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I came of age in the 1970s, a time when the lessons and tumult of the Sixties were being uneasily assimilated into our individual psyches and the collective national fabric. People, ideas, language, and politics that had been widely condemned as “bad” during my childhood, became “baaad” during my teenage years. I was not sure what to make of the unsettling, topsy-turvy-ness of the culture. The war in Vietnam and the fall of Richard Nixon (and all that those processes represented) struck a powerful, revealing blow against my belief in the decency, legitimacy, and honesty of our government and its military–industrial complex.