Five Good Ideas Championed by Hippies

It is good and right to hate hippies. Hippie culture is a celebration of weakness and degradation. It’s given us a slice of the population that is equal parts useless and obnoxious and helped home-birth the self-congratulating, smug and cloying “progressive” culture that clogs the brains of many otherwise intelligent people. Hippies often smell funny and they have terrible clothes.

Hippies were the first cultural group in modern history that aligned political causes to a counterculture to such an extent that many legitimate causes became wholly unpalatable to mainstream Americans. I’m convinced that many of the people in Nixon’s silent majority were there not because they really supported U.S. policies in Vietnam, but because they detested the hippies that embodied the vocal opposition more than they distrusted Nixon.

One could almost propose that hippies are some brilliantly successful psych-ops invention meant to quell popular opposition to interventionist military policies. How can we make opposition to undeclared foreign war abroad culturally abhorrent in a democratic society? Gentlemen, I present to you: the Hippy. 

But however much it pains us, we must give credit where credit is due, and hippies have actually embraced some good ideas over the years. They may not have invented anything useful, but their knee-jerk embrace of anything countercultural has actually put a few good items in their erratically-cast hemp nets.

Legalizing marijuana: This is such a widely embraced idea now that it has almost completely escaped the cultural ghetto of the hippie. But without hippies marijuana would not have entered popular culture to the extent it has. Smoking marijuana may turn lazy people into completely useless people and dumb people into outright retards, but throwing people in jail for smoking it makes as much sense as prohibition. It will be legal in our lifetime, and future generations will look at the laws against marijuana the way we look at the outlawing of alcohol. Even elderly people in Florida are toking up before hitting the all-you-can-eat buffet.

Organic food: I once thought that organic food was a wonton excess of effete snobs and tree-hugging imbeciles. But the more information that is available today about the practices of many large agricultural corporations and the effects of many of the additives used regularly in food, the more organic food looks more unavoidably sane. With the increasing popularity of community supported agriculture, it’s possible to eat organic food without entering the orbit of the vegetarian or vegan planets.

Bicycles: Hippies embraced bicycles and helped turn a favorite childhood toy into its own obnoxious subculture. The cyclists who flout the law by breezing through red lights and riding the wrong way down one-way streets and then demand the same rights to the roads as cars share the same sense of entitlement as the hippies. But bicycles are beneficial in and of themselves and for city dwellers they are faster than most public transportation for getting around. (Full hypocrisy disclosure: I own a pickup truck but not a bicycle).

Co-ops: They are voluntary exchanges that organizers can invite or exclude whomever they want. When people think of co-ops in New York, they usually think of apartment buildings controlled by old curmudgeons or supermarkets run by bickering lefties, but who says you can’t start your own for whatever purposes you want? They are good ways to avoid the middleman and save money on things. Illegal day care co-ops are popping up as well; as parents do an end-run around long lists for local kindergarten classes and prohibitively expensive licensed daycare centers.

Preserving National Parks and Forests: Why do we leave it to the hippies to rant and rave about the loss or pollution of public land? It’s not anti-capitalist to want to have a national park. Does the name Theodore Roosevelt mean anything to you? If you like hunting, you like lots of unspoiled nature.

Don’t stop hating hippies; they are a malodorous race of useless clowns. But don’t neglect good ideas just because it may have been embraced by hippies.

How to Buy a Used Car

My woman and I set out several months ago and saw two deals fall through before finally finding success. I am sad to report that bait and switch is alive and well and the truth finds no purchase in the vocabulary of a used car dealer. The people you find employed as used car salesmen are those whose ethical lapses got them kicked out of pickpocket school.

It was hard work to not get ripped off, and we’ve only had our new vehicle for a few weeks so cross your fingers and stay tuned. But it has been a learning experience. Buying a used car will be easier if you follow these rules:

1.      Never accept bullshit prices. When you see a price listed and then see some small print about the price being the “Internet price” or the “financing price,” walk away. Do not do business with any car dealer that wants to tack on as much as 20% simply because you’re not willing to go into more debt and earn them a bigger commission because they’ve signed you up for financing.

