The song compares “Selma, Alabama” to “all the hate that there is in Red China” and puts forward the idea that “marches alone can’t bring integration.” It’s directed at the young people who were becoming victims of the war: “You’re old enough to kill, but not for votin’ / You don’t believe in war, what’s that gun you’re totin’?” (At the time, the voting age was 21 the 26th Amendment changed that in 1971.) The song also extends that lament of cruelty to the Civil Rights struggle in America, something that no #1 song had done explicitly. In a strained and raw voice, Barry McGuire surveys a climate where nothing made sense, where it looked like the world was falling apart: “The human world is disintegratin’ / This whole crazy world is just too frustratin’.” He never mentions Vietnam by name, but the whole song is clearly informed by it.