From a Summer of Love to a Winter of Discontent

The summer of love in America was long over.  It was a time of waning optimism.   A time of national doubt.  About the power of M1s and napalm to stop encroaching communism in Southeast Asia.  About the power of communal living to either change or block out the world’s ills.  A time of burning draft cards and burning bras and burnings flags and burning ghettos and burning books and burning lakes and burning crosses, the collective conflagration sending plumes of uncertainty high above the fruited plains.

It was 1972 — a time to stop caring.  Time for a generation to get lost.