2.      Take your vehicle to your own mechanic. If you don’t already have one, look one up on the Internet and call ahead of time and make an appointment to get whatever car you’re interested in checked out. Don’t trust any dealer that won’t let you take a vehicle to your own mechanic.

3.      Utility uber alles! Pick the vehicle that will give you the most use. Pay no attention to what it looks like or what your friends are driving and pick what makes the most sense to what your needs or and how you live your life. Unless you plan on invading a desert country or being a douchebag in an ugly vehicle, you will have no use for a Humvee. Likewise, you can’t fit a dead deer in the trunk of Prius. Think about how you live your life and what you do every day or every time you drive? I know people who didn’t buy a car because it didn’t have any cup holders. It was sleek and sporty, but sleek and sporty does you little good if you’re spilling hot coffee on your genitals every day.

4.      Research everything. There is no excuse not to be super informed on your car purchase. You can find out detailed information online on any vehicle worth buying and read lots of customer reviews. One truck I almost bought had two active recalls on it. Since the recalls would be serviced for free, it was even more inexcusable that the dealer hadn’t done that before putting the vehicle up for sale. Know this kind of thing. Spend the money on Carfax, and don’t trust the dealers to provide you with that. It is nice for dealers to do that, but at least one dealership I considered buying from had been accused of providing false Carfax reports.

5.      Go with your gut. Does the car dealer give you the creeps? Is there something that just doesn’t seem right about everything? If the sales people or their manager (they love the tactic of getting a pushy manager involved and playing good dealer/bad dealer with you) act as if they’re trying to rush the sale, something is wrong and you should probably walk away from it.

6.      Resist the bait and switch. The first dealership we visited pulled a blatant bait and switch. When the salesmen realized that we were interested in cheap vehicles and were planning to pay in cash, they sent us to random, far-away corners of the lot looking for a van they advertised at an inexpensive price. The story we got was that the vehicle was probably not there anymore. “We sell hundreds of cars every week.” They continued to play ignorance as to the location of the van listed for $4,995 until one of the salesman walked by it as we were walking with him and quoted us the wrong price on it. “This is a Toyota Sienna but it’s $8,000,” he said. We noticed that it was the very van they had advertised on the Internet for $4,995! We pointed that out for him and began looking over the van. He walked away. We put a deposit down on the van. It ended up being a piece of shit that we didn’t buy (see #2), but we made them make good on their ad.

7.      Test drive everything, three times if you need to. Don’t buy from any person or place that won’t let you do test drives. Those are either scam places or auction houses selling to dealerships. A test drive is a no-brainer. The only thing a dealership should want from you before you do a test drive is to see your driver’s license. One dealership said that we could only test drive vehicles if we put a deposit on it first. No dice. This was the same dealership that listed a truck on the Internet for $2,000 less than they did on their lot. The dealer said that once we gave them a deposit on it, “Then we know we can do business.” We walked away after saying a pleasant goodbye.

8.      Pay cash. Don’t get bogged down in financing unless you have to. There are many car dealerships that really don’t want to deal with people paying cash. I watched many a hopeful salesman deflate on the spot and write me off in their minds when I mentioned we were paying cash. Salesman will try to sell you something above your price range and they’ll say how easy financing will be and how glorious your life will be with an expensive car with the magical power of financing. Fuck ‘em. You don’t want to get involved with the dealerships that are relying too much on commissions from financing. The more they want to focus on financing, the less effort they put into giving a shit about cars.

