How did many Americans view the counterculture?

Answer 1

Because the average middle aged American in the 1960s was born and raised from PARENTs that had been born and raised with horses and buggys. They had NO radios, NO televisions, NO cars, NO airliners, NO micro-wave ovens, NO telephones, and NO modern medicines. They had been raised from pioneer families that had "traditional values"; Women were women, men were men, good was good and bad was bad...there was no confusion about those common sense subjects. Then came the counter-culture a by product of modern machines (some noted above). Shock and dismay came from the confusion that modern easy living (read lazy and spoiled from people that did not EARN it) had turned the younger generation of human beings into.

Translation: The pioneers earned the right to have a easy life by inventing the telephone, television, automobile, X-Ray machines, cameras, computers, and peaceful living. The spoiled offspring of those people turned into Hippies and and other non-productive humans...because they never had to suffer (they didn not earn the easy life; it was handed to them!).

A more modern and easier example would be: If a parent(s) PAYS for their child's college education; then that child has not learned value. That child was handed an education without earning it! A child that pays for their own college earns it, and learns the value of making an honest living. A person that serves their country in the US Military and attends college on the GI bill has EARNED that education. But when a rich "Mommy and Daddy" buys their spoiled child a college education...with rare exceptions, that's what they're gonna get...a spoiled offspring that knows only greed and the desire to "make an easy buck."

Answer 2

Some aspectes of it had a lasting effect on mainstream culture. The movement affected the worlds of art and fashion