Many 2020-22 Americans, who consider themselves more sophisticated than their 1950s counterpart, nonetheless embraced Coronamania’s nonsensical lockdowns, school closures, masks, testing, and vaxxes.

What cultural changes caused people to go from the radical, “anti-Establishment” 1960s and cynical Watergate/post-Vietnam/“Do your own thing” 1970s to the gullible, government-believing/medical expert-worshiping 2020s?

As usual, I’ll begin with a contextualizing, slice-of-life story; two prosaic stories this time, which occurred fifty years apart.