Reply #26: Ooh man, yes, it was a great year, a great time to be young and alive

[MadHound]

I feel sorry for the generation of kids that have followed me. I grew up in a time when the liberal promise of the sixties and early seventies hadn't gone sour. When AIDS was unknown, and the worst you had to fear from sex was getting your girlfriend pregnant, anything that you caught was curable. Yeah, stagflation and the high gas prices were a bit of a problem, but damn, we had leadership that was willing to do something, not just mouth polite nothings and tell you to go shopping. People weren't polarized as they are now, especially since Watergate had shut down the 'Pugs for a little while. Morals and religion were on a live and let live basis, and it wasn't something you thrust upon others, and if you did, people from all sides of the spectrum would call out the offending person for being a rude idiot.

Punk music was just starting to energize the music scene, you could wander down most streets smoking a joint and at worst, at least where I lived, you would only get popped with a ticket and your stash would be confiscated. There were more original movie concepts, it just wasn't an ongoing rehash of hackneyed plots and third rate TV shows. The news actually reported what was going on, and every journalist wanted to be the next Woodward or Bernstein.

Damn, I'm starting to sound like my parents and their maudelin meanderings. I know, I know, there were problems and pitfalls, and that I'm glossing over things in my old age. But damnit, it was a better period, a friendlier time in our country's history, the last, final sweetness, like a beautiful day in late autumn. But then Reagan took power, and the fundies felt empowered, and it started becoming fashionable to be rude, crude and intolerant. Peace, love, and flower power turned into Greed is Good and U-S-A, U-S-A. And it has been going to shit ever since.

I'm sorry for those of you who have came after, and I admire you and your courage and durability. I constantly marvel that today's kids aren't more fucked up than they are, having to deal with all of this insane shit on top of going through all the angst and ecstasy of adolesence. I feel like my generation let you down somehow, that we squandered our good fortune. But I tried to keep it from going all to hell, and in some small ways I've had success. And damn, I won't stop trying to make this a better place until the day I die. For I don't want to live in a world where hope is replaced by fear, and freedom replaced by tyranny. Besides, I owe it to those who come after to pay it forward, as my parents did for me.