A lot of boomer behavior and beliefs make sense when you realize this. A lot of them were raised by whatever garbage was on TV due to neglectful parents.
Do yourself a favor and watch an episode of one of these shows some time. MASH, Gilligans Island, the Andy Griffith Show, etc. Pure escapism. Simple black and white moralistic protestsnt values.
Now realize that when boomers reminisce about a time when "townspeople knew the local cop" that this never existed. They are literally just going off what they seen on the andy griffith show as a kid during their formative years.
They really were the first online generation. After World War 2, pretty much all the functions we associate with the internet were present, but slower and spread out over multiple systems. Radio, television, telephone - even older forms of mass media like magazines and newspapers played some role. People even note that the sixties marked a new cultural phenomenon - by that point the first generation raised in this "analog online" was old enough to be contributing to it's cultural output. It marked the start of the feedback loop.
The Baby Boomers experienced a lot of firsts for whats now considered the standard experience of growing up in the US. It... really explains a lot.