How many tea baggers used to be hippies?
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Zuma (
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March 19th, 2010
From what I can tell from photos of Tea Party crowds, most of them look old enough to have been hippies back in the day (or maybe these were the guys who joined up for ROTC). I wonder if any of them went to Woodstock.
They also look old enough to be on Medicare, so I wonder what’s up with them protesting universal health care. Do you think this will all blow over once heath care passes?
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I very much doubt the radical liberals of the 1960’s have somehow turned into Rush Limbaugh Conservatives. One thing they have done is appropriated some of the imagery that went into making the left wing radicals of the last century so memorable, in a conscious effort to curry favor.
Ummmmm. A total disconnect from facts seems to be how they operate. And I will say it again. Most of these people would be watching reruns of Matlock if Obama was white.
A trillion+ bucks on Iraq and now they care about the deficit. I’m calling bullshit.
Some of those hippies got real conservative when the drugs wore off.
No the hippies and their belief that socialism is a fantastic way for everyone to be forced to live sort of seem to have stayed liberal.
@Anon_Jihad
because liberalism = socialism, just as conservatism=nazism
Socialism and most of its variates are from leftist schools of thought, and the stereotyped “hippie” is generally displayed as rather socialist in thinking.The tea baggers are rather right winged aligned, typically quite far over the line towards Libertarianism.
Can the question be rephrased to something along these lines: “Are today’s libertarian and paleoconservative Americans former socialists?” I’m sure some a few were, but that’s kind of a dramatic toss the other way.
you may or may not be aware that the term Tea-Bagging has other connotations…
@Anon_Jihad I prefer to smoke pot, sit naked on a beach, play my bongos and blue ray my broker….
All of them. They finally grew up. : )
LMAO @Cruiser !Me too, but then again, I don’t consider myself a “tea bagger.” : )
The Hippies were full of love (and weed), the teabaggers are full of hate (and shit)
Something must have gone horribly wrong in their lives if any substantial number of these teabaggers (a fitting title, as they willingly swallow the balls of the corporate elite without even knowing it) were once hippies.
Um,your use of the term “tea baggers” threw me for a minute . . . it means something entirely different to me . . . and I would be cautious where I used it . . .
Hippies? No.
Yuppies? Yes.
@Kayak8 it’s already been discussed thoroughly in the media and on Fluther
@Cruiser I’m all for that too, but I’m not a pacifist, nor do I hold many common “hippie” ideals. I just like weed. Being naked is pretty sweet too. Never mind high and naked . . .
For the kabillionth time, they’re called Tea Partiers.
@YARNLADY My dad shifted from radical liberal to a solid Conservative.
@Anon_Jihad Do you work for me…Director of Sales?? John is that you???
My guess is that it’s mostly the boomers who grew up objecting to their weed-filled “Summer of Love” brethren who are the ones joining the tea party.
For those of you slinging obscenities at the Tea Baggers, why do you hate them so? I really would like to know.
@Nullo :: They started calling themselves that. It took a while to for them to understand the reference. Proud
@CaptainHarley – My reasons are based in the amount of pure bullshit they allow themselves to swallow without understanding of any kind. When asked why they are protesting the healthcare bill, many of them admit that they haven’t read the bill but are just reacting to what they’ve heard on FOX News or by other teabaggers. Then you have the sort of teabagger that happily assaults the Parkinsons man, simultaneously throwing money and insults at him along with a large helping of unhealthy Neocon derision. Almost none of their protests are based in facts, just heresay. That’s probably why I have no respect or patience with any of them.
Relatively few people were actually hippies back in the day; hippies just happened to be “new” and attractive to the media (not in the “good-looking people” sense, though some were, but youthful, extroverted and attention-seeking).
No one in that generation of my family were hippies at all, and made fun of them for being “rich” white kids who were too irresponsible to buckle down and get jobs. There really was such a thing as “the silent majority” back then.
@Rufus_T_Firefly You’ve meet actual Libertarian minded individuals who think FOX is legitimate news? FOX rages against most of what Libertarians stand for.
@johnpowell
That was in reaction to Janeane Garofalo’s venomous comment that the Tea Party people were, “a bunch of teabagging rednecks.” A sort of, “Is that the best you can do?”
It is still offensive.
@Anon_Jihad – What makes you think they’re all Libertarians? Most of them are easily definable crackpots who get their news from the voices in their heads. I mean, there are undoubtedly some Libertarian-types among their ranks, but we were discussing the Teabaggers. You remember them, they’re the ones wearing those ‘I’m proud to be a Teabagger’ buttons and many of those folks have repeatedly and loudly declared on video that Fox is where they would prefer to get their news.
@Kayak8 So, as @aprilsimnel pointed out, many of the people who wrapped themselves in the trappings of “hippie” were not truly demonstrating their actual political views, but ‘joining in’ on the current fad of the day.
@aprilsimnel Not all of us were rich or irresponsible. I, and the people I associated with were truly interested in creating a truly free world. We were the ‘flower children’ without the drugs.
@YARNLADY – “We were the ‘flower children’ without the drugs.”