9.       Ignore time pressure. One of the sleazy dealerships had signs several places telling customers to remember that, “The car you looked at today is one that someone may have put a deposit on yesterday…” and the tactics of the manager and salesman were in the same vein. Ignore those time pressures and understand it’s a bad sign that should make you think twice about buying from the dealer. The person trying to rush a sale is the person who doesn’t want you to get a good look at the vehicle or the terms of sale. 

10.  Join AAA. I seemed to break down a lot more when I was too poor to spend the money on an annual AAA membership. Even if you never use it ever, it’s worth it just to avoid the jinx of not having it.

At the end of the day, we drove away with a used 2003 Ford F150. It is big and it is hard to park, but it’s what suits us and we love it.

The Great Gay Marriage Distraction

Sorry to be the golden shower on the rainbow parade, but Obama’s stance in favor of gay marriage is nothing more than election year politics at its most cynical.

Supporters praising Obama’s “courage” and this “historic moment” are being hopeful and naïve. The White House knew the North Carolina referendum was coming and that it would probably win and timed the announcement accordingly.

Obama knows there is little he can do for them, but he wants gay activists’ campaign cash and he wants to rally them to his campaign after angering them with years of inaction.

Obama was against gay marriage in 2008. Then he said his position was “evolving,” which meant he was going to change it as soon as it was politically feasible. In making this announcement, Obama pays lip service to the gay rights groups and gets activist supporters more interested in his campaign.

But while gay rights advocates will be motivated to come to the polls in November for a President who is now conveniently waving the rainbow flag, religious fundamentalists won’t be as motivated – their candidate supported gay rights until he started running for president.

The solution is to have no government stance on marriage at all. Marriage is a private agreement between two people. Let two people who want to be married get their marriage/civil union agreement notarized and then file it with their local county clerk. Gays will call it marriage and religious people will disagree, but who cares? The government has absolutely NO business in the personal relationships of its citizens.

I think even most of the religious activists agree that all consenting adults should be able to live their lives as they choose and determine who will be their family beneficiaries and next of kin. They get hung up on having the government calling gay unions marriages. But if things were running right, the government wouldn’t be involved in marriages/civil unions at all.

We still have our armed forces fighting in the Middle East, ruinous amounts of debt piling up, crumbling infrastructure and increasing crime. Let’s stop using this wedge issue for short-term electoral gain, let all adults form whatever relationships they choose, and move to solve some other issues.

The Call of the American Road

After nearly 15 years of living without a car, it came time to join most of America in owning an automobile again. I faced the prospect of being a car owner with excitement and apprehension. My past experiences as a car owner were all bad. 

The last vehicle I owned was a 1977 Plymouth Voyager van that I gladly gave away to a charity before driving a U-Haul back to New York. My van was a big, 15-passenger van that was puke-mustard yellow with a beige white stripe. If you looked at the van at the right angle, you could faintly decipher the old lettering on the side from a church that had owned it. I bought it from a redneck in the back woods of rural North Georgia who was shirtless and drinking beer at two o’clock in the afternoon. 

           

            It was so large that it was often mistaken for the large taxi vans that were popular in Athens, Georgia at the time. I remember driving down Broad Street at night after the bars closed and crowds of drunken college students trying to hail me. It was embarrassing.

I was not born into the standard American car culture, growing up mostly in a city. When I first moved to the suburbs, I found it strange that there were no sidewalks. Sidewalks came with civilization, just like paved roads and running water. But car culture rules the suburbs, and I adjusted quickly. I got myself a car at the first opportunity. I was a teenager and there is nothing lamer for a teenager than to be dependent on their parents for a ride (although it remains perfectly acceptable to rely on parents for food, clothing, education, life itself).

My first car was a 1987 Plymouth Horizon. It broke down a lot. A minor accident had damaged the front end and one of the headlights wobbled, making my car look like it had a lazy eye at night. It eventually was destroyed when the engine caught fire.

