You obviously weren't there.
I mentioned 1969, because it seemed to fit the "screaming hippie" description much more than 1977 does. I wasn't an adult in 1977, but I wasn't a toddler, either ... I remember the Bicentennial much more than the end of the Vietnam War (most of our people were out earlier in the 70's, anyway), and I don't particularly recall "defeatism."
You obviously weren't there.
That year WAS the start of the Carter presidency, which was rooted in defeatist attitudes about our place in the world and led to record-breaking inflation and prime interest rates, the giveaway of the Panama Canal, Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Iran taking our people hostage, establishment of the Dept Of Education, the malaise speech, the constant blathering about human rights although Carter fawned over brutal dictators.....(add your own)
If you don't remember defeatism in the late 70s and even well into the 80s then you were indeed not an adult. It was rampant and awful. Left wingers were screaming I told you so and crowing about how our military was useless and that we would never win another war and that we deserved to "lose" the war, even though we didn't lose the war we just decided to quit fighting it. It was a crappy time in our history and, yes, I can see that some people might have used Star Wars or other types of escapism to quit thinking about it for a while. I didn't, I wanted to think about it and work to defeat liberalism where I could and I am still doing it.
I remember the Bicentennial, too. My Navy ship, the USS Farragut, was a part of the festivities in NYC. The Tall Ships and the fireworks at the Statue Of Liberty are still great memories (the girls flashing us from the speedboats during the Tall Ships event wasn't bad either).
Do you remember Jimmy Carter, "stagflation", "malaise", inflation as the "moral equivalent of war", etc.?