Time & Perspective Quote by Lester Bangs

Bangs doesn’t argue; he suspects, and the suspicion is the point. That doubled “now” and the shruggy “sort of” make the line feel like overheard bar talk, but it’s a critic’s scalpel disguised as a slur. He’s describing a society where sedation is less a side effect than a strategy: keep people pleasantly fogged and they’ll confuse stimulation for freedom, sensation for agency.

“In fact” is doing heavy lifting. It signals he’s tired of the polite version of this conversation - the one where drugs are personal choices and entertainment is harmless. “The powers that be” is deliberately vague, a catch-all for labels, advertisers, politicians, television programmers, even the broader managerial class. Bangs isn’t sketching a single conspiracy so much as naming an alignment of incentives: a docile audience is profitable and governable. If you’re “stoned out,” you’re easier to sell to, less likely to organize, more likely to accept prepackaged narratives as reality.

The cultural context is crucial: late-60s/70s America, when counterculture pleasures were being rapidly commercialized, when rock’s rebellious energy was turning into an industry, when Vietnam, Watergate, and televised politics taught people that truth could be stage-managed. Bangs, a rock critic who both loved and distrusted the machine, aims his cynicism at the way “escape” gets marketed as enlightenment. The final turn - “we don’t know what’s going on, and we don’t care” - is the real indictment: ignorance isn’t just imposed; it’s made comfortable.