Kill All Hippies

David Weigel | September 21, 2007

Code Pink protesters at the NRA's meeting today kept interrupting John McCain, so he did this:

Yep, the video comes from McCain's YouTube channel: That one guy who still works for the campaign saw the potential of it and scurried to put it up.

McCain's war stance is helping him in two ways that are only semi-related. Washington's hawkish establishment laud McCain because he's been saying for years that we needed more troops in Iraq. If the Petraeus surge works and Iraq is stabilized it knocks the rust and tarnish off the entire neoconservative project.

The base has a different reason for liking McCain on this: It wants to beat up some hippies. When he says "we beat you yesterday," he's talking as much about getting even with anti-Vietnam protesters as he is about the Senate's war votes. The Two Minutes Hate* against MoveOn.org was as much about defending the honor of David Petraeus as it was about shaming George Soros and Michael Moore and the rest of 'em. The base is actually pretty angry when it thinks about spending decades in the Middle East... but its loathing of the liberals who want to get out is visceral.

*More like Two Weeks at this point

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Episiarch|9.21.07 @ 3:10PM|#

I've kept this town free of hippies since I was five and a half.

|9.21.07 @ 3:14PM|#

It's not just liberals who want us to get out. It's also non-liberal veterans who are tired of seeing their friends getting blown up and killed for no beneficial reason.

Couldn't help but notice that the most hawkish GOP leaders are usually the ones who never bothered to wear a uniform.

Episiarch|9.21.07 @ 3:17PM|#

Couldn't help but notice that the most hawkish GOP leaders are usually the ones who never bothered to wear a uniform.

That doesn't really apply to McCain, though. He's an authoritarian ass, but he did go through hell and never capitulated. Anybody who survives 5 years in the Hanoi Hilton gets some (very specific) respect from me.

|9.21.07 @ 3:17PM|#

And McCain's a fraud...he's happy to stick us into another Vietnam and ignore the pointless casualties and lack of results so long as it gets him into the White House.

|9.21.07 @ 3:18PM|#

I'm not saying this is the case, but it wouldn't be that hard for Code Pink-type protestors to be right-wing operatives trying to make anti-war people look like goofball hippies.

UCrawford|9.21.07 @ 3:18PM|#

Episiarch,

I used to feel the same way, until McCain signed off on the MCA.

|9.21.07 @ 3:19PM|#

Aka the Conan bias.

|9.21.07 @ 3:22PM|#

So, how exactly were "they" beaten before?

|9.21.07 @ 3:23PM|#

"Couldn't help but notice that the most hawkish GOP leaders are usually the ones who never bothered to wear a uniform."

Yeah like John McCain. That clown never wore a uniform in his life. Fucking chickenhawk.

Episiarch|9.21.07 @ 3:24PM|#

UCrawford, I agree, I'm just saying that he must be a pretty tough bastard. I can respect Julius Caesar's military prowess without thinking he was a paragon of liberty.

|9.21.07 @ 3:28PM|#

Now we can only wait until the next time McCain appears on the Daily Show and with a shrug tells Jon Stewart that it was just one of those things you gotta say when you're a Republican.

|9.21.07 @ 3:34PM|#

Hey Dan T, your scenario is plausible. a quick story:

My ex girlfriend works for a prominent Republican leaning PR firm in D.C. About three years ago a nuclear plant in TN was going to re-open after a decade or so offline. A competing nuclear plant hired her firm to hire some hippies to jump, shout, and stink outside the re-opening plant.

the hippies were, as best I could tell, actual hippies. but someone was paying them, or at least their hippie leaders, to be at the nuke protest.

rho|9.21.07 @ 3:35PM|#

I've kept this town free of hippies since I was five and a half.

Do you have a rock that keeps hippies away?

|9.21.07 @ 3:38PM|#

Republicans hate hippies. Wow what a story. I guess Weigel's next big breaking news is going to be Jews don't like Arabs. I this Reason or the Onion.

|9.21.07 @ 3:43PM|#

CARTMAN
Hello, ma'am. I'm working to clean up the neighborhood from parasites. Do you mind if I take a quick look around your house? I'm afraid you may have hippies.