            When I moved back to New York, I relished the idea of being free from the obligations and troubles of owning an automobile. No more calling tow trucks, no more sitting in traffic or wondering nervously about strange sounds coming from the engine. After years of endless automotive headaches, I yearned to be part of the cosmopolitan class that was free from the shackles that were auto ownership. And I could get as drunk as I wanted to because someone else was always driving me home.

           

            But things change and now I find myself living in Queens  with a woman who has not only been accustomed to owning a car while living in New York City, she also has a space in our building’s parking lot that she waited five years for and intends to keep. It was time for us to have our own. The last of my family left the city several years ago, and asking people to pick you up from the train station gets old when you’re pushing 40.

            I also found myself wanting more of the unbounded freedom that comes with an automobile. One time, on a business trip, I picked up a shitty rental car from the airport in Palm Springs, Calif. and set out to find my even shittier motel. Despite the circumstances, it felt great to be behind the wheel of a car again after so much time away. The rap song ‘California Love’ came on the radio and I felt like I was the coolest pimp in the universe.

America, a large and vast country, is filled with the spirit of travel and adventure that we can tap most easily via the automobile. Sure, one can ride the rails and see a good bit of America that way, but a car gives you the power of self determination and destiny that Americans habitually crave. The auto took the place of the pioneer’s wagon as a vehicle of continental exploration and conquest.

            It’s true we’ve become a nation of sloths who would drive ourselves to the bathroom if we could, but it’s also true that this freedom of movement made possible by cars became part of our national character long before our disabling gluttony. For better or worse, the car is part of the American way of life.

            The car fits right in with the American spirit of individuality and self reliance. Every time you need to use public transportation, you’re rolling the dice on a thousand variables. People get sick on the bus, busses get stuck in traffic, people get hit by trains, signal malfunctions stop trains between stations. Taking public transportation puts a terrible amount of trust in the general public to help you get to work on time. Your best advantage is that most of the other people around you are on the same quest. If you’re someone who must work nights and weekends, you’re screwed.

            Admittedly, in large cities, public transportation makes sense. I will gladly endure the hell of New York’s subway rush hour to avoid the hell of parking in Manhattan. I’ll let a million homeless people sneeze on me before I risk getting a car towed and having to pay hundreds of dollars in tickets and fees. But the Byzantine parking laws of New York are not representative of the U.S. as a whole. And, as much as I love New York, I must admit that one needs to frequently leave New York City in order to maintain one’s sanity.

See you on the road.

Groupthink and Unfashionable Facts

The current atmosphere surrounding the shooting of a Florida teenager by a neighborhood watch volunteer is one of frightening groupthink and near hysterical self-serving bloodlust.

If you haven’t seen it plastered all over the news, on Feb. 26, 17-year-old Trayvon Martin was shot and killed by 28-year-old neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman. Zimmerman claimed self defense and the police did not charge him with any crime. News of this incident has sparked a nationwide outcry among black racial activists and their political allies. The Department of Justice has begun investigating the case and the chief of police of the town of Sanford, Florida has temporarily stepped down.

The narrative that popular sentiment promotes is that this is a case of racial profiling turning murderous. That a white (though later identified as a mixed-race Hispanic) man thought a black teenager was a criminal simply because he was black and murdered him after provoking an altercation.

Even assuming the worst of the case, that the shooter harbors racial prejudice and was acting completely irresponsibly when he followed Trayvon Martin, there is still not enough evidence to charge him with murder. Furthermore, there is yet to be convincing evidence that the authorities erred in the decision not to charge him with a crime in the first place.

“Hey, we’ve had a lot of break-ins in my neighborhood and there’s a real suspicious guy…” So begins George Zimmerman’s 911 call to police. Even if you believe that the call contains a muttered racial slur on the part of Zimmerman, the call is not a racist rant but a call from a concern citizen who sees activity he finds suspicious and then grows frustrated when the suspicious person moves to avoid detection.

