On the political front, in the U.S. the generation became ambivalent if not outright disaffected with politics; they had been reared in the shadow of the Vietnam War and Watergate scandal, and came to maturity under the Reagan and Bush presidencies, with first-hand experience of the impact of neoliberal policies. Few had experienced a Democratic administration and even then, only, at an atmospheric level. For those on the left of the political spectrum, the disappointments with the previous boomer student mobilizations of the 1960s and the collapse of those movements towards a consumerist "greed is good" and "yuppie" culture during the 1980s felt, to a greater extent, hypocrisy if not outright betrayal. Hence, the preoccupation on "authenticity" and not "selling-out". The end of communism and the socialist utopia with the fall of the Berlin Wall, moreover, added to the disillusionment that any alternative to the capitalist model was possible.