Stacking mythologies

People my age never actually experienced the 1960's, but have a sort of culturally mythologized version of the shifting landscape of that time. Most Americans around my age were taught a mythological version of 1950's Americana. It was represented as this post-WWII golden age. And the crap that came after it ruined paradise: Walmart, McDonald's, hippies, etc.

So then a lot of these folks came to reject that lionization of the 1950's, to view it as poisonous. They countered with a different mythology, that the 1950's were a time when everyone was racist, when no one was stopping the destruction of the environment, when everything was too expensive, a time of social repression, etc. But they already internalized some of the old myth, and that never really went away. And that includes the reflex against the encroachment of 1960's institutions.

Many of these same people have another myth about Walmart and McDonald's, one born of a 1990's backlash against consumerism. In this myth, Walmart and McDonald's are akin to archetypes of corporate exploitation and race-to-the-bottom capitalism.

The emotional weight of these stacking mythologies worries me. Too many people have taken something with a coherent economic history and mythologized it into a locust swarm. Walmart and McDonald's really did spread very rapidly in the 1960's, for reasons that we actually can know a whole lot about. Instead of trying to learn the real reasons for this, which might be important, they already have their explanation: it's because these are corrupting forces, and they spread across a virgin landscape.

Myths don't always leave much room for nuance, and when you start stacking them on top of each other, there's even less.