I think what a lot of people fail to understand is how the "big rift" opened in America during the latter half of the 1960s. Today, we think we see many different rifts, but like the Grand Caynyon, it has side tributaries, branches and trancepts, many bigger than other major canyons or gulfs elsewhere, but ultimately, it's all traced back as part of the same thing.

All the various kinds of strife in the 60's were both new, and simultaneously... not. Bits 'n pieces of everything going on wasn't utterly 100% unique in terms of: "History might not repeat, but it rhymes..."

Ultimately, WHAT WAS different, was an entirely new axis, cultural metric, or "front" opened up.

Hippies vs. Squares.

Which quickly came to mean, "Cool kids vs. Mainstream Americans."

And, Pop-Culture, Hollywood, the Media, and the press KNEW IMMEDIATELY, they had to be on the Cool Kids side, no matter what. Not just for ideological reasons, but their livelihoods depended on it. And as such, "being cool" started meaning "opposed to normal mainstream American values."

If one looks at culture, even relatively newer phenomenon that soan this divide, like "Rock n' Roll" pre-split, the things that were getting side-eye or outright criticism, Elvis, Chubby Checkers, the early "Ed Sullivan" Beatles... whatever was supposed to be "unseemly" is..  just laughably quaint, even by "Square standards."

These are guys in suits & ties, or at least a jacket, performing with something of a "Big Band" format, or a talk show intermission act.

This is why the the Weather Underground, the New World Liberation Front, the Symbionese Liberation Army, many other lesser known radical-Left terror groups & individual copycats, performed over 2,500 bombings in just a year and a half, between 1971 & 1972.

In broad strokes, the broader reason was obvious, what these rad-Left assholes watched in the late 60's, they just assumed: "Oh my God, this HAS to be it!" and figured it was the watershed sea-change moment that was the wave they could ride to revolution. When it really was just the earthquake and the crack in America of the fault-line between "Hippies vs. Squares" opening up.

And, as "Cool Kids" fell into other indulgent things, moving into Disco, Punk, Metal, Cocaine, Club54 type scenes... the rad-Left, lost their shit. And set out on desperation strategies hoping that bombings, killing police, bank robberies, etc. Would provide the accelerationist match to get the momentum, that they never had, back.

One can see this in the failure and retreat of the Civil Rights movement. The marchers in their Sundy Best, suits, ties, a fedora, a dress... or at least dress pants & button down shirt, if that was the best they had, getting the fire hoses, dogs, & billy clubs, was sobering. And evoked sympathy, "All they want is to live like us."

And, among other pathologies that subverted the Civil Rights Movement, and the Urban Democrat wing got the plantations running again, this time for votes, using welfare, instead of for King Cotton & whips, the power of the "Cool Kids" was a big part of it.

Before the rift... you could have the absolute most left wing member of the American Communist Party, and I dunno, the local John Birch Society chapter President  sitting next to each other on a train. And unless they help up reading materials that gave away their political leanings, you would never know.

Both men are shaved, wearing suits & ties, have a hat, a cigarette, and open the door for ladies.

That was GLUE.