What was the social climate?

[Love big words]

It started out with a war in southeast Asia in a country no one had ever heard of or ever wanted to protect. Mostly, we were pissing in the wind on that one.

We were tired of pot and wanted something more. So we moved to coke, but it was expensive.

Many of our musicians were dying and we got kind of sad about that.

We couldn't figure out how corruption and politics became so intertwined. Our President was a paranoid fool.

We went to the moon so many times we forgot how dangerous it was until Apollo 13 reminded us that in space, no one can hear you scream. We went a few more times just to prove we could, took a car up there to drive around and pick up a bunch more rocks and stuff and safely returned earth. The result of the whole thing was an orange drink called Tang which tasted like Sunny Delight with some fine sand mixed in it.

And everyone who was getting a good job back on Earth and then couldn't ever be fired was black. It was called Affirmative Action and it still sucks.

We all had a VCR but could not keep the clock set. And only a few understood how to set the timer to record a show at a later time. They were the geniuses.

The japanese cars were everywhere and we started liking them more and more but had to buy what they had and couldn't customize them.

Our clothes sucked but we had to wear something.

We bought microwaves and the first thing we made was either hot water or popcorn. Some thought it was radioactive so they ate cold food.

Some nit wit invented disco and it became a parody of itself. We did it, not liking it, but we needed to date so we could have promiscuity, or perhaps the idea of it.

Saturday Night Live was absolutely phenomenal, most of the time.

Everyone started turning gay not knowing a monkey virus called AIDS was about to kill them.

Later, we had probably the worst President ever in Jimmy Carter. His brother was a freaking total embarrassment.

We prayed the USSR wouldn't nuke us. And they, as it turned out, felt the same. The term thermonuclear war and intercontinental ballistic missile became mainstream.

We had our first little hiccup at a nuclear power plant called Three Mile Island. It was sobering.

Towards the end of the 70's our economy was really petering out, Iran took a bunch of Americans hostage but we all had a Farrah Faucet poster so we could imagine her naked. She had big hair and nice teeth. She was dumb as a post but a real trophy. We had Farrah and the stupid Soviets didn't, so there!

And then we elected Ronald Reagan and we started to believe in ourselves again.