Are Hippie Republicans Oxymorons?

You may have noticed on the Politics Forums a significant number of posters defending Trump and the Republican establishment. Does this strike anybody else as incongruous? Of course, these forums are open to everybody. Trolls, Russian bots, Neo-nazis, everybody and his/her dog can play. It would be dull without them. But it still seems unusual to me that Republicans would be attracted here. Were these folks at Woodstock? Do they go to Rainbow Family gatherings? Was there a time when "Peace, love and understanding" meant something to them? Is it the drugs? Sex? Rock n' roll? Do they bathe irregularly? Are they just slumming? What's the deal? Is this the problem?

 

Here's some food for thought that might lead to suicidal depression. My rich Reagan-loving gradma was a hippie and didn't even know it!
What is a Conservative Hippie?
Urban Dictionary: republican hippie
Where did the Hippies go?
Whoa, it's a republican Hippie...it's a Rippie... - Democratic Underground

 

Quick question...

What, in your opinion, defines a hippie?

 

A penetrating stench of patchouli

 

not guilty

but i do leave nag champa incense sticks in my car to make it smell good

 

Nag champa incense leads to harder stuff

 

oohh that reminds me...i have to go check the mail box

thanks

 

I don't see how one could be a Republican and a Hippy at the same time. Being a model citizen, work for corporate America, and attend a church like the one Mike Pence goes to, and wear boat shoes with a Dan Quayle hair cut, and get married to a bull dog jaw bible thumping 400lb woman who has an addiction to sugar cured bacon pretty much describes Republican. Being skinny, vegetarian, artistic, non-conformist, drop-out, globally aware, socially caring, Krishnamurthi reading, Hunter Thompson admiring defines Hippy.

 

You must like keeping people inside tiny little boxes with neat labels on them.

I'm sure it's upsetting when you don't know what box someone belongs in.

 

No such thing as a republican hippie...republicans are cons, liberals are hippies. Trump and his minions just attacked the FBI today, releasing the memo by Nunes. The FBI is NOT the enemy of America, Trump is the enemy, out to destroy the foundations of this country. Trump and his minions chose white supremacists at Charlottesville Va. when he called them "good people". The nazis were white supremacists also. ICE is the new Gestapo. They are only one step from cranking up the ovens again.

 

And that's of course the crux of the issue. I'd start with the term "hip', which is African-American in origin. Some say the term derived from the Wolof word "hepicat" for open-eyed (others say that's crying Wolof). In African-American parlance in the early twentieth century, it came to mean savvy or "in the know", where it flourished in the "hepcat" culture jazz era to designate somebody who understood the latest (especially underground) trends. Anatole Broyard offered "A Portrait of the Hipster" in Partisan Review (1948), who saw hipsters as a reaction by African-Americans against the white corporate world that controlled their destinies.The word was taken over by African-American wannabes and was used in the 50s "Beat Generation" era like Jack Kerouac to describe alienated white anti-heroes of the emerging counterculture. Norman Mailer, in The White Negro: Superficial Reflections on the Hipster (1957), uses it to describe "the desire of a white avant-garde to disaffiliate itself from whiteness, with its stain of Eisenhower, the bomb, and the corporation, and achieve the “cool” knowledge and exoticized energy, lust, and violence of black Americans." What Was the Hipster? To be hip was to be "cool" and non-confomist, the opposite of "square" ( rigidly conventional and conformist to traditional values). The term "hippies" was an insulting diminuitive of hipster first applied to "the sloppy kids who hung around North Beach or Greenwich Village after 1960 and didn’t care about jazz or poetry, only drugs and fun." Ibid. The term came to be applied to the counterculture that developed as a reaction to the War in Vietnam and the popularization of psychedelic drugs by Leary's experiments in the early sixties. It originally had a countercultural connotation--rejecting the values of the Dominant Social Paradigm. By the early seventies, Charles Reich celebrated the triumph of the counterculture in The Greening of America, which meant that it was in danger of losing its identity as a counterculture. Then came punk rock, Reagan, and --well, we know the rest. What is the essence of hipness? A goatee and earring in a guy's ear, as in the Time cover rendering of American gothic? Or something less superficial--a rejection of fifties Eisenhower/Reagan Republican values of militarism, corporatism, and mindless conformity to traditional thinking and mores?

 

Not boxes, reference points. Without distinctions, thought is meaningless mush and words become Orwellian weapons to sow confusion and create alternate realities.

 

I don't know. Here's my two cents.

