The New York Times | Gonzo Nights

"''There was madness in any direction, at any hour. If not across the Bay, then up the Golden Gate or down 101 to Los Altos or La Honda. . . . 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 -- that 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 -- that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.''"

Yeah, this is it. This is the heart of the book, where it all makes sense and you start to understand HST, the 60s movements, the drug craze and the hippies. It was about prevailing over a depraved established order, letting karma conquer dogma, winning without fighting.

The Bush years are as different from that time as can be. These are the Bubba years!