"--- the bitter, polarizing ideological divisions that would open up in "The Sixties," and that persist in American politics to this day, lay in the future.
On important issues, the leading politicians in both parties, as well as the most respected Establishment figures, were essentially in agreement, sharing a broad vision of social progress allied with a firm anticommunism.
There were few serious differences within the mainstream of American thought as to what the country was essentially about.
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Very true, in this sense. -- Most people essentially agreed with our Constitution, as written. --- It was an era of live & let live.
Then 'they' killed JFK.
Who are "they"?