Over at "Travel Penguin" I jokingly suggested that Blogger David might be a latter day hippy for he had posted a philosophical blogpost that was about peace and love and independent thinking, diverting one's focus away from current affairs and the associated angst.
Afterwards, I considered what a "hippy" actually was. What did you have to do? How did you have to act or present yourself in order to be classified as a bona fide "hippy"? Did anyone who bore that label ever classify themselves as hippies? Or maybe it was just a name attached to them by conservatives who sought to denigrate young people in search of a better, more peaceful tomorrow.
In the early spring of 2005, I was delighted to stand on the corner of Haight and Ashbury in San Francisco - the very womb of the American hippy movement. I guess my wife and children wondered - what the hell are we doing here in this unremarkable neighbourhood? But for me it was like the completion of a pilgrimage.
The so-called "hippies" of the late nineteen sixties were so goddamn "woke" that they were off the woke-scale. They were preaching peace and love, smoking pot, wearing flowers in their hair and angry as hell about the war in Vietnam.
Perhaps Donald Trump was a hippy in those days for he dodged the draft with absurd bone spur claims. Maybe he was seen in Golden Gate Park in a kaftan, smoking grass with the other draft dodgers and maybe he closed his eyes to listen to Scott McKenzie's "San Francisco"...
the hippies got a lot of bad press. You give some of their positive points. Many people were wanna be hippies and a bad example of peace.
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