1950s Aeternum (Because JFK Lives, Nixon Elected, No Vietnam, Etc)
This is the thing where something changes in the 60s as mentioned in my few examples, and as a result the Long 50s doesn't end and it keeps on going. There's no Hippies or long hair or adoption of casual dress and casual mores, Rock and Roll remains whatever it was if it doesn't just go away and give way to Swing Revival and Bossa Nova, everyone keeps dressing in suits and it's season 1 of Mad Men forever. Rather than growing long hair, smoking weed, criticizing the establishment and changing society, those young people all join the peace core and resemble the Clever boys.
That thing comes in different varieties and with some elements there and some left out of what I mentioned (and there's more than what I mentioned) but you get the idea. The problem with it is that it ignores the fact that things change and those changes were already socially underway, and they didn't just come into being because JFK got his brains blown out or we got involved in a quagmire in Southeast Asia. Casual dress was already coming, more open and understanding social mores were coming, Hippies were already evolving into a thing, the boomer youth is going to be open to things and change, music was changing, and social developments were arising just like they did because they were there to address the bulls**t and false assumption of utopia of the 1950s and the years before. Little Jimmy is still going to grow up with long hair, listening to rock music, smoking marijuana on occasion and thinking of changing the world; it's just that he may not go into protesting the Vietnam war and joining the Weather Underground, and he could remain Flower Power rather than "By any means necessary".
Save JFK, have Nixon elected, avoid Vietnam, etc, but you are still going to see the same sort of 60s progression and changes play out. It's just that you can avoid the extremeness of some of them, mostly where it concerns the shift that occurred in the OTL 60s of the optimistic view of anything being possible and changing things to improve them to make them the America the boomers were told America was (but which it wasn't being in reality) to the more pessimistic view that the system was totally flawed and corrupt and beyond redemption. Once the latter view came into being, because Johnson kept sending men to die in a lost cause and blacks kept being denied civil rights and the police kept bashing the brains in of peaceful demonstrators and the list of reasons go on, that is when you get things like the Weather Underground and left wing conspiracy theories that the CIA killed Kennedy and calls for violent reaction rising to challenge civil disobedience as the method for change, and so on. To have something like a Long 50s continue requires a different set of changes and circumstances, and ones specifically designed with the intent to have that be the case or at least earlier than 1959.
This is the thing where something changes in the 60s as mentioned in my few examples, and as a result the Long 50s doesn't end and it keeps on going. There's no Hippies or long hair or adoption of casual dress and casual mores, Rock and Roll remains whatever it was if it doesn't just go away and give way to Swing Revival and Bossa Nova, everyone keeps dressing in suits and it's season 1 of Mad Men forever. Rather than growing long hair, smoking weed, criticizing the establishment and changing society, those young people all join the peace core and resemble the Clever boys.
That thing comes in different varieties and with some elements there and some left out of what I mentioned (and there's more than what I mentioned) but you get the idea. The problem with it is that it ignores the fact that things change and those changes were already socially underway, and they didn't just come into being because JFK got his brains blown out or we got involved in a quagmire in Southeast Asia. Casual dress was already coming, more open and understanding social mores were coming, Hippies were already evolving into a thing, the boomer youth is going to be open to things and change, music was changing, and social developments were arising just like they did because they were there to address the bulls**t and false assumption of utopia of the 1950s and the years before. Little Jimmy is still going to grow up with long hair, listening to rock music, smoking marijuana on occasion and thinking of changing the world; it's just that he may not go into protesting the Vietnam war and joining the Weather Underground, and he could remain Flower Power rather than "By any means necessary".
Save JFK, have Nixon elected, avoid Vietnam, etc, but you are still going to see the same sort of 60s progression and changes play out. It's just that you can avoid the extremeness of some of them, mostly where it concerns the shift that occurred in the OTL 60s of the optimistic view of anything being possible and changing things to improve them to make them the America the boomers were told America was (but which it wasn't being in reality) to the more pessimistic view that the system was totally flawed and corrupt and beyond redemption. Once the latter view came into being, because Johnson kept sending men to die in a lost cause and blacks kept being denied civil rights and the police kept bashing the brains in of peaceful demonstrators and the list of reasons go on, that is when you get things like the Weather Underground and left wing conspiracy theories that the CIA killed Kennedy and calls for violent reaction rising to challenge civil disobedience as the method for change, and so on. To have something like a Long 50s continue requires a different set of changes and circumstances, and ones specifically designed with the intent to have that be the case or at least earlier than 1959.
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