I never see anyone mention the most significant revolution in our society that is a central cause of the major changes in the past half-century.
The hereditary elite of America fell apart in the 1960’s.
The cause
The cause was the rise of the officer class in the military in WWII. The U.S. military, which had for nearly a century gotten its officers from Southern military schools, was faced with a massive draft and expansion of the services into the millions. To meet the demand for officers the decision was made to make every college graduate an officer. Only a dozen colleges were for the hereditary elite, so the thousands of other college graduates became a new meritocratic class.
When the new meritocratic leaders from the officer class left the Army, they moved swiftly into the upper ranks of modern commerce. Some moved up the corporate ladder of the 100 largest companies and many others started new businesses that became important.
The few who climbed the corporate ladder replaced the hereditary elite and destroyed the main source of jobs and income for the hereditary elite class. Without the jobs and money the elite provided for their own, the elite fell apart beginning in 1960; it was almost gone by the 1970’s. By 1961 the institution was so weak it could no longer publish the New York Social Register. (See photo.) The Debutante Balls were no longer sponsored by the local elites.
The image on the right is the last NY Social Register published by the elite’s own members. Its contents are interesting. Each person’s home address(es) and phone(s) are listed with the schools they went to and all the private clubs they belong to. Only people listed could buy the register. When traveling the country they usually visited each other.
I personally saw the elite collapse as a Vice President of one of the West Coast’s elite banks. I was told to join a club. (Most clubs still didn’t accept Jews.) Clubs really mattered. The Bank President’s son came to me to ask if it was possible for him to marry his Asian girlfriend (not possible until 1970.)
The consequence
To understand the consequences of the lost hereditary elite, their role as the top social institution must be recognized.
The elite's members were at the top of all American institutions including print and electronic media, the courts and the law, the military, the civic organizations (IOOF, Lions, Elks, Masons) and even the major Protestant religions. The civic organizations were hit first in the 1950’s and were ghosts by 1960. The major Protestant religions were hit next (Unitarians, Presbyterians, Methodists, and Episcopals) and were empty pews by 1965. Catholics and Jews were never allowed membership in the hereditary elite, so they didn’t suffer the same fate.
The second largest and most powerful institution in America was the labor unions. Being almost entirely urban, they replaced the hereditary elite and took over nearly every city in America. The correct name for the public face of the unions is ‘the Democrat Party.’ By 1975, every city with over half a million people in America, was under total control by the local unions; union leaders have run cities to this day.
The third largest institution in America turns out to be ex-felons. The reason ex-felons are important is that they comprise between 7 to 10 million persons, more than half black and they influence young black males. Men become felons before age 20 and prison comprises the bulk of their life experience. Prison life is homogeneous, the most homogeneous experience outside the military.
Prison experience impacts fashion: pants below the butt. It impacts woke values: ‘blacks are systemically oppressed’ and ‘police target blacks’ are prison views of the world. Music since the early 1990s has had a great deal of rap, the sounds of prison life.
I haven’t included the impact of the dissolution of the hereditary elite on education and academia. The elite was never in power outside of the elite schools; Marxism was a main force from before WWII. The ideology was re-invigorated from 1970 onward by Michel Foucualt and Herbert Marcuse.