its writing came during a troubled period for the world in general and america in particular ; we were suffering from our first gas pains in history , we had just witnessed the sorry end of the nixon administration and the first presidential resignation in history , we had been resoundingly defeated in southeast asia , and we were grappling with a host of domestic problems , from the troubling question of abortion-on-demand to an inflation rate that was beginning to spiral upward in a positively scary way .