Hippies is a stupid word. It is a naive word. It is not a bad word to everybody, but it is a harmful word to us all. It also confuses two very different groups...
Here's the problem:
- Bohemians. There is a perpetual class of people, mostly young people, who try to act carefree about some things, and supersensitive about others. Contrary to popular bullsh-t, they do not hail from the sixties but have existed forever. Their numbers fluctuate based on whether people who might have been hippies are instead required to mine coal, or whatnot.
- Activists. On the other hand, there are activists. Sometimes they belong to the bohemian class of cafe intellectuals, students, music fans. But that is absolutely not a requirement. Activists can be coal miners, bereaved war moms and veterans, people who don't like birth defects, etcetera ad infinitum.
What we currently have, is a defense mechanism, like an autoimmune response, that is identifying a group as "hippies." Well for starters, bohemians and activists are two very different groups, which have some crossover, but no more than can be expected because these are in fact very large groups in our society, groups people can move in and out of.
Several important points those two groups have in common:
- There is nothing explicitly "leftist" about either group. It is noteworthy that the Nazis started among these two groups, in fact more among the bohemians than the unionists and veterans. Bolsheviks on the other hand were more likely to have an occupational stake in the movement they constituted.
- While not explicitly leftist, to be a bohemian or an activist one must have had one's mind opened. That can happen in university, because of combat experiences, because of work conditions, or other stress. On an individual level, you won't find (for example, ravers) bohemians who lack some reason to be what they are, even if it is merely parental neglect and neglect and aimlessness in school.
- The mainstream of society frowns on these types, because the herd always hates mavericks. Unless a critical mass of society in the nation or in a region or city is also at the same breaking point. Once that critical mass is reached, it becomes uncouth to disparage these mavericks, because the herd is moving that way, following. When the mavericks are not leading to something sustainable, like good labor standing, or good music, or saving the whales, then the herd eventually does get mad at where they were led, so there's a backlash.
- Good leadership is important, but leadership by ideas not people. Nat Turner was counterproductive to emancipation and Vanilla Ice was counterproductive to rap crossover. It is always more important to make the ideas of the movement perfect. What you want to do is avoid the extremes of Stalin or Castro or Hitler (who consolidated a movement in themselves while whittling 'impure' advocates). Of course we want to avoid those political extremes, but also those tactical extremes. You don't want to tear people down completely for their positions but you don't want any one person's ideas and failings to be the core either.
- In the US, not by accident, political movements are unusually leaderless. Our leaders tend to get torn down. It's hard to say why. If it isn't Oral Roberts and Pat Robertson jumping the shark of their own delusions and getting eaten by it, it's "hippie" rockstars choking in their own vomit. Or Jimmy Hoffa. Or MLK, RFK, Malcolm X, and on and on. Yes, if they don't self destruct one way or the other, they tend to be killed. America contrary to popular bullsh-t, is not a country that values individualism. At all. The USA stamps out exceptional individuals who don't play ball, one way or the other.
Basically, this is a herd nation. Maybe more than others, I don't know, I've never made a lifelong study of another country's soul as much as I have of ours. But I do know there will never be an American Hitler, or Stalin, or even Napoleon; that it really
can't happen here. No, if we go off the edge, it will be a relatively leaderless charge. Because we are led by ideas, not men. Just as it was once asserted we are a nation of laws, not men, but beyond that. The leaders we celebrate are the Henry Fords, the George Washingtons, the Thomas Edisons. Mavericks? No, their path turned out to be the right path.
It does have a little something to do with the fact that this country has never truly been wrested from the grip of robber barons. There is an established oligarchy and it does exert a grip over our politics and to a lesser extent, culture. It's whip in asserting this control is what we foolish assume to be our weapon exclusively against it: Free expression. The way the rulers of this nation rule is by shaping the way we look at things. It's a vibrant, dynamic system. It allows for guidance to flow both ways. I'm not knocking it, or calling it totalitarian. But this whole "hippie" stereotype is something that I do believe the establishment has fostered deliberately.
