Learning more about the Beat counter culture movement might improve your view of the book. Others have mentioned that this deals with a different generation than what you think and that it involved a cultural minority, but it goes deeper than that.

The beats were anti-capitalist environmentalists who hated the, as they felt, overpressing and undeserved patriotism that follows war. The environmental activism could have been an accidental byproduct of their loud disapproval of patriotism, but it’s notable all the same.

These qualities meant that the people in this culture were not only a minority, but that they were effectively ostracized from the wider population. Coupled with this social dynamic, long and fast travel was suddenly more accessible than ever before, which gives us On The Road.

It’s silly to frame the characters as being heroes or villains. They’re archetypes of the people a beat poet was likely to meet.

I don’t like this style of literature, for beat writers I prefer Ginsberg, but On The Road is a snapshot of history (biased, of course, from someone living in it), not a manifesto.