MightyGodKing introduced me to a fascinating Teabagger blog post called “The Electric Tea Party Acid Test,” in which the author claims that the Tea Party is the logical heir to the hippie peace movement. Here are a couple of gems:
The truth is: Hippies didn’t particularly like Lyndon Johnson, the Democrats, or their ’60s-era “Great Society” big-government programs. Look at the poster on the right for a typical opinion, untouched by the revisionism of later historians.
Do any of these apply to you: Are you a Deadhead? Attracted to alternative spiritualities? Avoid chain stores? Love nature? Listen to ’60s music, reggae or jam bands? Smoke pot? Go to Burning Man? Wear ethnic clothing? Like world cultures? You may not be a full-on hippie, but you’ve been influenced by hippie culture. And because of that you may feel some allegiance to what you have always assumed is hippie politics: left-leaning and “progressive.” And that allegiance, perhaps unconsciously, has prevented you from embracing, or even truly acknowledging, the anti-authoritarian vim of the Tea Party. Tempting, isn’t it? And now you no longer have to resist temptation. Let it all in: your newfound awareness that the Tea Party is the embodiment of the hippie ethos after all.
You’re home at last.
And here is the best part of a graph showing different groups and their belief systems, with individualism on the left and collectivism on the right:
The one thing that I agree with the author on: I do believe that a large part of the Tea Party movement is in fact made up of Baby Boomers. But I don’t believe they’ve had a sudden epiphany and joined the movement in the spirit of the Love Generation. I think they’re the same greedy so-called “Reagan Democrats” who have been fucking everything up for decades now.
Why are hobos tossed in with that lot? That’s bullshit. Hobos are way cooler.
I love the GOP’s new all-things-to-all-people rebranding. In a nutshell: “You can believe whatever you want as long as you’re willing to settle for tax cuts for the wealthy and deregulation of industry.”
I’ve been thinking that Burning Man (a Hippiest event?) is very T-Party – in that it’s a community that ‘functions’ with minimal government – but I’m sure most Burners and tea-baggers would hate to have their ideologies compared 🙂
most of the Tea Party are the same people as the Hippies.
Hobos are way cooler. They get old people diseases in their 30s.
Tune in, Turn on, Drop out – the Fox News slogan.
Finally the hobo vote gets some love.
Id love to dose the shit outta the tea party idiots…duh, DRUGS were part of the hippie culture. Of course, isnt the teabsgger’s revisionist/rebranding all Orwellian double-speak?
Shouldn’t this graphic be on a tube? Or, maybe in a ring?
Not all hobos are anarchist kids or drunken bindlestiffs with a chip on their shoulder when it comes to the system. They might not want a slice of the same action that causes the rest of us to keep a file cabinet trailing our every move until seven years after we die. But aside from fancying a no strings attached traveling life, I don’t think hobos generally have a dog in this fight.
@6, The Tea Party is on all kinds of drugs. However, instead of pot and LSD they prefer meth and oxycontin. The older Tea Party folks are on a galaxy of prescription pills.
@9 and they mix them with … interesting … results.
For the few hippies that took their ideological lifestyle values to it’s logical extreme—the commune—their “movement” usually came crashing down at the first tough winter or act of infidelity; or until they realized their children deserve running water, and pants.
Teabaggers will never get that chance, however. Teabaggers will continue to suckle the teat of our collective society for everything it’s worth, and complain the milk is bad (analogy!).
So in this respect, there’s a parallel to be drawn, but it’s with the goateed college kid doing bong rips in your rental house, not the free-lovin’, state-smashin, shot-in-facin’ at Kent State characterchures sold to a generation by Madison Avenue and Hollywood.
Paul, I agree with you about Boomers x1000.
I blame the loose parenting skills of the Silent Generation.
Did anyone read the article? Here’s what I don’t understand:
Yet, they also believe that everyone should be self-reliant. How does that work, exactly, if you can’t change human nature?
Human nature includes bums, mental cases, and losers – always has, and always will. If you can’t make them self-reliant (by changing their nature), doesn’t this whole self-reliance premise fall apart?
I thought it was that the Hippies who ARE the Tea Party (remember, the YOUNGEST of them are now over 50, and most are retired) just liked to blame others for their blowing their retirement funds on stupid investments and drugs?
The successful hippies don’t show up, they use their media corporations to stir up the ones who “blew their retirement funds”.