Remember the “Generation Gap”? In the sixties, some white kids and their parents lost the ability to communicate with each other. Driven by fundamental demographics (the baby boom was taking control of its purchasing power), the culture felt charged and changing. Between fashion, music, the Civil Rights movement and anti-war protests and changing hairstyles, things got squirrelly to the point that the military was used to maintain order.
In those days, culture was pretty monolithic. Three television networks, two political parties, one kind of bread, three car companies, clear racial boundaries, low divorce rates, factory jobs and no computers or Internet. A broad based Generation Gap was easy to see because, outside a very limited range of possibility, a thing was either mainstream or it wasn’t.
It’s not so easy to describe the situation today. The media is fractured and audiences are smaller. Commonality and the sense of national community are under constant assault.
