A counterculture counter-arugement: Hippy-Hooray
Nick Reilly
Issue date: 2/4/10 Section: Opinion
From President Nixon to Eric Cartman, everyone has seen it fit to dump on hippies and their ilk. It has been en vogue since the late 1970s when most hippies turned into yuppies and saw that money was the route to suburban condos and designer clothing.
Sure, some hippies stuck to their ideals, and they've multiplied into the marginalized counterculture they thought they wanted to be. Even the counterculture thinks hippies are lame now.
From their naive belief in free love and peace to poor hygiene, hippies bring a lot to the table when it comes to deciding which group of people to scapegoat for everything from society's degradation to stagnation.
But if it weren't for those damn dirty hippies, tree huggers, liberals or any other cliché you can think of, then our present would be a lot smoggier than it is now.
First of all, true hippies today are lame. Sorry, you did a lot of great things which I will go on at length to describe in this article, but you're one step above fruititarians in most people's minds.
Once all those boomers realized they'd been stoned for eight years straight, three of which had to have been spent listening to plodding jam sessions by such hackneyed, bestselling bands like Pink Floyd and the Grateful Dead, while the other six were spent in college reading Marx and letting their hair reach their scrotums, they were justifiably pissed off. Who isn't pissed off about who they were ten years ago?
They realized capitalism wasn't all that bad if they could carve out a little, identical niche for themselves.
Today, hippies have become as out of touch, immature, and frankly, seen as pussies.
With all of these points against the hippy, it is very easy to make him/her the scapegoat for extreme left-wing politics, or even moderate liberal politics. Care about peace and you're soft. Care too much about the environment and you're labeled Al Gore.
Well, hippies may be today's punching bags, but yesterday they did something that is rarely accomplished today, they brought actual change.
Sure, some hippies stuck to their ideals, and they've multiplied into the marginalized counterculture they thought they wanted to be. Even the counterculture thinks hippies are lame now.
From their naive belief in free love and peace to poor hygiene, hippies bring a lot to the table when it comes to deciding which group of people to scapegoat for everything from society's degradation to stagnation.
But if it weren't for those damn dirty hippies, tree huggers, liberals or any other cliché you can think of, then our present would be a lot smoggier than it is now.
First of all, true hippies today are lame. Sorry, you did a lot of great things which I will go on at length to describe in this article, but you're one step above fruititarians in most people's minds.
Once all those boomers realized they'd been stoned for eight years straight, three of which had to have been spent listening to plodding jam sessions by such hackneyed, bestselling bands like Pink Floyd and the Grateful Dead, while the other six were spent in college reading Marx and letting their hair reach their scrotums, they were justifiably pissed off. Who isn't pissed off about who they were ten years ago?
They realized capitalism wasn't all that bad if they could carve out a little, identical niche for themselves.
Today, hippies have become as out of touch, immature, and frankly, seen as pussies.
With all of these points against the hippy, it is very easy to make him/her the scapegoat for extreme left-wing politics, or even moderate liberal politics. Care about peace and you're soft. Care too much about the environment and you're labeled Al Gore.
Well, hippies may be today's punching bags, but yesterday they did something that is rarely accomplished today, they brought actual change.
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