Again, that establishment is not some moneyed cabal alone. As in a stampede, the people at the front in this country financially are not so much driving as being driven by the forces of the mass. They get ahead here and stay ahead in large part not because they are leaders but because they are the best followers.
The herd is the establishment down to every last person however poor who is more content in their life or afraid of radical change, than they are miserable.
The herd is not stupid, though, not stupid exactly. It is smart about some things. It's smarts are decentralized. Just look at Freeperville. The guiding light of BushCo is dim indeed. And yet it cannot be said that individual members are stupid. Rather, the groupthink ideas are stupid. But in the midst of groupthink, maverick ideas seem stupid even if they are correct, obviously rationally correct.
We are, none of us, free of these forces. Fifty percent of the country, Democrats, are never going to be "maverick." Democrats in general can never be bohemians or activists, "hippies." If we all had dreadlocks and tie dye, or we all suddenly became Norma Raes, then that would be normal. Then the mavericks would be more extreme or they would be invisible. It is true that sometimes mavericks are wrong. Really wrong. Heroine is bad, for example, murder is bad.
But what rational human beings ought to evolve to be capable of, is rational analysis. Is a maverick a dangerous deviant, or is a maverick right, or is a maverick useful, or is a maverick just simply benign?
Well, here is a hint. Someone advocating peace is by definition benign. Someone who happens to be advocating peace but is advocating, say, world socialism once they have your attention, should be taken to task for advocating what you object to. Only.
Like an immune system, if you misidentify things you are going to get into trouble. You are going to get sputter and turn red over harmless, or useful substances.
So, let's all just stop using the word hippie. It's not that it's a bad word. I am as apt to like bohemians as I am to like activists, which isn't saying much, because there are all kinds of politics and life choices I don't like. Hippie is such a broad term it includes not only the disparate groups of "hippie" fashionista/fans, and "hippie" activists, but it also includes a wide range of things to be into. Something for virtually everyone to hate. And if their experience is narrow, to misapply to a vast population, and all of it's various merits.
We should, instead, as ever, be debating issues, not people.
Take peace.
Take war.
Peace is good, war is bad.
War is very bad, it is murder.
To go to war as anything other than an irresponsible murderer, is to go to war taking responsibility for the fact that it is a commission of murder.
You have to have something you are trying to stop that is worse than what you are going to do to stop it.
Something to stop that is worse than you mass murdering an unpredictable number of people, including combatants (who are people to), and moms, and babies, and people who might even agree with you; and of course your own soldiers.
And you even expose your own population of innocents to retaliation.
It has to be worth it.
That is what Kos, basically, said.
But it just came out wrong, because of that stupid "hippie" mental virus.
Now, I gather he lives in Berkeley.
Well, I've never been there, but let me tell you there is nothing about being anti-war that has anything to do with running a crystal and incense shop (which I do not), or running into people on a skateboard.
Rather, one must accept that war is a terrible thing.
It is not fun.
It is not something that we may ever, ever, assert is a necessity as a generality.
Occasionally, we may hit historical points where we say. okay, now, in this exact circumstance, war is a necessity.
A certain restrained set of military actions are a necessity.
But to say "war is a necessity" as a truism is an abomination.
No truer than saying "cannibalism is a necessity."
Or "rape is a necessity."
Or "drunk driving is a necessity."
Or "smoking crack is a necessity."
...One might imagine extreme, and improbable circumstances where those things are necessary, such as having a gun to one's head.
One tries really, really, hard to avoid such situations.
One does not gloat, or glory in those things.
Rather, if one achieves something in the course of war, one celebrates that.
A liberated people.
A stopped holocaust.
An invader evicted.
A terrorist strike averted.
One should not, must not, ever, celebrate the defeat of an enemy as an end in itself.
That is a human enough urge, but that is why we have bloody, tooth-spitting bar fights.
Which many of us so-called hippie anti-war types would, in fact, be happy to indulge warmongers in.
Put that meme in your pipe and smoke it.