[alexjplant]

Did people act like this in the 70s too when we had stagflation, mass unemployment, gas rationing, Vietnam, Nixon, etc. to contend with? I ask that sincerely because I wasn't around then. The US got a ton of cool music and cinema during that decade (disco and soft rock excepted) but the rest of it sounds even worse than things are now.

[SpicyLemonZest]

People acted like this constantly, the 70s are incredibly sanitized in the popular imagination. A government strike force murdered 4 student protesters at Kent State in 1970; Boston had 40 race riots between 1974 and 1976.