The 1960s have achieved almost mythic status as a hinge point in American history. Both those who welcomed and feared the convulsive changes the decade brought can agree on one thing: Socially, culturally, and politically, the nation was a very different place when it ended than when it began.
This could be another such moment.
The ’60s watershed moments—the civil-rights campaigns in Birmingham and Selma, Alabama; Martin Luther King Jr.’s March on Washington and the anti-war March on the Pentagon; the outpouring of demonstrations following the shootings at Kent State—can seem in retrospect like towering peaks of transformative activism far beyond any contemporary experience. But history may look back on this period as a comparable transition in the nation’s politics and culture, driven primarily by the largest generation of young Americans since the baby boomers who flooded the streets decades ago.
Enormous differences separate the two periods. But they may ultimately prove united by the magnitude of the change they impose. CONT.
Ronald Brownstein, The Atlantic
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