Hippies grow pot. Godbots…?
I’ll need more help with that moral equivalency thing.
While words cannot express how much I love this line, I have to admit that it’s not true. I, also, am a wild-eyed moderate. Yes, I usually describe myself on this board as a hippie chick, because…well…so many of you aren’t. And to folks like y’all, I *am *a hippie chick. My deep dark secret is that when I do run with the hippies, I’m criticized for being the Conservative (you can hear the capital letter, trust me), cynical, “too-much-in-your-head” Muggle. I make myself just as unwelcome there pointing out that margarine being “one molecule away” from plastic is a meaningless phrase as I do here pointing out that nettles are a damn fine remedy for seasonal allergies.
He may have been referring to those so immersed in the importance of their own identity as a Christian that they cannot hear a general criticism of some zealots without personalizing it and reflexively ankle-biting.
Of course, I could be wrong.
I’m not so sure that’s true. There seem to be some people these days so committed to the idea of “moderate” political positions that they say some awfully crazy shit. I’d call Joe Lieberman a wild-eyed moderate, excepting of course that his positions are about as “moderate” as the rest of the Republican party.
It’s a rare day when you, I, and lissener are on the same page. Next beer’s on me.
Me? I love hippie chicks, as long as they come complete with brain. And razor. I met this really cool hippie chick over the weekend, and I could really picture myself engaging in some free love with her. But I had the feeling that she could introduce various body parts to the concept of shaving. She could start with her upper lip.
Get out! Next thing you’re going to tell me is that such people post here, under extremely ironic user names.
Say it ain’t so.
Gotcha. I ran across a similar problem when I was criticizing this guy.
A wild-eyed moderate is someone (just like a wild-eyed radical or reactionary or any other zealot) for whom facts and reason and civil discourse can be discarded in the service of promoting their viewpoint. You have to remember, ends and means, by no means – obey the same code (great – anybody know why I’m suddenly channeling Roger Miller?).
Anyhow. Moderation is not a synonym for truth. It’s merely a bad approximation of truth, based on the admittedly sound assumption that extreme worldviews are bound to be wrong a lot of the time. Even then, it works only statistically/stochastically: the idea isn’t that the middle on any given issue is likely to be correct, it’s that the truth on a large number of issues is likely to be found, on average, on both sides of the middle and at roughly equal distances.
Nonetheless, you still find people who would literally cut the baby in half as a matter of public policy, who think that everyone equally displeased constitutes a healthy demos, who think that the way to truth is to give equal time to the insane screamers on each fringe. These are the wild-eyed moderates, who have given up the idea that there are any correct answers and doggedly insist that Eden must be equidistant between Heaven and Hell. And they can scream and shout as loudly, and behave as badly, as anyone else.
Anyone, be they Godbots or Patchouli Patrollers, who pretends to be up on politics but in reality does nothing more than spout someone else’s canned rhetoric should be force-fed the New York Times every day until they learn to shut up.
Interpret “force feeding” however you wish here, be it literal or figurative.
Most of the hippies around here either live on a trust fund or are slumming it waiting for their inheritance. The lack of need to work or have consequences in life often produces brain-dead type people who lack empathy.
The 17 year old daughter of my friend’s girlfriend was telling him the other day “My dad lives out in Eugene with all the hippies. They smell like ass, but they get the best chronic.”
That just popped into my head when I read this.
By the way, excellent rant, dead on. 10 of 10.
Hah, I’ll one-up you; the Norwegian Pirate Bureau (http://www.piratgruppen.no/) has an average user age of 42 years old. My grandpa actually got a pirate hat from the founder as the 111st member.
…snap snap…King of the Soup.
I don’t personally know any hippies like that. And if anyone has non-hippie-yet-knows-them credentials, it’s me. Just among my relatives are farm co-opers, Woodstock residents, and New Agers (heck, I even grew up 5 miles from Lilydale.)
Of course there are intolerant people of any persuasion.
Dave Barry said it best when referring to overly religious folk but it seems to apply to people with strong political/world views: “People who want to share their religious (political/world) views with you almost never want you to share yours with them.”
The American Experience had an installment on “The Summer of Love”. Hippies gather, the word spreads, more hippies join in, become hippie plague, “real” hippies get the hell outta Haight.
And what’s up with the whole no bathing? Pollutes Mother Earth with the funk of your being? Washes away your essential vibe?
Gee, why not Pravda?
'Cause it’s in Russian, silly!
I live in a pretty hippy-infested place. And there’s a certain strain of hippies…not all of them…but a certain number…that use the hippy ethos as an excuse to act like douchebags. They feel free to break any agreement, wander out of any obligation, help themselves to anything lying around, because, hey, I’ve gotta do my own thing. I’m not judging you, dude, so how dare you judge what I do?
“Yeah, it’s right under the rim of the toilet bowl. Go have a look, but let me go. . .tidy it up first.”
Me, I like hippies.
Filthy, filthy hippies from Takoma Park. 
Somehow I imagine that you run into that problem far more frequently than that.