Time Essay
Once gone, and often before, every decade migrates into the vocabulary of folklore. There it persists as a sort of handy hieroglyph for conjuring up popular memories of a time. So it is that "the '20s," as a phrase, evokes not only The Great Gatsby but more social lore than the entire text of the novel. Similarly, to allude to the '30s, the '40s, the '50s or the '60s is to speak volumes. In contrast, the '70s have not, so to speak, learned to talk.
The waning decade has remained elusive, unfocused, a patchwork of dramatics awaiting a drama. Here on the brink of the '80s, it would still be risky to guess what people will mean when they speak of the '70s ten years from now. Why have these times seemed so indefinite?
There are doubtless many reasons. An odd but important one is that the '60s lasted too long. As folklore, decades seldom observe the calendar's nice limits. The '20s actually began with the adoption of Prohibition; the '30s, launched by the 1929 crash, did not end until 1941, when the U.S. entered the big war. The election of Dwight Eisenhower as President in 1952 began the time consistently, if imperfectly, remembered as the quiet '50s. The furies and griefs that are recalled as the essence of the '60s began not in 1960 but at the death of John Kennedy. Then came that brutal ransacking of the national spirit that did not even pause at the end of 1969 but continued through the disillusionments of Watergate. The '60s did not really let go until Richard Nixon resigned.
So it may be that the '70s, having started late, have not been going on long enough to give clear shape to whatever they are finally to be. At first, they could scarcely be recognized except by what they were not. Mainly, they were not the '60s. To an exhausted, convalescent society this was a relief but also disconcerting. It was not easy, even with Jerry Ford in the White House, to begin watching for pratfalls instead of apocalypses. Still, by the time Jimmy Carter tried to whip up a moral crusade for energy conservation, much of the country seemed to have perfected the knack of shrugging off the alarms of crisis. It was easy to read that mood as indifference, but it is more reasonable to suppose the country just needed a rest.
It did not come to a dead standstill, however, and the record of the trends and tendencies of the brief post-'60s period has become clear enough. So has the fact that the record is shot through with perplexing contradictions. Any attentive observer could jot down a fast thumbnailer of the '70s so far:
The voters were apathetic; no, they were outraged at taxes and mobilized to demand reform. People had given up on the capacities of government; no, citizens everywhere were forming diligent factions and forcing government's hand on one issue and another. The individual had learned he could not change any thing; no, so many individuals had learned they could shake things up in court that there was a litigation crisis.