I'm a feminist. I'm an environmentalist. I find a zen-like state of tranquility sitting on my board in the early morning, bobbing in the gentle swells, watching the sun come up over the hills as it turns dark blue sky into inviting shades of orange and purple. Sometimes I don't even try and catch a wave. I'm just enjoying being out there...I'm just enjoying being. I run around barefoot, and am naive enough to think love and peace will solve the world's problems, but realist enough to know that the application of love and peace still eludes us as a species. And, I'm a lesbian who grew up in the time of angry feminist punk rock and riot grrrl bands. So in that regard, I am very counter culture.

On the other hand, I am old fashioned. While the definition of family is fluid these days, it doesn't change the fact that--in my opinion--the family unit is the most important social structure in one's life (or at least, it should be). I grew up eating dinner at the table as a family, going to church, and instilled with discipline and a strong work ethic. When I look at where I am in life now, I realize I wouldn't be here if it weren't for the values with which I was raised. I'm weary of big government and think they need to be out of our daily lives. The GOP has drifted so far from its initial core values that, truthfully, I'm not sure I identify as Republican anymore. Last election I voted Libertarian, despite recognizing that Gary Johnson was completely insane.

I have a very carefree live-and-let-live approach to most things. So, if the first paragraph comes across as "hippyish" to you and the second one like conservative Republican, then there you go.

But I don't see how those two philosophies are at odds with each other.

 

Its says Hip not Hippie.

Rather than make it about Democrat vs Republican why can't you say we follow what defines ones beliefs and principles. Does it make someone a Democrat to believe we need a National Healthcare system? Does it make someone a Republican if they believe in gun ownership? Does it make someone Democrat or Republican if they believe in gun ownership as well as gun control? Does it make someone a Democrat if they believe in the legalization of Marijuana? Does it make someone a Republican if they want to secure our borders from illegal immigrants? If we are not a Christian are we a Democrat? Its not about a party, its about which principles seem to the best to support? Its very easy to try and make it about an us or them D vs R argument. Seems to be the popular approach these days. Pick a side and fuck the other side for not being on the same side. This is the very cause of the problems in this country. Neither are in the middle anymore. They are either extreme right or extreme left. And its fucking up our country.

I both favor and oppose what each party represents. I vote for whom I believe best serves my beliefs to as much an extent as I can find. That has been a Democrat or a Republican depending upon the beliefs they seem to champion. If none do, I don't vote for any of them. I have lost faith that our political system represents me for about 20 years now. I had hope for Obama but that waned after a few years. That doesn't mean I don't still have beliefs, I just take the path that I can control those beliefs at my will anyway I can. I find every way to avoid the fucked up policies and take advantage of every policy I benefit from.

One of my better friends makes an astounding living growing marijuana. He is a staunch Republican. No matter what. But he is the biggest hippie I know. A rich hippie, but a hippie none the less. Fuck him because he isn't a Democrat like you?

Maybe the better question is what is a hippie? A Non-Conformist? Or do they identify as being poor and non interested in finance, economy and religion? There is no one hippie just like there is no one Republican or Democrat.

If you don't like the fact that someone votes differently than you, smoke a joint, mellow out, get over it.

I don't hate anyone that doesn't share all my views on things. I may not embrace them, but I let them go in peace and life their lives. Its best if they try not to convince me what an asshole I am for not feeling like they do. Live and Let Live doesn't mean we don't defend ourselves if needed.

We all serve ourselves better by not trying to choose a political party as the only view to have. You're just gonna fuck yourself up by trying to blame the side you're not on.

 

Don't try to put me in a box.

I've got a box-cutter.

 

I noticed Republican talk show host Bill Cunningham always calls himself and Republican caller "Great Americans; and, at the same time he cuts down Libral Democrats as not Model Americans, not Great Americans. I noticed Republican talk show host Mark Levin insulting any Libral caller as a "Moron" or "Idiot" or worse. I noticed Republican talk show host Sean Hannity insulting Librals as communists and won't workers and followers of Marx, Trotsky, Ayers and Alynski. I noticed one well known Republican who likes to call Mexicans murderers and rapers. All these stigmatizing labels are a form of placing people in boxes.

 

Okie up on top pointed out Hippies are for Peace. I've always recognized Republicans are supporters of war, war for oil, and more war for profit.

 

lots of things actually, (10) especially that golden moment of looking forward instead of back, and taking a break from hating logic.

actually the global social system (12) is/was the result of the combination of population and technology.
and the whole thing was in a sense the result of being at the cusp of where the overwhelming majority of places were no longer even a little bit isolated from each other.

what now calls itself conservative (which it isn't anyway, though maybe that's another topic) is a desire to 'go back' to a fantasy that never was, but before that time,
had been much easier to pretend. (there were actually conservatives in those days, mostly indigenous and other marginalized cultures,
but that is something entirely different that what the tea nazi's have since misappropriated)