Rest of hippie hate'n goodness nyah

Episiarch|9.21.07 @ 3:53PM|#

Do you have a rock that keeps hippies away?

See Warren's link.

|9.21.07 @ 3:57PM|#

Episiarch,

I agree that he's physically tough, and I was impressed with his autobiography and appreciated the sacrifice he made. I just don't think his kind of toughness makes him a good political leader, nor does what he went through in Vietnam lend credibility to or excuse him for his policy positions. I think that people have a tendency with McCain to lionize him for Vietnam, while overlooking the fact that his policy positions contradict all the lessons he claimed he learned from his captivity and service. He may have been a hero once, now he's just another soulless hack.

And I should have phrased my original comment more clearly. McCain's obviously no chickenhawk...but he sure does love their policies when it works to his personal political advantage, despite the number of dead bodies those policies create.

|9.21.07 @ 4:05PM|#

More evidence for "Code Pink" being in on it:

"Accidental" color-coordination of McCain's PINK tie...

|9.21.07 @ 4:07PM|#

Anyone who uses the chickenhawk argument is pretty much admitting they don't have a real argument. It's certainly a lot more silly and shameful than McCain truthfully telling neo-Hippies they've been beaten yet again.

dhex|9.21.07 @ 4:08PM|#

KULTUR WAR
OONST OONST OONST OONST

i don't have any problem calling dubya a chickehawk. (actually bloodthirsty fucking monster is a better term but it takes so long to say)

|9.21.07 @ 4:15PM|#

Shorter Weigel:
It is ok to take the most uncharitable interpretation of my opponent's speech.

TLB|9.21.07 @ 4:16PM|#

Those listed aren't "liberal", even in the current state of that word. They're far-left.

|9.21.07 @ 4:18PM|#

I'm not saying this is the case, but it wouldn't be that hard for Code Pink-type protestors to be right-wing operatives trying to make anti-war people look like goofball hippies.

Unfortunately, one of the things not making this so hard is that during the 1960s and early 1970s, goofball hippies spent 10 years making anti-war people look like goofball hippies.

Come to think of it, many continued on during the Cold War 1980s.

Some of them still haven't retired yet, either. They often appeared to have swamped the serious anti-war arguments during protests that preceded the Iraq war.

The impulse to beat hippies is a strong one.

|9.21.07 @ 4:26PM|#

UCrawford|9.21.07 @ 4:33PM|#

Larry,

The neo-hippies have been beaten? Really? What was the prize for beating them? Five more years for our troops in an Iraqi shithole while we wait for the dysfunctional Iraqi government we're propping up to inevitably collapse? Another 3,000 of our guys dead (along with untold numbers of Iraqis)? What exactly have we "won" here?

When I use the chickenhawk argument, I'm trying to illustrate the fact that the policy makers who are determining our actions in Iraq don't view the men and women in military as individuals, they view them as an abstraction to be pissed away on a grand dream of "democratic" conquest. In my experience this is a common mentality among people who've never served but support military aggression...they don't appreciate the true costs because they've never shouldered the burden themselves and they're insulated from the consequences. In any case, the chickenhawk argument's got more credibility than the whining about "neo-hippies" emanating from the pro-Iraq crowd.

UCrawford|9.21.07 @ 4:35PM|#

Dan T.,

Nah, Phelps is from my state and we've had to deal with him for years. He's just a loon.

|9.21.07 @ 4:36PM|#

There was a letter to Best of the Web yesterday that pretty much summed up Code Pink and ANSWER and the lot of motley hippies that seem to have nothing better to do than run around making anyone who opposes the war look like a clown. It stated:

I have a friend. Several times a year he goes out and dresses in funny clothes and participates with other like-minded people who believe in the the things he believes. And they act on their beliefs. And talk about them. And get younger folks involved, who will carry on their traditions.

