A Secret Thought

My deepest darkest secret has come to the front. I have been plagued with the idea for sometime, but never had the courage to confess for the fear of the overwhelming laughter I would face. The words finally trickled from my mouth in an almost inaudible unintelligible manner.

I want to be a hippie.

There, I said it for all the public to see and hear. I want to be a hippie.

I already have the tattered jeans. I have plenty of T-shirts to paint a peace sign on. I borrowed the CD “Hair” from the library for research purposes. I want to grow my hair long, shinning, streaming, flaxen, waxen. I want to learn how to play a wooden Indian flute and sell my CD’s at local fairs. I want to put flowers in my hair and go back to Frisco. I want to again dabble in poetry. I have taken to oil painting as a hobby and as soon as I can draw a straight line, I’ll make a decent living off it. I must admit that I’m not good at the pot smoking. The times I experimented, I just got an enormous case of the munchies. But I did inhale.

I missed that part of my youth, the true hippy era. During that time I was a true dyed in the wool, staunch conservative, war monging Republican. Those hippie pinko commies were the enemy and Ms. Fonda was the mother of them all. War protestors walked the same line as the Viet Cong.

Until recently war protests have been limited to debates amongst the talk show pundits, analysts and administration officials who have found themselves to be working the unemployment lines. No real protest songs from anyone in the entertainment arena. Fahrenheit 9/11 caused a stir for awhile. Now a new figure has risen to champion the cause. A mother of a fallen GI has dared to camp adjacent to the Presidential vacation site and demand answers about the war. The President in true form stammers. She is entitled to her wrong opinion. A frantic group of red, white, and blue patriots dismiss the lady as a subversive and that her protests work into the hands of the enemy insurgents. The echo of the justification for our involvement in Vietnam sounds loudly. “If we fight them over there, we won’t have to fight them at home”.

It would appear though that the enemy insurgency and their attacks are not new and really unrelated to the heightened protests. Terrorists are on the attack not only in Iraq, but well into other Arab nations and Europe. The constant in the equation is a determined relentless enemy who will remain undeterred in spite of all the democratic elections and constitutions.
So the argument is circuitous. We can’t protest the war for it will devalue the sacrifice paid by yet another generation . But if we don’t debate the true motives and justifications for our continued involvement in this war, the toll of American lives lost will increase. Once again, overloaded helicopters will be taking to the sky.

Being a hippy ain’t an easy life