ROSS DOUTHAT: The ’70s And Us.

You can remember some of it with ’70s statistics: Never so many divorces, never so many abortions, a much higher rate of rape, an S.T.D. crisis that culminated in the AIDS epidemic.

But some of it is better grasped through anecdote and social history — particularly the extent to which the ’70s saw the drug-enabled exploitation of kids on a grimly horrifying scale.

As Matthew Walther pointed out recently in The Week, much of rock and roll’s groupie culture was a spree of statutory rape, with the gods of rock as serial deflowerers of girls not much older than Dolores Haze. . . .

Meanwhile despite their moral turpitude the ’70s still occasion nostalgia, for bad reasons but also one good one: They featured our civilization’s last great burst of creative energy. Those predatory directors and rape-y rock stars made great movies and memorable music. Our sclerotic interest groups were born as idealistic causes then; our repetitive religious and intellectual debates were fresh and new. Our era is calmer and safer and less vicious (Trump and Twitter notwithstanding), but its peace feels like cultural exhaustion.

And Harvey Weinstein is a fitting bridge between that world and ours, both artistically and morally. His independent-film work tried to revive or imitate the ’70s auteur spirit, before giving way to lousy Oscar bait for his companies and endless superhero movies for the system.

Meanwhile the way he brutalized young women was a very 1970s way to be a movie-business monster.

But the allegation that when balked in his advances, he masturbated into whatever receptacle presented itself? That’s very 2017.

Sigh.