They are Civil War re-enactors. These peace protesters are just peace protest re-enactors if you think about it. "

How much longer can the same few thousand losers go around staging the same crap before becomes just another quaint human interest story about people re-living the past?

|9.21.07 @ 4:40PM|#

"In my experience this is a common mentality among people who've never served but support military aggression...they don't appreciate the true costs because they've never shouldered the burden themselves and they're insulated from the consequences."

1. That assumes that people who are shouldering the burden do not support it, which at least according to the polls is not true.

2. It assumes that someone military people are less likly to use force and more peaceful than civilians. That may be true, although I am not sure, but regardless that sure as hell isn't what the people who deploy the chickenhawk argument have thought for oh I don't know ever. The same people who normally preach about the military industrial complex and the need to kill the Pentegon and war mongering generals are now claiming that only people who have served in said complex are competent to make decisions regarding war and peace? yeah right.

UCrawford|9.21.07 @ 4:56PM|#

John,

Actually I've never said anything about abolishing the Pentagon or killing generals, nor have I ever used "the military industrial complex" as a rationale for anything. I'm a pro-military, pro-national defense military vet who opposes aggressive military interventionism and the war in Iraq.

I'm also opposed to obviously incompetent leaders (Bush) openly lying and cherrypicking the facts on the ground to hide their obvious incompetence. I find it offensive that Bush is so willing to send soldiers to fight an unnecessary war in Iraq when it's a sacrifice he was never willing to make when his own time came during Vietnam. I also find it offensive that someone whose own military record and employment history has shown a distinct pattern of failure, incompetence and underachievement (again, Bush) gets our troops into a mess and refuses to correct or even acknowledge the problem out of what appears to be nothing more than simple petulance and insecurity compounded by a baseless and unsubstantiated faith that Iraq will just work itself out "because it has to".

So rather than use the loaded word "chickenhawk" I should probably substitute it for "fraud" instead. Bush is a fraud. A rather insecure and pathetic fraud. His policies are that of an insecure and pathetic fraud. Most of his policy advisors who supported the Iraq invasion and occupation are also frauds of a similar ilk.

P.S. I'm not sure what you were saying in your point 2, by the way. It appears to have gotten garbled, possibly in an edit.

|9.21.07 @ 5:00PM|#

We beat you yesterday.

Yes, by the staggering margin of negative 8 votes.

Quite the insight into McCain - he isn't gloating because his side is winning the battle, but because the rules of the game allow them to excert power despite what the people want.

So, joe, do you think that if a group of thugs have 51% of the votes they should be allowed to run roughshod over the other 49%? If you were a libertarian, which are SOOO not, you'd think that the filibuster rule in the U.S. Senate helps preserve divided government, and think that was a good thing in preventing abuses of power. If Republicans still controlled the House, Senate, and Presidency, would you still be bitching about the power to filibuster? If not, aren't you being the sort of partisan hack you accuse everyone else of being?

Fluffy|9.21.07 @ 5:02PM|#

McCain's Viet Nam service was extremely honorable, but that John McCain is dead and gone and this doddering old fool was left in his place.

I suppose his senescence explains why his definition of honor now apparently doesn't exclude lying on the day you announce the war, doesn't exclude mistreating prisoners, doesn't exclude immunizing people who mistreat prisoners to make sure they never are punished for their crimes, and doesn't exclude shrilly demanding that everyone around you declare a military policy a success even when its chief spokesgeneral only is willing to claim mixed results.

McCain has an interesting definition of honor these days.

Fluffy|9.21.07 @ 5:08PM|#

On the subject of "chickenhawkery":

I think the service history of the Bush cabal isn't relevant to analyzing the merits of their actual policies. We certainly have plenty of reasons to announce those policies abysmal failures without resorting to looking at Cheney's lack of service or Bush's National Guard record.

