Okay, I know, my third post, but...
There's an equally valid but opposite spin to put on this one, gang. It's more than understandable why people would be pretty grim after getting through the Great Depression. Frankly, I'm amazed that that particular generation turned out as decent as it did. Remember, this wasn't just a generation that fought in World War II; this was a generation that enacted a great deal of social advancement in the years that followed. The early Civil Rights movement can't be credited to the baby boomers, seeing as it started in the early 1950s. There was the expansion of public schooling after the War, and the establishment of antipoverty programs.
And if their outlook isn't as sunny and open as we'd have liked it to be, well... look at it this way. They'd just been through a massive collapse of international finance. And they'd just been through a war that came near to plunging civilization into hell of jackboots and mass murder. Now, suddenly, the country seemed prosperous, and things like the G.I. bill gave thousands of men opportunities to turn their lives into something greater than they might've had otherwise. If they were more than a little grim about the possibility of losing it all, I can _easily_ understand that. (Heck, I get _very_ protective over the nest egg when faced with a big expense or a major change in my life, and that's just from having had two short periods of unemployment. I can't _imagine_ how my Dad must feel when he faces the same stuff.)
And a generation that sprouted Martin Luther King, Noam Chomsky, Joseph Heller, Norman Mailer, Gore Vidal, Kurt Vonnegut, and hundreds more can't be all bad.