Wednesday, August 19, 2009
It took the 40th anniversary of Woodstock for me to understand what’s going on in our country right now:
Right-wingers are the new hippies.
They’re Rippies.
These days Rippies are the ones disrupting town-hall meetings and shouting down authority. They’re the ones chanting for a revolution. They turn on (Fox News), tune in (to Rush) and drop out (of the taxpaying public).
And clearly, some of them have found a stash of acid. There’s no other way to explain the birthers.
(Think about this for a second: From the moment Barack Obama announced he was running for president, not only did every major newsroom on the planet check his background, but every potential opponent in both parties sent out pros to look for dirt. Nobody found a thing. And people still believe he’s not a U.S. citizen? Dude, pass me a tab of that.)
The Rippies of ’09 tap the same righteous anger as the hippies of ’69 — they’re furious about a huge government operation that they believe is tied to unnecessary deaths. Now, it’s a national health care plan. Back then, it was the Vietnam War.
(Yeah, I know, not exactly equivalent targets. Just roll with it for a minute.)
Have you heard about the movement to go John Galt? Galt is the character in Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged” who organizes a strike of the world’s productive people to protest a socialist society. In the current version, productive citizens would starve the government of money by cutting back work output, going off the grid, growing their own food.
If that doesn’t sound like a commune, I don’t know what does.
Sad truth
Let me stop and stipulate a couple of things. Rippies don’t speak for many of the conservatives I know. It’s a sad truth of politics (and journalism, and life) that the loudest and angriest get the most attention. If you’re trying to have a normal conversation, and one of those little yappy dogs keeps pinballing around the room, it won’t be long before the conversation is about the little yappy dog.
The other thing is, all this is fine and fair in a democratic society. National health care is a giant government program — something that will change the lives of millions — and we ought to dissect it and discuss it and tell our elected officials exactly what we think. Civility is overrated. If a few hollering folks spur others to join the debate, that makes it more likely that a good bill gets passed, not less.
But at the same time, you can’t mistake the sweet aroma of irony. (Smells like patchouli.)
If we were back in ’69, the agitators now would have been against the agitators back then. The people defending their tactics as fully American would have called the hippies’ tactics anti-American. It’s proof, as if we needed any, that values shift and slide depending on momentary needs. (Baseball fans boo steroid users — except the ones on their team.)
Here’s the good news. One, people who do nothing but yell tend to wear out their welcome. Two, the country is now paying attention to health care and the uninsured. Three, if the hippie movement is any indication, at least we’ll get some good music out of the deal.
And four, Sarah Palin is totally Grace Slick.
X Tommy Tomlinson is a columnist for the Charlotte Observer. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.