For those who may not have read yesterday’s comment thread for “Four Moments When Culture Turned”:
The things that happened in this country between late 1963 (or very early ‘64) and late ‘68 constituted a massive cultural transformation.
Within a mere five years this country experienced (a) a complete altering of traditional male thinking, behavior and appearance (long hair, more inward-looking, a lessening or diluting of traditionally aggressive attitudes**) + (b) increasingly unmodified or unbridled sexual behavior & liberation + (c) a significant trend toward the abandonment of puerile top-40 music and the introduction of poetic, socially reflective rock music lyrics with complex, avant-garde musicianship + (d) the all-but-total collapse of traditional religious authority as pot, mescaline, LSD & transcendental meditation redefined American spiritual life + (e) anti-Vietnam War consciousness and massive street demonstrations + (f) notions of convulsive political revolution or at least primal changes in terms of the shattering of political norms.
Before 11.22.63 this country was basically still thinking and behaving according to the ethos & norms of the relatively sedate 1950s — but soon after the country all but completely went off the cliff on every front, and everything exploding within this comparatively brief chapter, or by the fall of ‘68.
Not that the convulsions didn’t continue into the early to mid ‘70s, but those five years, glorious and turbulent and fundamentally transformative as they were, are what ushered in Richard Nixon, the “Southern strategy”, lawnorder and the whole cultural counter-reaction. Joe Sixpack and Susie Homemaker were scared shitless.
Nothing that happened in the ‘70s, ‘80s or ‘90s was as jolting or mind-blowing or primal (“Something’s happening’ here, what it is ain’t exactly clear”) as what happened during those 60 months. Which isn’t a long time in the grand scheme of things.
** The complete altering of female behavior happened a lot more in the ‘70s and beyond.