Hippie News & Stuff: Beaten, but Unbrowed

In Which Y'r Ob'd't S'v't observes that, while the rightard/fuckloons have indeed led the country down the "primrose path" toward rankest, loathsome authoritarianism (at best!), they had plenty of assistance, encouragement and eager compliance from folks to whom you, hippies, are probably related.

Katrina van den Heuvel, in a WaPo column I the other day, heaped scorn and obloquy on "the right wing" for "browbeating their fellow citizens" into submission with their "scorched womb/school/union/senoirs/health (etc) policies" (my phrase) camouflaging their odious, militantly anti-social/anti-democratic (small d) agenda as an almost sacred crusade "battling" against the "moral crises" of gay marriage, social safety nets, contraception, green energy and organized labor.

Quoth the outraged Katrina: "The real crisis of public morality in the United States doesn’t lie in the private decisions Americans make in their lives or their bedrooms; it lies at the heart of an ideology — and a set of policies — that the right-wing has used to batter and browbeat their fellow Americans."

C'mon. Puh-LEEEEZ!@ I mean, I buy the indictment, but, really:

The thug/gunsel wing of the GOP didn't have to browbeat everybody.

They had PLENTY of willing acolytes, lusty volunteers, enthusiastic foot-soldiers and spear-carriers. You're probably related to a few:

All those Reagan Dims, among others.

And what about the "religious" rightloons, theocrats, and Cristards?

And the growing legions of anti-science homeschoolers, eager to eliminate the secular influences of public school?

And the welfare/immigrant/colored-people haters.

Take all the groups to whom the thugs like "Widow's Peak" Ryan, Orange Boner, Sen. Yertle, and Eric "The Man With The Six-Pack Jaw" Cantor have drawn from for their constituencies, and add to that the Limbaugh ditto-heads, and they started with fair plurality of ready allies.

Not to say that the "morality" of the bottom line is not, prima facie, itself immoral, or that those who cleave to it aren't psychopathic narcissists who should be shunned by decent folks and sent to isolated, primitive islands; but to claim they "forced" their toxic ideology upon us is a bit of an exaggeration. Many swilled the kool-aid.

Even with the calamities of the last Congress, close to HALF of the people, probably, STILL approve of the frontal assaults on the safety nets as long as it's sold as making lazy loafers go back to work, or denying "privileges" to the undeserving; MOST, most likely, if they thought that the people whom they detested as inferiors were suffering more than they as a result.

I fear this is stupid of the sort even the Ocean can cleanse. We can try, when I see you at the beach, chers...PAZ!

Back to your good self, Winstone, and the wonders of Hippie Central!