Zimmerman describes Martin’s behavior before he’s fully aware of Martin’s race. During the call, he tells the 911 operator that the suspect is possibly under the influence of drugs and is holding something in his waistband. He reports that the subject is now staring at him and then confirms that the suspect is black.

It is true that Trayvon Martin did not have a gun and that Zimmerman followed him and was suspicious of him. It’s also true that Zimmerman, and not Martin, has a criminal record including a charge of assaulting an officer and at least one complaint of domestic violence.

But one critical aspect of the case is often overlooked and is essential to determining whether the shooter acted lawfully. That is: it has been reported that Zimmerman was on the ground screaming for help and being punched by Martin when the shooting occurred. So far nothing has shaken that assertion. It’s backed up by witnesses and appears to be corroborated by later 911 tapes of people who called after hearing the two men fighting outside.

That’s a tough pill to swallow for the keyboard commandos publishing Zimmerman’s home address and calling for his blood. But if Zimmerman was being beaten by Martin and was screaming for help, as witnesses appear to confirm, then there’s no case against Zimmerman at all, no matter what kind of jerk he might be.

Zimmerman was indeed advised not to pursue Martin by the police and it appears he ignored this advice since the two met up later. Zimmerman complains on his 911 call about Martin possibly getting away. It is after this remark that the alleged racial slur occurs. For some reason, this has been seized upon as reason to declare the shooting unlawful, but the point, while it certainly is a damaging display of poor character is true, wouldn’t change facts if he was indeed on the defensive when he shot Martin. At least one report indicates that after exchanging words, Zimmerman was heading back to his vehicle and was struck from behind.

But as is often the case, the mainstream media falls in line relatively quickly and sticks to a predictable narrative. In doing so, many facts get tossed quickly out the window. In the Sanford, Florida shooting, the media is in the mode of portraying Martin as nothing but an innocent victim and Zimmerman as a villainous, racist ogre. But the shooting has to be judged by the evidence of the shooting itself. The calls for Zimmerman’s arrest fly in the face of the basic facts of the case.

And sadly, so far, the Trayvon Martin case is just that: racial hysteria that is inflated into front-page news by an echo-chamber media too scared to look at facts and tell the hard truth.

Goldman Showers of Ego

Worse than changing the passwords on your boss’ computer or performing an all upper decker in the executive washroom, former Goldman Sachs derivatives executive Greg Smith became big news when he very publicly quit his job with an op-ed piece in the New York Times.

Titled “Why I am Leaving Goldman Sachs,” the editorial declared that the environment at the firm was “toxic and destructive.” Smith, while admitting he saw nothing illegal, said that the firm is focused more on funneling clients towards business that will earn Goldman fees and not make clients money. He witnessed five managing directors refer to their clients as “muppets.”

To an extent, all specialized workers have an insular culture that views anyone outside of their realm as some kind of inferior rube. This applies to auto mechanics, fire fighters, soldiers, stock brokers and even journalists.

But what every professional is ultimately judged on is how well they do their job. When you’re trapped in a burning car, do you care if the fire fighter there to save you is an insufferable prick who cheats on his wife? Firefighters and police are often contemptuous of the people they serve—cops in New York reportedly refer to hipsters as “marshmallows” because they are “white and soft.” But when my building is on fire, I could care less what names the first responders call me behind my back so long as they do their job and I stay alive.

Likewise, if you have money invested with Goldman Sachs, you are probably OK with their culture being one of contemptuous disregard for “unsophisticated investors” so long as they get you a good return on your money.

High stakes jobs attract egomaniacs, whether it be brain surgeons, fighter pilots or investment bankers. When you can make millions of dollars disappear in a matter of seconds or scramble someone’s mind with a tremor in your hand, a giant ego will help stop the mind from drowning in a miasma of worry and panic. You want people in these positions to be full of confidence. It doesn’t mean they have to act like giant dicks about everything, but don’t be surprised when they do.

