Let's not discount what a good bit of antagonism can do competitively. We were coming out of a war, the scope of which seemed larger to everyone than any before it, and of course the events of that war (Holocaust and the nuclear threat) had a huge part in shaping post-war culture. That whole era up until the early 70s was characterized by antagonism (becoming the Communist threat) in response to which the US had to overcome! America herself had about a hundred years or so after the war for independence until she started to get shit on, and the rest of our history has been manipulation into consolidating federal power and causing everyone to see *America* for something it was never supposed to be. Combine it with the fear, the antagonism, the response to those, and the wartime money/energy machine, and that's a springboard for a shitload of innovation. Back then (we're talking people born in the early part of the 20th century), education was also better, so by the time we get to the post-war period you've got some highly educated minds going to town in a manufacturing-heavy economy that also benefited from stealing some of the best European scientists and bringing them over the pond. Basically, America 'nutted'. After that, it was all telecom, and cultural Marxism, the surveillance state and rabid consumerism. By the end the first woke revolution they called the counter-culture, they were already turning men into women and introducing all of the cultural bullshit that led us to the wave of tolerance that Boomers today see as so intellectual - harkening back to their fucking hippie LSD days and simultaneously acting like a wonderful virtue signaling device.