A pitiful Wall Street parody of 1960s populist protests is a reminder of what has changed in American life over half a century. The hippie trappings are there, but the joyous anarchy and hope back then are nowhere to be seen in today’s crybaby culture.

More real passion was generated by a recent increase in Netflix prices than “Occupy Wall Street,” a diffuse demonstration against corporate greed that started a week ago with street-theater demonstrations by a few hundred activists and dwindled into handfuls being pepper-sprayed by New York Police.

We are deeper into culture than politics here when such a fiasco is seen against the uprising over inequalities against others by race and gender during the 1960s, which is being mirrored now only by Tea Party rage over perceived injustice to themselves by aging Boomers and their political heirs.

Political megatrends aside, this is a significant shift in American values from ideals of fairness and justice for all to rage over being victimized by efforts to care for the poor, the aged and helpless.

After World War II, a wildly successful Broadway musical and movie, “South Pacific,” captured the national imagination with an Army nurse singing of herself as “A Cockeyed Optimist”:

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