, the former hardballer of the Nixon administration, announces for Jesus, and the man who is likely to be the next president of the United States, Jimmy Carter, announces for Jesus. Oh Jesus People.

If you need something more academic, I’m sure someone with access to sociological research databases can pull up something.

Regardless, the idea that the Boomers operate from a core of selfishness is not new, it’s not unexplored, and it is a mantle proudly taken up by the generations most outspoken promoter all the way back in 1976.