One of the favorite games of Left Blogistan these days is to "document the atrocities" of Right Blogistan, and of right-wingers in the media.
There are plenty of atrocities to document. Ann Coulter, Bill O’Reilly, Rush Limbaugh. The list goes on and on.
And of course the bloggers have to reach hard to compete. Pamela of Atlas Shrugs. Michelle Malkin. The entire looney tune brigade that calls itself Pajamas Media (because all the other names it sought were taken).
- Ace of Spades questions whether Israel really bombed Qana.
- MyPetJawa imagines Hizbollah fighters wearing Snuglis.
- In the face of its objections to Israel’s war in Lebanon Sisu says disband the UN.
These are just a few of the items I dug up over the course of a few minutes, all linked back to Pajamas Media. It’s a pretty tame group of posts (except for the desire for Muslim genocide) because they’re mainly obsessing over one issue, Israel’s war. (Writing about our own war would hurt their little feelings.)
In the face of this some in Left Blogistan are having fainting spells. Billmon of WhiskeyBar claims a nervous breakdown. RedStateSon claims he had a panic attack over this nonsense.
Well, maybe I can help. Maybe The Long View, The 1966 Game, and Open Source politics have something important to say about this.
They’re hippies.
Update: My 18-year old daughter says this is insulting to hippies. She prefers the term "haties." Maybe she’s right.
Some 40 years ago, the democracy of FDR faced the same kind of crisis, and had the same kind of crack-up.
LBJ was fighting the "good fight" in Vietnam, he was fighting the "good fight" against poverty and injustice, but what were young people thinking of him?
Nothing good.
Of course, the media and the American people weren’t thinking well of him either, but for different reasons.
What the young people wanted was more. More action, more attention paid to their issues, less to anyone else’s. They wanted it all, now.
So they dropped out, and atomized.
Many young blacks moved toward the Black Panthers, or to the Black Muslims. They adopted a "blacker" identity (they started calling themselves "black" for one thing), they grew their ‘fros high, they wore dashikis and sunglasses, and they stood strong against "The Man."
Young whites went into the drug culture. They listened to the Stones, and they got stoned. They retreated into a fantasy of free love, universal understanding, the brotherhood of man (in which no one had to really to go work).
That’s just what is happening now.
Only now it’s happening on the right and you don’t recognize it. Because it’s a mirror image. It’s backwards.
Call it the summer of hate. Kill the Muslims. Kill the liberals. Kill the queers. Kill, kill, kill, kill.
What, you thought these a’holes were going to get all huggy?
Not their thing, man.
I think you are right on with this one.
I think you are right on with this one.
Nothing to do with “hippies” as I understand them. People want “more attention paid to their issues” because that’s human nature. Although “hippie” was a derogatory term coined by columnist Herb Caen to describe the Haight-Ashbury in 1967, the people he described were attempting alternative lifestyles, experimenting with psychedelics (and only “retreating into a fantasy” after the underground press was dismantled by the Feds, Haight St. was overrun with speed and merchandise dealers, and Pepsi took over the Generation). The ethics you ascribe to “hippies” are actually for the Me Decade — and that’s the early 1970s. The problem with this right/left characterization is that it fails to account for people like Arnold the Governator on the “right” and Bill/Hilary Clinton on the “left”.
Yes, there are still some idealists out here, and although we were once called “hippies” we are not the same people who ascribe to vagrancy as a way of life.
Nothing to do with “hippies” as I understand them. People want “more attention paid to their issues” because that’s human nature. Although “hippie” was a derogatory term coined by columnist Herb Caen to describe the Haight-Ashbury in 1967, the people he described were attempting alternative lifestyles, experimenting with psychedelics (and only “retreating into a fantasy” after the underground press was dismantled by the Feds, Haight St. was overrun with speed and merchandise dealers, and Pepsi took over the Generation). The ethics you ascribe to “hippies” are actually for the Me Decade — and that’s the early 1970s. The problem with this right/left characterization is that it fails to account for people like Arnold the Governator on the “right” and Bill/Hilary Clinton on the “left”.
Yes, there are still some idealists out here, and although we were once called “hippies” we are not the same people who ascribe to vagrancy as a way of life.