The Re Collection

Digby examines the pundit class’ Pathological Fear Of Hippies

The political issues were just a small part of why people voted for Nixon both times and why the political establishment moved to the right (as the culture itself grew ever more liberal.) Broder and his pals’ facile rendering of that history has pretty much crippled liberalism for almost 40 years and it’s long past time that we ignored those who persist in perpetuating it.

My conservative Texas neighbor still uses “hippy” as a generic term of disdain for anything he doesn’t like — generally political stuff, but not exclusively. Anything out of his scope of experience, dirty, eccentric, contrary to his idea of middle America — which he thinks is personified in the Waco atmosphere, apparently. It really pisses me off.

In many campaigns across this country this year, you hear of candidates running as fast as they can from the disaster in Iraq and the president who got us into it. But not in Bush Country.

Van Taylor, a Iraq War vet who wants to unseat Democrat Chet Edwards, must not have got the memo, or doesn’t think the folks around here are feeling the way Americans elsewhere are. He’s running hard on his vet status, and says he will be a War Senator, so sorely needed to help Bush, the War President. This rather curious stategy is probably his only recourse, though, since he has no other discernable qualifications for office and isn’t even from around here — apparently something pretty important to the locals (I’m new myself and that’s what I hear — I think it has something to do with college football).

Today’s Waco Trib included the following guest editorial by Waco resident Hal Ritter on Taylor’s battle plan for getting elected in George W. Bush’s congressional district. Ritter doesn’t seem to think Taylor’s paying attention either.

Interestingly, though the Trib found the piece worthy of publishing on their editorial page, they did not think it quite worthwhile enough to make available on their web site. Since their guest column is basically a long letter to the editor that got promoted, and all the lte’s are printed — even the absolutely idiotic ones that blame CBS for the death of their Iraq crew — this makes no sense whatsoever. But then this is Waco; they do things there own damn way down here, in case you haven’t heard. At any rate, I paste in full, with no link, and no apology to the Trib.

So now warriors are needed?

Why is Van Taylor’s military past more important than others? (more…)

Good story in the Nation about Cindy.

Her trajectory to activism is a morality tale she regularly relates, especially during her frequent speeches on college campuses. “What kept me from speaking out in the beginning was the sense that I couldn’t make a difference,” she says, noting that she saw millions of people around the world protesting the war in February 2003. “And George Bush responded by saying, I don’t have to listen to ‘focus groups,’ and marched into Iraq.”

Now she puts her apathy into a larger context. “I think the people in power want you to feel helpless, because if we all find our voice, our power, we really can make a lasting difference in this country,” she says. “I think we have almost two-thirds of Americans opposed to the war today, and these people just need to find their voices.”

I moved to the Waco area from the Oklahoma City Metro, home of “the worst newspaper in America“(CJR).

The Waco Trib is slightly better, which instead of a failing grade of 20 on the journalism test, it gets a failing grade of 40.

The star student in the class who skews the curve is editorial columnist John Young, and of course, the local no-nothings rail at every turn against him and his even having a job at the Trib.

Here’s an example of why Young drives the Bush ite fanatics over the edge: A million little evasions