You are exactly right. The aging hippies are trying to relive their youth. The infantile freaks of today are trying to recreate it, thinking they will have their own Hendrix and Beatles and Woodstock and free ass and drugs around every corner. Hollywood has spent 35 years glorifying the 60's and these diaperenes think it is their brithright to have one of their own.
These people are getting ready to die, and they know it. They can't hide it much longer, all the creams and exercise and "whole foods" won't make it go away. Most of them have lived lives that are immoral, irresponsible, and decadent, you know, drugs sex and rock and roll, and they quite frankly fear what will come. They are angry and they are fighting desperately to bring back the days of their youth.
Like cornered animals, they are dangerous.
I'll bite.
Sixties radical revivalism has been aching to assert itself since.... the sixties. Those of us who lived them remember that even while the so-called watershed events were happening, they were already sad and pathetic attempts at social relevancy.
My family watched the burning of the Bank of America at Isla Vista, and the media was already firmly entrenched on the war protester/hippie side. I grew up with , and hung out with, hippies and malcontents, and they were NOT ROMANTIC, they were paranoid drug abusers with a shaky grasp on reality.
The women were weepy, dreamy, depressed, paranoid and too skinny. The men were stoned, horny, phony, shallow males who would walk two miles for some pot, but wouldn't lift a finger to save a "chick" from rape.
Fools like Rather and Cronkite breathlessly told the tales of brave young college students protesting an unjust war...
it was infuriating.
Even then the propaganda juggernaut was in full gear. The big media told us how cool it all was, Woodstock and San Francisco and acid and communes and grow all the hair you can, man. The nation stank.
The whole thing was an embarrassment, but the important practitioners controlled the dialog, and they wanted those wild young chicks more than credibility, so America paid a heavy price for its complacency.
The radical babyboomers partied til they puked and mugged for the cameras, and the rest of their generation mopped up the vomit and cleaned the dishes. The majority never got on TV , they went to work and joined the middleclass.
The radicals hogged all the media attention, they betrayed our own military, they refused to face their own drug burnout problem, they made really lousy parents.
Kerry represents them PERFECTLY.