The Space Age Candidate

The Space Age not only forced people to reckon with the otherworldly flavors of Pillsbury's Space Food Sticks and the orange powder drink, Tang, but also the arbitrary nature of national borders.  The Berlin Wall remained, but dogs, monkeys, and people were circling the globe.  Not just anarchists but corporations were working towards a utopian flow of ideas and goods across those pesky lines. A new space age perspective emerged. In the 1960s Buckminster Fuller started talking about "Spaceship Earth," and soon after environmentalists offered slogans and battle cries such as "Earth First!"

         As early as the 1940s, SF fans had begun to talk of having the “long view,” as the space age they predicted and helped nurture took shape. Then came sightings of flying saucers, hovering over cities and onto movie screens. Children, particularly boys, added astronaut to their list of future jobs. Space, however, was expensive. Many of those in the era's occult underground morphed into 'Flying Saucer People.'  You no longer had to meet the Ascended Master St. Germain somewhere beneath Mt. Shasta--instead initiations now took place in outer space amid glowing lights and soothing music. Without the benefit of a national space program, many "contactees" came forward (especially on late night talk radio) to insist that on their own they had come into contact with alien beings, aka “Space Brothers.”  And so, in 1960, we gained our first, and, so far, only, Space Age Candidate for president, Gabriel Green.

          Relying on his base as president of the Amalgamated Flying Saucer Clubs of America, in 1960, Gabriel Green sought the U.S. presidency. This contactee candidate offered a utopian future. Free energy devices would run “automatonic” factories whose secrets he had gained from Space Brothers. He also proposed world peace, an end to nuclear weaponry, an end to pollution, better dental care, schooling, lower taxes, and an end to traffic jams.  His sixteen page pamphlet was free. Regrettably, I have never found a copy. 
                                           
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[note: contactee subculture aka "Flying Saucer People" are covered in both of my books in slightly different ways. See: Wonder Shows; Man from Mars;  what can I say, I admire those involved in contact sports.]