I don’t know–was it easier for the people who were in their 20s or 30s before they first had the hint that there was anything even wrong with hippie masses? People who all of their lives may never have seen a reverently celebrated Mass? And then we walk into an EF Mass and compare it with the only Mass experiences we have ever had, and cry for the beauty of it, and the reverence of it, and the way it is centered on God and not the congregation.
You may not have patience with us. But we never even knew that the sacrifice of the Mass could be uplifting (half of us probably didn’t know the Mass was a sacrifice), and that it could communicate both the trancendental and immediate nature of God. And then we see that people had it and gave it up for dreadful music, everyday language, and holding hands. We don’t have to be nostalgic for the 50s, and as far as that goes we don’t actually care what it was like. What difference does it make to the beauty of the liturgy? We do know what the OF is generally like, and we long for more people to be exposed to the beauty of the EF enough times that they can make an informed decision for themselves about which Mass is a greater help to them in being closer to God.
There are reverent celebrations of the OF. But the only ones I’ve attended that had as much reverence as the EF, were celebrated in a church that also celebrated the EF. Perhaps it’s a coincidence.

But I do frequently go to the OF in that parish–I have nothing against it. If my old parish had celebrated the OF that reverently, I might never have even gone to look at the EF.
I am totally in favor of the letter of Vatican II and totally against “the spirit of Vatican II,” which basically seems to be what people talk about when they want to make the Church into their own image. But I am a traditionalist in that I believe the wholesale jettisoning of 1900+ years of liturgical and devotional development during the course of, say 10 years, was a mistake.
–Jen (“Bathwater please move to the left, babies you come here to the right.”)
P.S. Obligatory part relevant to the thread: Another big myth is that anyone under about 55 who attends the EF is doing so because they grew up repressed by their traditionalist parents. I’m much more in favor of the EF than my parents are.