Financial people take pride in their professional greed. If they don’t make money for their clients, they don’t stay in business (at least not without enormous government bailouts).

That Goldman Sachs is full of avaricious douchebags is about as surprising as a bar being filled with drunks. Smith may be right about the decline of the moral fiber of the firm over the time he’s been there. But he’s bluffing if he thinks the kind of behavior he witnessed is new for Goldman Sachs.

And the op-ed piece, while it excoriates Goldman Sachs for its lack of humility also reveals how much its author is still steeped in the self-congratulating culture of high finance. He boasts about his accomplishments at the firm, even going back to remind everyone how hard it was just to be an intern there. He mentions how he was one of the few employees selected to be in the firm’s recruitment video, that he was a Rhodes Scholar finalist, getting full scholarships from Stamford to study in South Africa. He even brags about being a bronze medalist in the Maccabiah Games, a.k.a. the “Jewish Olympics” (which sounds like something that should be on the Howard Stern show beside Black Jeopardy or Homeless Howiewood Squares). It has the effect of taking one aback at the whole scenario: If this braggart is offended by what he’s seen at Goldman Sachs, how bad must it be over there?

The one actionable bit of information in the Smith piece, that large investment banking face appalling conflicts of interests in both selling and buying securities, would be big news if he had published his piece in 2006. Smith was in the middle of his tenure at the firm then, and went another six years making lots and lots of money before his conscience forced him to resign in the most self-serving and flamboyant way possible.

Goldman Sachs has a prestige to it that other major investment banks don’t have. They have been able to still make money even during times when everyone else was going broke around them. Would an employee’s sour grapes earn prime space in the New York Times’ opinion pages if the firm were any other than Goldman Sachs?

But we need to ask: What is the goal behind Smith’s speaking out against the firm that treated him so well? Did he attempt to tell its senior management about these problems before making his very public rebuke? Why is he doing this now and not years ago? Goldman Sachs’ culture disgusted Greg Smith enough to write a scathing public critique, did it offend him enough to give back any of the money he earned managing assets for the much-maligned “muppets?”

What Would St. Patrick Do?

If St. Patrick were walking among us today, he would most certainly not read heretical articles criticizing his feast day. Yet there is nothing more Irish you can do today than read my article about a recent St. Patrick’s Day controversy on Taki’s Magazine.

Here are some paragraphs that were cut from the article by the editors. They were considered too serious for the piece.

The case against St. Patrick’s Day goes beyond it being commonly celebrated as a moronic swill fest. For a people who are still trying to unite their island and the two sectarian communities that make up the majorities in those two parts, having a national holiday that is the feast day of a Catholic saint runs counter to the cause. Also, the Catholic Church has abused its influence in Ireland; anything that knocks that institution’s grip on the Emerald Isle would be welcome.

To be fair, there are opportunities to experience real Irish culture and language if you want it. But beyond the drinking, the other common St. Patrick’s Day celebrations and customs are all pretty useless as well. Corned beef and cabbage is one hell of a depressing meal, especially if you’re in a city where delicious pastrami is so easily accessible (St. Patrick probably ate potatoes and gruel). There isn’t much you could do with a baked potato that hasn’t been done already, unless you want to fire a potato cannon guns at the British Consulate. You could go to church if that’s your bag, but that could drive someone back to drink.

A better Irish holiday would be June 16, which is Bloomsday, the day chronicled in James Joyce’s “Ulysses”. Never mind that “Ulysses” is overrated and difficult to read. It was a landmark novel that amassed literary influence despite being censored. It features fireworks, masturbation, and sex.

Tragically, there are real issues to worry about in Ireland. The Irish economy is in bad shape and the country has faced fiscal crises similar to those that have gripped other countries in the European Union. Like many other parts of Europe, Ireland has seen an inflow of Islamic fundamentalist immigration. While it’s been steadily pushed out of the news since the peace agreement was forged in 1998, the dream of a united Ireland is still unrealized.