My own personal (half-baked) theory is that humans are not really
meant to be as "uniquely individual" as American society likes to
imagine and that, in fact, it's rather anxiety-provoking for young
people to feel that they must be, and so they band together in
their "uniqueness," harshly critical of anyone who is different
inasmuch as that person represents their own amorphous fears
of drowning in a sea of "freedom." This is, now that I type it,
rather psychoanalytic :-). It could also be just as you say, Jay...
Robin