The question of chickenhawkery IS relevant, however, when discussing the somewhat pathetic tendency of pro-war types to frame the war discussion in terms of "toughness" or "bravery". The "101st Fighting Keyboarders" are rendered clowns on a PERSONAL level by their chickenhawkery, in a manner separate and distinct from the war itself. Bush is rendered ridiculous on a PERSONAL level when he shows up on an aircraft carrier wearing a flight jacket and acting like he thinks he's Audie Murphy and not Mr. "I hid out in the Air National Guard to make sure I didn't have to go to Nam". The war may be a good idea or a bad idea, but either way bloggers who think that supporting the war makes them manly and tough are losers, and chimpanzees who dress up in flight jackets are still chimpanzees.

Episiarch|9.21.07 @ 5:09PM|#

These peace protesters are just peace protest re-enactors if you think about it.

For some of them, this is actually very, very true. But you can't dismiss all of them like this.

|9.21.07 @ 5:14PM|#

John, thats a really interesting observation about the ANSWER protestors being similar to Civil War re-enactors. They do seem to want to re-enact the 1960s an awful lot.

clunk|9.21.07 @ 5:19PM|#

John and Fluffy, regarding your above posts:

You BOTH hit the nail on the head.
You're my new heroes.

UCrawford|9.21.07 @ 5:25PM|#

Valid points all, Fluffy.

SIV|9.21.07 @ 5:46PM|#

and chimpanzees who dress up in flight jackets are still chimpanzees.

Brilliant Fluffy! Did you just think of this on the spot? Calling Bush to a chimp? If only you guys had thought up this original, effective smear earlier we could all be living prosperously, with liberty,at peace with bin Laden and the poor misunderstood Jihadists, looking forward to four more years of the Kerry administration! You have talents Son....don't waste them.

|9.21.07 @ 6:26PM|#

I hate Code Pink and John McCain, just like I hate Ann Coulter and John Edwards, just like I hate MoveOn and Rudy Giuliani.

Gary|9.21.07 @ 6:33PM|#

A growing number of Iraq Veterans and enlisted are also apparently liberals and hippies. They want out.

Republicans just stated that giving them time off -- which would harm the Occupation -- would insult the troops.

I'm quite sure that Reason has focuses on the real reasons Washington chose to invade Iraq, in contrast to the stated reasons. I won't reiterate except to say Gulf of Tonkin and Domino (conspiracy?) Theory redux, and a disdain for having to purchase "tin, tungsten, and rubber" at fair market prices or go elsewhere, plus a "foothold" in a region.

In a serious moment, Jon Stewart slammed Hardball, not for debate, but for dishonest arguments. Much of US political debate has fallen over into the gutter, drunk and stoned on ego.

For a source with more gravitas than Jon Stewart, check YouTube for some postwar govt-sponsored videos from 1946 and 1947. One is called "Don't be a sucker", the other "Despotism". Once-popular Wisdom calls to us down through the decades.

Gary|9.21.07 @ 6:57PM|#

By the way, lest I be taken to the woodshed for unorthodox views on "the terrierists" ...

Don't debate me on the real reasons for going to war.

Just check with Brzezinski (Grand Chessboard) and with PNAC and all those related interlocking tax-free foundation-funded 'think tanks' (see Scaife). "Imperial mobilization" is precisely what they were promoting, long before Sept 11.

They also said they NEEDED us - ordinary Americans - to suffer a bloodbath, before they could roll out their policies. Reason? Um, too many "hippies" and disgruntled older veterans. Actually, what they refer to as an "excess of democracy" amongst "the rabble", which must surely include nearly every person.

Democracy itself -- popular will -- needed to be curtailed, and TERRORISM -- a major security threat, a catastrophic event -- plus the use of "attractive personalities" to "manipulate emotions and control reason" via the "latest communications techniques" were some of their stated solutions.

Gosh, if they didn't have an evil arch-enemy like Osama Bin Laden and his filthy Al-Qaeda hordes, it's almost as if they would have had to create him, fund him, train him, and arm him.

