Last week’s issue of The New Yorker contained an Evan Osnos article about the devolution of Greenwich, Connecticut from a place dominated culturally by modest, public-spirited Yankee capitalists to a bastion of swaggering Trumpism. The article lays out the symptoms at some length, but does not really attempt to explain why it occurred. I will try to do that for you.
It’s not a coincidence that Osnos finds that the shift started to occur in the late sixties and early seventies. It’s a symptom of the libertarian bent of the boomers, which in turn was the product of genuine social and cultural grievances, unprecedented affluence, and the absence of an overwhelming formative crisis such as World War II or the Great Depression that compelled the entire community to pull together. The positive element of the boomer individual freedom agenda was support for the civil rights movement, gay rights, and feminism against perceived oppression from traditionally privileged groups. The darker side was disregard for the interests of the less affluent; except to the extent that they could be realistically viewed as victims of the culture war, they were held to be responsible for their own misfortune, and left to sink or swim on their own.
Modesty and team play were out; unbridled self-expression, preening, and contempt for losers came into vogue.
And so, Joe DiMaggio was replaced as an icon by the trash-talking Muhammad Ali, Reggie Jackson, and Joe Namath, and the Bush family was ultimately trounced by Trump. On the whole, we are the worse for it, I’m afraid.