Wild in the Streets

 

What do Vladimir Putin, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Xi Jinping, Benjamin Netanyahu, Donald Trump, and Joe Biden have in common?  Each of them (with the exception of Donald Trump, who did, and may again) lead very powerful countries.  And the leadership of each has been tarnished by controversy, generally characterized by their exhibiting a reluctance to cede power but, in the more extreme cases, engaging in and/or supporting brutal acts of terrorism and oppression: against neighboring countries, political opponents, and even the general population in their own countries.  But these men all have something else in common:  They are all over 70 years old.  Four of them are “Baby Boomers”, meaning that they were children or teenagers in the 1960s, and Biden, while technically too old to be counted as a Baby Boomer, also entered the 1960s as a teenager.  (Ali Khamenei just misses this benchmark, as he was born in 1939.) 

(A note:  When I started writing this article, Joe Biden was still tenaciously resisting growing calls from his fellow Democrats to end his candidacy for reelection to America’s presidency.  He has finally done so, while lending his endorsement to Vice President Kamala Harris, who, while much younger than him, is a Baby Boomer.) 

The irony here is that the youth of the 1960s – at least in America – became famous for opposing their elders, and a popular slogan among them at the time was “Don’t trust anybody over 30.”  They flouted standards and conventions, organized marches and protests, and genuinely scared those who held the reins of power.  Songs by popular musical artists of the time openly espoused revolution – even violent revolution, such as “Street Fighting Man” by the Rolling Stones, and “Something in the Air” by Thunderclap Newman.  Other musical groups, however, expressed cynicism about violent revolution, most notably the Beatles, in their song, “Revolution”, which had the lyrics “But if you want money for people that minds that hate, all I can tell you brother, you have to wait” and “But if you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao, you ain’t going to make it with anyone anyhow”.  The Who, as well, expressed cynicism in their revolutionary song, “Won’t Get Fooled Again” with the (prescient) lyrics, “Meet the new boss . . . same as the old boss”.

Growing terror among the older generations of the restive “hippie” youth was finally given full expression in 1968 in a now long-forgotten movie, Wild in the Streets.   At the center of this film is a rock star, Max Frost, who fronts a band named the Troopers.  An ambitious senator (played by Hal Holbrook), hoping to capitalize on Frost’s popularity among younger voters, invites Max and his band to perform at one of his rallies.  But Max Frost turns the tables and uses the opportunity to promote a revolutionary movement that begins with a call to lower the voting age.  The senator, still believing that he can use Max to advance his own political ambitions, supports the movement, and the voting age is lowered from 21 to 15.  The new teen voting block eventually succeeds in getting Max elected president, and he eventually abandons those among the older generation in Congress (referred to as the “Old Guard”’ by Max) who were still hoping to work with him in a way that would serve their ends as well.  The mandatory retirement age is set at 30, and anyone over 35 is arrested and sent to “re-education camps” where they are permanently dosed on LSD.  This successful youth revolution in the United States inspires identical revolutions in the other major countries of the world.  The movie ends with the 24-year-old Max Frost facing an uncertain future, however, as an even younger generation clamors for more power of their own. 

The fictional band Max and the Troopers actually had a bona fide hit record, in their rousing rock-and-roll anthem “Nothing Can Change the Shape of Things to Come”.  (If I recall, my sister actually owned it, because I remember hearing it being played on her record player.)  The lyrics, rather than calling for revolution, simply asserted that it was inevitable:

 

There's a new sun

Risin' up angry in the sky

And there's a new voice

Sayin' "we're not afraid to die"

 

Let the old world make believe

It's blind and deaf and dumb

But nothing can change the shape of things to come

 

There are changes

Lyin' ahead in every road

And there are new thoughts

Ready and waiting to explode

 

When tomorrow is today

The bells may toll for some

But nothing can change the shape of things to come

 

The future's comin' in, now

Sweet and strong

Ain't no-one gonna hold it back for long

 

There are new dreams

Crowdin' out old realities

There's revolution

Sweepin' in like a fresh new breeze

 

Let the old world make believe

It's blind and deaf and dumb

 

(But) nothing can change the shape of things

To come

 

Looking back, one can see that the fears of a youth-led revolution were overblown, but the youth of that generation eventually did take over the reins of power – often after they had become older than their former adversaries – and those of that generation at the pinnacle of power now are holding onto it with a vice-like grip.  In some ways, they seem like ugly caricatures of the “Old Guard” that they were railing against in the 1960s.

And I can’t help but wonder if what this country – and the world – really needs today is a true-life version of Max Frost, to lead a revolution of the young vs. the old.  (Or, since some of the world leaders seem to be particularly hard on women in their policies and practices, maybe a Maxine Frost, leading a feminist-youth revolt.)  We have certainly seen noble attempts at this outside of the United States, such as the periodic anti-Putin uprisings in Russia that began with the Dissenters’ March in 2006, the Hong Kong protests of 2019-2020 which arose in response to increasingly autocratic behavior by the government of mainland China, and the widespread protest in Iran that began in September 2022 after an Iranian woman was arrested by the “morality police” for not covering her hair and who then died while in police custody.  And yet, here in America, the younger generation has been conspicuously quiescent, at least when it comes to criticizing or protesting this country’s older generation of leaders.  Granted, the “Old Guard” leadership in America is not nearly as draconian as that of Putin’s Russia, Xi’s China, or Khamenei’s Iran.  But the danger seems increasingly ever-present that, unless things change, American democracy could be at risk in the very near future.

I think that many would blame this on the very character of our crop of college-aged youth, colloquially known as “Generation Z”.  Mollycoddled by helicopter parents as children, and then psychologically crippled by a too-early exposure to smart phones and social media, these “snowflake” youth are often perceived by their elders as simply unfit to hold any positions of responsibility, or to take on any significant challenge.  I wonder, though, if we’re giving up on them too soon.  There was another “lost generation” of youth, who were raised as children in the “Jazz Age” of the 1920s: an era when Prohibition incited criminal behavior and the glamorization of gangsters, moral codes were openly flouted in speakeasies and jazz clubs, and religion seemed to be withering in the face of scientific assaults, as in the famous Scopes Monkey Trial of 1925, where attorney Clarence Darrow championed the teaching of evolution in the classroom by holding the opposing attorney’s religious beliefs up to ridicule.  One could imagine that it would be difficult for any children brought up in that decade to have a moral compass, or any good character at all.  But those kids, after being hardened in the Great Depression of the 1930s, and called into public service in the 1940s to join the war effort against the Axis Powers in World War II, are remembered today as the Greatest Generation: a generation of heroes of the highest order.  So I think it is very premature to write off Generation Z as a “lost generation”.  Their youth might surprise us, and in a very good way.  And if the younger generations here in America take up political activism on a scale comparable to the protesters in the 1960s, then perhaps, as happened in the Wild in the Streets movie, this will embolden youth throughout the world to push their own protests to successful outcomes.  

I just hope that if our youth do finally assert themselves, they don’t go to the extremes that Max Frost and his followers did to drive their elders out of power.  And I especially hope that it won’t take a crisis of the order of the Great Depression, or World War II, to rouse them out of their apathetic slumber and stir them into action.