Well, did YOU live near/work where bombs were going off? I was, in Manhattan. Granted, that was 1970, but it was still that era.
Then there were all of the INSANE, who were wandering the streets of NYC, because the damned Libs shut down the insane asylum.
The damned BLACK PANTHERS were stealing ambulances, stealing money, blackmailing pols in NYC, and yes, killing people with impunity.
And it's THAT kind of stuff, as well as lots of other things, that I'm talking about...as well as intimidation.
Some things were worse, some things better than today, but it's worse today, in that the with cell phones and the net are here now, which enables larger crowds to descend on places. OTOH...it hasn't yet reached the "war" stage, as it did back then.
70’s - the golden age of terrorism
https://www.cnn.com/2015/07/28/opinions/bergen-1970s-terrorism/index.html
New York City isn’t representative of the U.S. at large today, and it wasn’t in 1972.
I get that the left was causing mayhem in New York back then, but that was far from true for the whole country.
Do you remember the Symbionese Liberation Army and the kidnapping of Parry Hearst? They had a big shootout with the LAPD. That happened maybe five miles from where I lived at the time.
The Black Panthers were still quite active in my neck of the woods, back then. They had tried to recruit me less than two years prior.
Yeah, there was still tension in the air, but your car wouldn’t be vandalized for displaying a Nixon bumper sticker.
Hell, man, California was still a red state, and most of Hollywood was patriotic. And the homos were still in the closet!
Sheesh, Detroit was still building muscle cars, and the NFL was a respectable organization.
Yeah, America was a better place in ‘72.
OUCH!
That is a really sore subject with me since I've lived in California all my adult life, and Ronaldus Magnus allowed (did not veto) the ironic closure of insane asylums in California and started the national trend.
The result?
Every city and town over population 10,000 in the country is now an insane asylum. In the murderous sense.