Reply #92: Yes, what I miss most about the 1960s is not the drugs or the sex [View All]

[Lydia Leftcoast]

(living in my conservative environment as a teenager, I saw precious little of either), but the OPTIMISM--the feeling that things were steadily getting better.

We had seen the civil rights movement change a whole social system.

We had seen real incomes rise steadily.

We had fine infrastructure, and new things being built all the time.

We had confidence that we would eventually stop the Vietnam War and end poverty. We actually thought that ending poverty was something worth doing, imagine that!

We had public figures who called for peace and economic justice, and the MSM took them seriously.

Sure, there were problems, but we thought things would get better, we wanted them to get better, and we were willing to do what it took.