[eevilspock]

It's the same in all human culture and politics. Every era's mainstream ridicules and dismisses those who criticize it as "extremists". But some of those extremists will one day be vindicated as being on the right side of history long before everyone else came around, and we will look back at that prior mainstream attitude and ask, "How could they be so blind?"

The important thing to keep in mind that we don't know which of today's counter-culture takes will end up winning (I don't say "being right" because cultural evolution is, like biological evolution, not teleological).

In other words, you had a belief, and in hindsight you were "vindicated". But there were many others who had equally strong beliefs that were not.