Well come to speak of it, we did. Janes.com apologetically called it a "marriage of convenience". Imagine that.

|9.21.07 @ 7:04PM|#

Ugh. Why was McCain even allowed to talk at an NRA meeting? He's about as pro-2A as Giuliani.

|9.21.07 @ 7:27PM|#

What happened to the John McCain that was opposed to obstructionist tactics and felt that items in the Senate deserved an up or down vote, nuclear option, blah blah blah. It seems that there is no limit to Republican hypocrisy these days.

Is it really any surprise that there is no amount of soldier's lives McCain wouldn't waste to ensure that the hippies lose, both him and his party are ghouls that live on the political points that can be scored with only the loss of a few thousand soliders.

COOP|9.21.07 @ 8:10PM|#

"The war is over, Mr. Lebowski! THE BUMS LOST!!"

|9.21.07 @ 8:25PM|#

Political rhetoric from a politico, ho hum.

Seeing the following:
If the Petraeus surge works and Iraq is stabilized it knocks the rust and tarnish off the entire neoconservative project.
from Weigel, after six years of Bush and four and one-half years of the downward spiral in Iraq, troubling.

Reason means the application of logic. And logic tells me that the neocons are batting 1000% re Iraq, they have been correct on exactly nothing.

Anonymo the Anonymous|9.21.07 @ 10:13PM|#

OT, but I hear this very often...
Along those lines, I've often wondered if Fred Phelps was actually a pro-gay activist doing an amazingly over-the-top caricature of a fundamentalist preacher to make them all look bad.

If he is, his commitment to the character makes Andy Kaufman's stunts look like kindergarten Thanksgiving plays. Read his bio. He's been at it for like half a century and none of the defectors have ever called him a phony, just a complete lunatic.

|9.21.07 @ 10:37PM|#

Just don't get him started with that, "it was the soldier, not the journalist," shit...

|9.22.07 @ 8:10AM|#

|9.22.07 @ 11:50AM|#

Hey, neat. "choose" and "lose" rhyme. He's neat. He deserves applause. That other lady didn't rhyme. She's dumb. Why didn't some police shoot her?

|9.22.07 @ 1:25PM|#

prolefeed,

No, I don't think any of things.

I just think that gloating about losing a vote but holding onto power anyways demonstrates poor character.

If I had lost the first six rounds of a boxing match, and then my opponent got disqualified because his glove laces broke and he couldn't answer the bell, I wouldn't strut around with my fists over my head. It would make me look like top-tier a-hole.

By dragging partisan outcomes into this, prolefeed, that makes YOU the partisan hack.

Also, what Fluffy said about chickenhawks. You're really only a chickenhawk if you, like the people at Fox, National Review, the Weekly Standard, yadda yadda yadda, denounce people as cowards and wimps, when you haven't actually done anything more manly than urge actual brave people to go out and fight.

VM|9.22.07 @ 2:17PM|#

joe! to be fair, he (prolefeed) does watch episodes of "The Ultimate Fighter" and notes that "tapping is for sissies".

*assumes karate stance!

Deadbeats|9.22.07 @ 4:42PM|#

Kill 'em cause their hair's too long!

Kill 'em cause their views are wrong!

Kill Kill Kill the Hippies!

Google won't show me the lyrics to that song
amazing how much shit ain't on the net
at least not where you can find it easy

peter jackson|9.22.07 @ 4:58PM|#

Crying "chickenhawk!" is just a cowardly way of calling someone a coward.

|9.23.07 @ 1:29AM|#

'"Crying "chickenhawk!" is just a cowardly way of calling someone a coward.'

Calling someone a coward for calling someone else a coward who calls someone a coward for a willingness to have others die for causes he would be unwilling to die for is just soooo cowardly...?(or at least lazy thinking). Oh, this is just fun endlessly recursive stuff.

|9.23.07 @ 10:06AM|#

Actually, calling someone a chickenhawk is a rather straightforward, bravery-neutral way of calling him a coward who poses as a brave person.

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