Domestic events such as the growth of a hippie counterculture and foreign events such as the Vietnam War

between the years of 1964 and 1980 all contributed to what Boyer calls the “Years of Malaise.”

The growth of a hippie counterculture in the 1960s had started across several college campuses across the
national and eventually started affecting more of the nation’s youth and young adults. The reasons for opposing the
war were different for everybody, opposed it because they believed we had no purpose in being there, others
opposed it because there was no clear strategy for pulling troops out, and the rest, and probably the most vocal,
opposed it on moral grounds, as they were pacifists who believed in nonviolence for solving problems. These
students started protests at many colleges throughout the nation, such as the one at Kent State, which ended in Ohio
National Guard soldiers panicking and firing into the crowd, killing 4 students. This caused several people who were
not too serious about the cause to be less involved with protests, because now it could possibly cost them their life.
These incidents, which were detested as unruly by what Richard Nixon called the “silent majority,” caused more
anti-war sentiment throughout the nation, even by those who did not support the college protestors. In addition to the
anti-war protests that were happening, after the year 1963 civil rights’ activists turned to more militant methods,
because they were tired of the slow progress that nonviolent civil disobedience gave them and after seeing the leader
of the nonviolent movement get assassinated, they believed they needed to stand up for themselves. Groups like the
Black Panther Party for Self-Defense told blacks to arm themselves and be aggressive when they were attacked by
whites. This strategy didn’t help them win voters for their cause; before when the civil rights movement was
nonviolent, they would get attacked by whites, which made the segregationist whites look like the bad guys because
they were physically harming people who were not acting or reacting violently. But when the movement turned
more militant, it made black civil rights activists look aggressive, like they were going to violently attain their rights,
no matter what, and this did not help win the moderate middle-class white voters, which was who needed to be won
over if any significant change in regards to civil rights was ever going to happen. Stagflation and Watergate were
two other major problems that affected America domestically; stagflation was a mixture of rising inflation and high
unemployment, which is difficult to combat because to reduce one, you must raise the other. This was a constant
problem throughout the 1970s, and it caused some uneasiness concerning the economy for most Americans. The
Watergate scandal involved a cover up by President Nixon of the breaking into the Watergate building where the
headquarters of the National Democratic Convention. This ended with Nixon’s resignation (along with the
resignation and firing of many of his staff) and ultimately his pardon by Gerald Ford, but it started a trend of
Americans having a major distrust of their government. These domestic problems all combined to create an
atmosphere of uneasiness, and caused the “years of malaise” in America.

Foreign problems from 1964-1980 caused Americans to have a discomfort with the current events of that
time period and how the government handled things. The Pentagon Papers, which were released by the New York
Times, was proof that the government had knowingly and intentionally misled the American public about the
Vietnam War. This caused more distrust in government; things such as the My Lai massacre did not give the
government good publicity, either. The My Lai massacre was an ordered by an American soldier, and the whole
town of My Lai-105 men, women, and children-were all killed. This caused public outrage, and many protestors
used this as an example of how morally wrong the Vietnam War was. The Vietnam War as a whole caused many
Americans to distrust and protest against the government. In 1973 the Organization of Petroleum Exporting
Countries (OPEC) decided to place an oil embargo against the US, because of the US support of Israel. This
embargo had a great effect on America, Americans had to drive less, US oil reserves had to start being used, and
companies would have to start making more fuel-efficient vehicles. During the early 1970s, when President Nixon
was still in power, there was a growing détente with the USSR, or a warming of relations between the US and
USSR. Nixon made a surprise trip to China, another communist power, which surprised Soviet leaders, and after this
trip Nixon and Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev signed the Strategic Arms Limitations Talks (SALT I) treaty, which
limited both countries abilities to produce nuclear weapons. These foreign problems caused a greater feeling of
malaise towards the government, and foreign countries, and more Americans protested against US involvement in
the affairs of other countries.
 Both domestic and foreign affairs combined to cause an increased feeling of uneasiness and discomfort in
the “Years of Malaise.”