Bell Bottomed Idiots

Think back (if you’re old enough) to those halcyon days when Haight-Ashbury, Woodstock, bell bottoms and anti-just-about-anything protests were the definition of “cool.”

That’s the same time period when phrases such as “Never trust anyone over 30!”, “Make love, not war”, “Hell no! We won’t go!” and many other pseudo-intellectual chants were coined and took hold of those parts of youthful brains that still existed in a non-vegetative state. My own personal favorite was “It if feels good, do it.” Yeah, just do it. Don’t worry about paying for it. Don’t worry about whether or not it’s illegal. Don’t fret over consequences. Just do it! It now seems that those “flower children” are all older. Not to be confused with “mature”, “grown-up” or “adult.” But they are older. They still enjoy doing their protest marches, teach-ins, and, thanks to Viagra, their interest in “Make love, not war” has been rekindled. They still favor inflating their own egos by arguing vociferously against anything that smacks of the middle-American, middle-class values that they hated while they were in college. They still abhor the military, they still fulminate over the dangers of out of control capitalism and they tend to froth at the mouth over anything that smacks of religion, excepting of course the worship of Gaia, believers in Global Warming, Climate Change (or whatever they’re calling it this week) or those who follow Mohammed.

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Well, you tell yourself, there are always some people who still act like children. We all either know some very tall children, or we are related by blood or marriage to some, or might have even dated one (once or twice, anyway). This is true, of course, and it cannot be denied. There is one other example of these very tall children – our Progressive political class. This does not mean Democrat politicians exclusively. There are plenty of RINOs wearing long pants that also fall into the “Peter Pan / I’ll never grew up class.” Now most of us would think that it would be easy to spot such individuals, yet they keep getting elected. And now look where it’s gotten us. We are struggling under the weight of $17 trillion dollars in national debt. (That’s a number that’s so big I had to write it out in words, because I wasn’t sure how many zeros were involved). Our government has consistently spent more than it has generated in tax revenue for at least the past five years. We have a President who actually does despise the military, yet has called on them at least twice to enforce his personal view of how the world should be when they’re not too busy holding his umbrella. So the old benchmarks of sophomoric rhetoric that identified these flower power children of yore don’t seem to be reliable in identifying these Peter Pan Progressives before Election Day. Might I suggest that these creatures have edited their old mantra of “If it feels good, do it” to reflect the reality that, at least for now, they are in charge. They get to call the shots. And the old “If it feels good, do it” grates against their aspirations. After all, if you dissect the phrase, it really means “If it feels good (to you), (you can) do it (if you feel like it – or not)”. In their new world view as leaders, that allows all too much independence. In the original form, the phrase could be ignored, or the definition of these tall children of what feels good, might not match what you think feels good. So now, the old phrase has been replaced, with remarkably little fanfare, to read:

If it makes ME feel good, I’m going to make YOU do it

Now, when election time rolls around, listen to the campaign rhetoric. If there is anything that sounds like: “Gee, this is a great idea, I love it, and to get a share of this wonderfulness, all you have to do is…” a good bet would be that you’re listening to one of these Peter Pan Progressives, regardless of whether there is a (D) or (R) after their name on the ballot. Now that you can spot these tall children more easily, just ignore the fact that they have a really good crease in their trousers and vote them out of office.