Truthfully, the drugs probably had very little to do with their/your actual political views. If you think that’s a stretch, just ask Rush Limbaugh about his views and drug use. Besides, technically, most ‘hippies’ were probably fairly conservative if you use the original meaning of the word in lieu of today’s bastardized definition. Many fought for less government spending and less government involvement in people’s private lives and more accountability from our leaders. Of course, some of them were just plain crazy, too! I can personally attest to that, having met quite a lot of them in the sixties. <grin>
@YARNLADY – Oh, I’m sure not everyone was rich. I was only relating the POV from that segment of the family.
Not many, because most (ex-) hippies are a lot smarter. They know that politicians who are supporters of fiscal conservatism are actually part of the Senate and House of Representatives. They are a minority these days. The tea baggers haven’t understood democracy at all. They think that they are only represented if the President is a Republican who can rely on a Republican-dominated Senate and House of Representatives.
@Nullo – My kids are American citizens. In November 2004 my daughter was totally devastated when George W. Bush was reelected. She stayed up all night because of the time difference watching CNN International. She told me that this is so unfair. I said, the majority of American voters elected Bush. We have to respect this. You’re kidding, she said, still full of anger. No, I replied, I’m serious. This is what democracy is all about.
@mattbrowne
I will admit that haste caused my post to be unacceptably and unhelpfully brief, leading to a misunderstanding of my intent on your part. I will amend that now.
You are assuming, incorrectly and without basis, that the Tea Party people are unaware of how their government is supposed to function. You are also assuming that the Tea Party people are all Republican, when a good deal of them are Libertarians and other third-party voters, and a small percentage are actually Democrats.
The main beef of the Tea Party is that the Federal government is too big and too irresponsible with its spending and too willing to bend the Constitution. That’s it.
@Nullo – Thanks for the clarification. To me it’s fine that this group of Republicans, Libertarians and other third-party voters, and a small percentage of Democrats are critical of the health care bill. This as such shows that they are mature citizens exercising their right to criticize the government. What is not okay is the name of their movement and the related slogans, as well as the style of their criticism. The people of the British colonies had to pay taxes, but were not properly represented in the British political systems. This lead to the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. Taxation without representation is wrong. We don’t have this situation in 2010. The style of confrontation of the tea baggers is disgusting and frightening. Again, debate is good. Even heated debates are good. But there are limitations. Health insurance for everyone is going to cause Armageddon? Obama wants to pull the plug on grandma? Comments like “Obama is a socialist-fascist and will put you in internment camps if you let him reform healthcare” are a terrible insult to all victims of Nazism. Well, you know, Obama, Hitler, ah, we can’t really tell the difference.
Shameful. To say the least.
Really? I suspect that they tea party people were anything but hippies. They are much more likely to be the good sorority girls or ROTC cadets than hippies.
The hippies were anarchists. The didn’t respect authority or international corporations. The tea party people want people in authority to crack down on people that look or sound different. They appear to think that international corporation deserve to run the world and that democracy should be replaced by fascist dictatorships. Mostly though, they are uniformed and misled. Just think, Sarah Palin is considered one of their leaders! The only person that is more misinformed that Palin is GWB. Palin, an Alaskan quitter, only recently learned where Russia is located.
@Ron_C – And yet today, we continue to have hundreds or perhaps thousands of valid reasons why we should not trust/respect authority or international corporations. Some ‘hippies’ might have been anarchists, but if they were, then it’s more than likely they weren’t hippies at all, but instead were using that movement as camouflage for other, more subversive and sinister activities. The lion’s share of hippies promoted free love and were the very beginnings of green movement, trying to take us back to ways that benefited both the Earth and the land or fighting establishment mores to gain acceptance and equality for all, which actually DOES support the notion that most tea-baggers probably weren’t a part of that movement. They only want things their way and appear to be disgusted by the end-products of today’s democracy. Are they anarchists in the making? It sure looks that way, doesn’t it?
@Rufus_T_Firefly the Teabaggers represent the ultimate end to which Ronald Reagen strode. They hate the government to the point that no one is left to lead but large corporations or really rich individuals. Indeed, that is its purpose.
The poor deluded members, including Palin, do not understand its real goals. Soon, it won’t matter. If their candidates win, the middle class will enter a poverty never seen in north America. The corporatist will be in charge. The only problem is if that happens, where will the corporatist sell their goods?
@Ron_C – There was a video that I watched a week or so ago, perhaps you’ve seen it. It was made by some entrepreneur who wanted to show the process by which the Tea Party movement had been and could be used/misled to dilute their effectiveness and possibly achieve some private agenda. I’m sorry, I couldn’t find the link or I would have included it. I’ll post it if I can find it again. Suffice to say, it was pretty scary stuff.
The tea party is like an insurgency, it only takes a few to tie up thousands. The dumber the member, the more likely they will be effective. Palin is the prefect leader, ignorant and greedy. She found a profession that pays better than prostitution but causes much more harm.
According to this, a lot.
@Nullo I take it you didn’t read through the comments about this article
@YARNLADY After Youtube, I learned not to read comments.
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