In the 60's] there was madness in any direction, at any hour .

[In the 60's] there was madness in any direction, at any hour ... You
could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense
that whatever we were doing was `right', that we were winning ...

And that, I think, was the handle -- the sense of inevitable victory
over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we
didn't need that. Our energy would simply `prevail'. There was no
point in fighting -- on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum;
we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave ....

So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in
Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost
see the high-water mark -- the place where the wave finally broke and
rolled back.
-- Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas