You might also add the illustration of the realization of pending mortality for those of that generation. The vigor of one's lost youth versus the reality of the infirmities of today. Repeating the County Joe quote from earlier in the thread: "Whoopie, we're all going to die!"
The contemptuous Joe McDonald meant by “whoopee were all going to die” that we were all going to die in Vietnam.
So don’t go, don’t fight communisms is fine, America is bad etc.....
Pending mortality, indeed. As one who has had a stroke and whose wife recently had a heart attack, I’m keenly aware of my mortality. Of course, I was also aware of it when VC rockets were in-coming at 2 a.m.
I know it wasn’t the same for everybody but for me, growing up in the fifties and sixties as an average white kid whose dad was an auto mechanic and whose mom was a homemaker, life was pretty damn good. I wonder what things are in store for my sons, and now my grand children, with the clouds of fear and uncertainty hanging over their futures? If I had come home in 1968 to the U.S. I see today, I’d have thought the plane had taken a wrong turn into the Twilight Zone.