Bernie Sanders, Democratic Socialism and Hippies 101

brianlux

Let’s toss around some ideas and post some information about how these three subjects are related. Maybe by doing so we’ll all learn something.

The latest ploy to discredit Bernie Sander’s is to smear his image by making it appear that he wants everything to be free and that he appeals to a hippie crowd.

Let’s start with the hippie nonsense. First of all, as Gimme so well pointed out elsewhere, you really have to look hard to find a hippie these days. I’m almost 65 years old so I can vouch for that being the case. Look at my photo. I’m the closest thing to looking like a hippie as anyone my age that I know and I’m a poor excuse for a hippie.

In the sixties we had the same misunderstandings. Anybody with long hair was labeled a “hippie”. But no way were we all alike. Some of us worked hard at our jobs or school or activism or all three. Some simply like to take a lot of drugs and crash for free in some flea infested pad on a filthy street call Haight.

Those who strive to support the Sanders campaign are working hard to do so and understand the value of hard work. So really, the Bernie Sanders/hippie connection makes even less sense today. That kind of smear simply illustrates a particular form of ignorance.

I won’t bother to yet again post links and information about why Democratic Socialism is not about “free stuff”. Every time someone posts something to that effect I just have to laugh. That illustrates yet another particular form of ignorance or (more likely) simply an attempt to agitate. I’m the last person to say there is never a good reason to be a fly in the ointment, but a wise person picks their battles carefully and knows well in advance what they are talking about.

OK, sock it to me, baby.

brianlux

And just FYI, I am not disparaging free loading hippies. For the most part, they are harmless, gentle, fun loving and easy going. I had to tell one such person to vacate the apartment I shared with some other guys in the late 60's early 70's . He had no place to stay so I let him throw a mattress on the floor and live there for a while but after several months of him staying there rent free, it was time for him to mooch off of someone else.

JC29856

Yeah... Nobody asks how we can afford endless needles imperial wars but hell freezes over when we talk about investing in our collective future, education health care etc. Starve the unemployed but send Israel $10M a day and rubber stamp checks to defense contractors. Yup yup

Go Beavers

I lived in Eugene for 11 years, so I have some experience around hippies. I never saw hippies as having any less of a work ethic compared to any other group. In fact, it was probably greater. It was just that their focus often fell out of mainstream thinking and routine societal behavior. Many worked their butts off in the area of their particular passion, and they found rewards outside of the paycheck. They dug in the organic soil, saw just enough clients in their massage therapy practice to make ends meet and allow themselves to be intensely present in the moment, or they did their art for hours on end without an expectation for a payoff. Many were tuned in to what their individual talent was and how they could share and/or help others with that talent.

JimmyV

Hippies > Hipsters

brianlux

Go Beavers said:

I lived in Eugene for 11 years, so I have some experience around hippies. I never saw hippies as having any less of a work ethic compared to any other group. In fact, it was probably greater. It was just that their focus often fell out of mainstream thinking and routine societal behavior. Many worked their butts off in the area of their particular passion, and they found rewards outside of the paycheck. They dug in the organic soil, saw just enough clients in their massage therapy practice to make ends meet and allow themselves to be intensely present in the moment, or they did their art for hours on end without an expectation for a payoff. Many were tuned in to what their individual talent was and how they could share and/or help others with that talent.

I guess it depends on how one defines "hippies". You are so right about many hippies who work on communes and in cooperatives. Also true for hippie artists. I am currently trying desperately to find ways to help an ailing person whom many would consider to be a hippie artist.

And of course we could go on and on about what is and isn't a hippie but what I'm trying to relate as the crux of the matter in this thread is to expose what I perceive as a blatant attempt by both the media and certain on-line forum posters who characterize Bernie Sanders as a man who wants everything to be "free" and to characterize him and his supporters as lazy mooching hippies. This is an utter lie.

Smellyman

Hippies to me now are much more than dirty, greasy, peace and love people. Well, we are that, but also care about the environment, sustainability, taking care of people and animals and much more. That is a modern hippie to me and that is what I try to be.

It's not an insult to call me a hippie, the only ones who think it an insult are gun toting, war mongering, bigots, climate change denying trump supporters. You pay me a great compliment calling me a hippie.

brianlux

Smellyman said:

Hippies to me now are much more than dirty, greasy, peace and love people. Well, we are that, but also care about the environment, sustainability, taking care of people and animals and much more. That is a modern hippie to me and that is what I try to be.

It's not an insult to call me a hippie, the only ones who think it an insult are gun toting, war mongering, bigots, climate change denying trump supporters. You pay me a great compliment calling me a hippie.

You're my kind of hippie, hippieman!

Back in the original hippie days it often bothered me when people called me a hippie because it was always said in a derogatory manner by people who had little or no clue what the counter-culture of that day was about. Also, people classified anyone with long hair or who wore a certain style of dress as a "hippie" yet we were a vast range of people types. In a way, to me anyway, young hippies seem more genuine and focused than the hippies of yore. We were very scattered and ran the gamut from dangerous to dishonest to crazy to artistic to communal to gentle to activist to radical and any combination of those.