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Yeah, as mentioned before, many of these "decades" don't quite match the calendar.
The 50s to me run from the end of World War II to 1957 or so. And are all about the United States dealing with its new position as the most powerful nation in the world, the burgeoning communist "threat" and a booming economy.
'57 to '63 is kind of a gray area as the Civil Rights movement starts to fracture the perceived conformity and "go along get along" tone of the '50s but the sixties don't really get going until the Vietnam War gets added to that mix and as a nation we start to struggle with the fact that maybe the government is an active source of wrongdoing. Then the sixties last until 1973 or so when the wind down of the Vietnam War eliminates the bete noir of the counterculture forcing it to see if it can survive all on its own.
Combined with proof that the government isn't to be trusted and economic malaise the '70s really only lasts 5 or 6 years until 1982 or so when Reagan policies really begin to creep in and AIDS lays waste to the ideas of relatively riskfree promiscuity.
But that's my view of it all. The actual "pop cultural" artifacts of each era are secondary byproducts to the larger social phenomena producing.
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