I lived through them. Though younger than you are, I was old enough to have an awareness, and to have The Fear: The feeling that something lovely, which was trying to grow, would soon enough be snuffed. Would soon enough be buried by hate and ugliness and the horrible clawing, clawing, always clawing ignorance and bias. That the old bigotries and isms- racism, sexism, whatever else you got, man- would provide just enough of an undertow to suck it all down and drown it, in sight of shore, an easy looking swim, but, oh well; it happens. If you read history, it happens a lot.
Still.
It looked like we were making progress. That love was just plain going to overwhelm all obstacles. There was a sense that even the older people were sick and goddamned tired of it all, and were willing to sigh a dragon's breath of Marlboro smoke and step aside. Crushing the butt under the heel of their boot and let it all run, ride, fly along. See what happened next.
In the words of The Doctor:
" There was madness in any direction, at any hour. If not across the Bay, then up the Golden Gate or down 101 to Los Altos or La Honda. . . . You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning. . . .
And that, I think, was the handle—that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn’t need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting—on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. . . .
So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark—that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.”
― Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas "
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