I was alive, though young, during the so-called Vietnam Era. The ranks of the Left were swelled by the aging Baby Boomers at this time as that enormous mass of population reached voting age. Like most young people, they looked for a way to find their adult identity by taking views opposite from their parents. Since their parents had come of age during WWII (when Nazism was defeated through overseas intervention) and the opening years of the Cold War (when the spread of communism was halted through armed conflict in Korea), the BB’s were almost compelled to embrace many lefty causes and parties. And the more radical and outrageous the better since it would provide a greater cry of outrage from shocked parents. (Sort of like the role that piercings and tattoos fill today.)
The stance that many of these kids took was simple enough to be easily understood, yet nuanced enough to lend the lie that they were deep thinkers. Foreign intervention was bad, particularly in the 3rd World countries being used by the superpowers as proxy battlegrounds. Communism was good, and any reports of massacres and mass graves were dismissed as right-wing propaganda while the tales of the excesses of anti-communist dictators were repeated ad nauseum in coffee houses and campus dorm rooms.
This would pretty much have resulted in nothing more than a few elections where the Democrat candidates had an advantage, if it wasn’t for the Vietnam War. Here was a case of a bungled proxy war on foreign soil, mishandled and mismanaged from the first, providing ample grist for the Left’s media machine. Many of these young BB’s had their first taste of adult responsibility when they marched in mass protests and risked arrest. These were heady times for young people.