I agree with everything you said but I think one thing that is often overlooked is how the boomers are virtually all lead poisoned. Gen-X and some Millennials as well but the Boomers took the brunt of it. They grew up with lead gas poisoning the air, lead pipes (well, a bigger percentage anyways) poisoning the water, lead tools poisoning the workers, lead bullets poisoning game, and so forth. Lead poisoning does some fucked up stuff to people’s cognitive abilities. The lead problem still exists but the scale of the problem back when the boomers were growing up was on a whole different level.

Exposure to lead can result in a variety of effects upon cognitive functions including deficits in general intellectual functioning, ability to sustain attention on tasks, organization of thinking and behavior, speech articulation, language comprehension and production, learning and memory efficiency, fine motor skills, high activity level, reduced problem solving flexibility and poor behavioral self-control.

https://www.mwph.org/health-services/lead-treatment/poisoning-effects

Also not saying they have an excuse, just saying I think lead poisoning of > 1 sequential generation affected a lot of decisions. Most probably small but all of them adding up to set the stage for our current situation.