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Christopher Jones as President Maxwell Frost making his
first State of the Union Address in the 1968 movie,
Wild in the Streets. |
Wild in the Streets is a movie released in 1968 exploring the power of personality and music, and their role in political movements. Max Frost, an anarchist turned pop star, uses his status and music to start a huge movement that convinces state houses of California to allow voting at age 14.
Then he turns his sights on the US Congress when he gets his girlfriend in, who just turned 25, old enough to be elected as a Representative.
Then she moves for a Constitutional amendment to allow people as young as 14 to serve in either House of Congress and as President.
Then Max dumps a bunch of LSD into the water supply of DC and gets the movement for the amendment passed, and he has no trouble getting it ratified in the states.
Then at age 22, he runs for President, elected by every state except Hawaii. A state he later neutralizes by bombing them with LSD.
I hope I didn’t spoil the movie for you. I doubt you’re going to see it anyway.
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| Max Frost’s Girlfriend listening to the State of the Union |
In his State of the Union address, President Frost basically says we don’t need people of age 60 running anything. He says the only question we need to ask them is whether they want their wheelchair facing into the sun or away from the sun.
He asks for the power to set the mandatory retirement age to 30 and to round up everyone 35 or older for interment in reeducation camps where oldies will be told that they owe nothing to no one and will be fed a diet of LSD.
Well, now these kids, the baby boomers, are the powerful elite.
And, these are the kids that once reveled in the power of political music and consciousness.
And, isn’t it strange, that these people, who are in power at all the record companies and radio stations and MTV and whatnot, have engendered a generation of music that basically sings about nonsense — what’s happening “in da club” and “with that ass, a tappin,” and so forth. Even rap has been successfully neutered.
Now in power, the baby boomers intend to hand on to it, eh? I’m sure for the public good. The only good 60-year-olds are the ones who were 20 in 1968.
I, for the record, think it’s sad that we don’t insist that people in their upper ages serve in positions of leadership. Someone who’s President needs to have made every mistake in the book and come back from them. I’m thinking it takes 40 years of adulthood to rack up a record like that.
We can all get freaked out about terrorism, but we live in a pretty good and safe world. It only takes a few micrograms of LSD to turn your brain into a pretty useless mush (as far as the outside world is concerned). A microgram is one millionth of gram. A gram of cocaine will fit into a thimble. So, about a millionth of that is enough LSD to get you and yet we don’t see clowns dumping LSD into water supplies, or chemicals that would be even worse.
Perhaps we have the war on drugs to thank for sparing us a groovy suburban summer? I mean, enough LSD to drug out the population of a small city would be worth millions on the street even though it would just cost thousands to produce. I’m guessing terrorists don’t care about the opportunity costs of their weapons (the use of those explosives in industrial applications), just the end result. So, I’m thinking we’re pretty safe because most people don’t want to do any harm.
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