>The corruption of US society began when the suit-and-tie 'fab four' so heavily featured in the media became maggot-infested hippies and pied-pipered a generation into degeneracy.
This is hardly correct.
The hippie movement is not inherently degenerate, so much as rather naive.
Much in "official" American society at that time was clearly wrong, and this is missed by very online frens who only yearn back for elements of life that were good but undervalued by hippies.
The Vietnam War in particular was both good and bad… we were right to oppose the evil ideology of communism, but the way the war was fought and who fought it left much to be desired.
The somewhat naive social activism of the hippies was appropriate by the much more detestable New Left.