Chomsky is known for his expertise in recent US history.
If we were to guess who, you or Chomsky, doesn't know recent US history it isn't close.
Anybody can read and assimilate books. Many of the cable news pundits are experts in US history and detailed political history. That is their job. They are out in the thick of it.
My point about Chomsky is that his observations are not that profound on advertising. The book Propaganda from the 20s-30s pretty much woks it all out. Chomsky is not original on this topic. What is your obsession with Chomsky as truth?
Chomsky implies it is govt promoted with intent, that is mass advertising. I see no evidence of that. From my long experience in technology what capital does is look at changing demographics and lifestyles and finds ways to create products and services for it. That is a bit of as simplification because advertising and products themselves affect cultural changes. Obviously the Internet and cell phones and now wireless devices that rival past computers.
It is a complex dynamic not reduced to a single simple causal effect. The analysis is obvious to me, I spent years dealing with complex systems. And observing and being part of complex social dynamics. You can not learn it from a book.
Ivory tower academics are isolated observers. On the west coast 'east coast intellectuals' refers to Ivy League academics who pronounce morality from afar.
To the OP. The cultural revolution 0f the 50s-70s overturned the orderly and conventional and conformist American culture. It was a movement that rejected conventional work and responsibility. That is where what is today began.
Middle class kids due to post war economics did not have to immediately get a job and start a family. Adulthood was postponed.
Communes. The Summer Of Love. Haight Ashbury and hippies. Woodstock.
It began the phenomenon of delayed adulthood and now the idea of perpetual childhood.
As to the truth of it, I was part of it. I spent most of the 70's as a social dropout. Sex and intoxication.
