(Set that title to the tune of “Living in America” as performed by the late, great James Brown.)
Yes, I put the video there, not that it has all that much to do with this post, but it is funny!
Imagine a post-war America where the president must resign before getting impeached. An America where thousands of soldiers, suffering from PTSD, are coming home to a country divided. There are nuclear power plants that leak. It is a country where there are long lines for fuel, and the internet is only for a very select few. Computers need to be built by hand in garages, and the individual is discouraged from trying to own one themselves, being told that it is “unnecessary” and a “toy” and “too expensive.”
Television, if you can get it, is restricted to a handful of channels, and they are never in the schools. Telephones are only attached to walls or to a cord beside one’s bed.
All bread is soft, squishy and white, and no one has any idea what gluten is. The portions of food are a quarter of the size you are accustomed to, and clothing sizes are much smaller as well. To reheat food, one needs to turn on the oven and hope they don’t burn the plate.
Children go outside for recess and take their lives into their hands climbing on monkey bars and the slides are all metal and gray. Their only means of communication with each other is speaking face to face or the occasional, very risky, handwritten note.
Welcome to the Dystopia of the 1970’s. (I’m sure there’s a lot that I missed, let me know in the comments if you want to!)
Hell, even the people in the Hunger Games books had remote controls for their televisions, didn’t they?
28
May
2014