WILL IT BE A HIPPIE NEW YEAR IN 2007?

Cindy Sheehan’s recent unwelcome appearance at a Democrat leadership press conference does not bode well for the future of our new Congressional masters. (For the video, go here.)

Instead of having the opportunity to bask in their new power and announce the House Democrats’ plan for the new Congress, Democratic politicians found themselves shouted down by Sheehan and her merry band of pranksters, forcing Rahm Emanuel to end the presser early and the Democrats to withdraw to another venue.

While the new leadership is attempting to appear statesmanlike, awaiting the President’s thoughts on what the future holds, the rabble that believes it elected them is storming the castle, waving torches, screaming for an immediate pullout.

Welcome back to Vietnam, ladies and gentlemen. It’s the Age of Aquarius all over again. (Actually, more like still, since an astrological “age” is 2150 years. In fact, the 60s weren’t even in the traditionally recognized “age of Aquarius,” which begins in either 2000 or 2150, depending on whose theory you use. But, then, attention to detail has never been a hippie value--unless you count staring at the lines in your hand for hours, at which the pot-addled and LSD-drenched once excelled.)

Nevertheless, it seems clear at this point that the sensibility of the hippie is on the ascendancy in ways we haven’t seen since we thought the 80s killed them all off or pushed them into the corporate world (Jerry Rubin, Ben & Jerry's, Fruitopia....)

Watch, as elemental feminism ascends to the halls of power. Nancy Pelosi is a mere taste of that which is yet to come. As we move to the technological place where men need not participate in virtually any area of American life, the polymorphous perversity repressed since the age of Freud is no more than a Dead album away from attaining full acceptance.

The masculine will collapse under its own ideological weight. The educational efforts of LGBT activists will flower, as a new crop of young adults emerges from high school to help frame the debate in the next election. Rejecting the old, tired, restrictive linguistic traps of “male” and “female” they will vote for new legislators that sever the linguistic and legal bonds of gender and extend the bonds of matrimony to whosoever will come to express their love for one another, for as long as they both shall feel like it.

It doesn’t take a Weatherman to see which way the wind is blowing. To coin a phrase.

The traditional marriage activists are on the ropes. No doubt about it. While referenda put to the voters at large still win large majorities, they’re not nearly as large as they once were. Florida is aiming to put the question on the ballot in 2008, but the new rules on Florida initiatives will make it difficult to pass, requiring a supermajority to make it law.

The old sentiments of hippiedom seem to have sunk in to the culture. What’s marriage, after all? Just a silly piece of paper. If Bob and Fred want one of those pieces of paper, why not? And why shouldn’t Bob and Fred express their love however they choose? Love is cool, man. And choice rules.

And we have a war, man. A war that’s killing American kids, a war that nobody volunteered for—oh, wait. We’re going to have to change some of those signs.

Survey the political landscape. Deja-vu, baby.

The lead performers of the political drama as it opens on 2007 form a masterpiece of collective counter-culture consciousness. From the Eleanor-Roosevelt-channeling feminist to the fun-free environmentalist, the left side of the aisle would be perfectly at home alternately chanting “Die, Pig, Die” outside the Democratic National Convention and following Pigasus through the mud as the jack-booted fascists give chase. Except that, this time, they’re going to be running the convention. And their pals in PETA won’t let them humiliate a pig anymore.

On the right side, we have a perfect lineup of hardhats and militarists, eager to wade into the fray and smash a few heads. From the former P.O.W. hawk that agitates to put more troops into this generation’s Vietnam, to the unofficial sultan of homeland security and hard-line law enforcement, the Republicans are polishing up their tough-guy/grown up images, burying the scandals of the past as fast as they can.

The “silent majority” that elected Nixon is silent again, and as of 2006, no longer even an electoral majority. In the last election, the moral traditionalists were narrowly defeated—but defeated, nonetheless—by a rather loud and angry mix of people who hate what’s going on in Iraq, but don’t really have a cohesive plan for what to do next.

The doves are flourishing; you can hardly see the GDP rise or hear the stock market roar for the noise of their wings—and their studded tongues—flapping. Hollywood is again passing bucks to such hopeless peaceniks as Dennis Kucinich and their re-vamped standard-bearer, the novice film-maker Al Gore. Gore’s cachet with the chic set is rising, while dour Hillary is even having problems ginning up interest in Iowa.

And the media world is gaga for ‘Bama.

Groovy, baby.

Except that, politically, the era of the hippie was not a love-fest. It was a mess. And it led to America’s first real loss of a war (you can’t count Korea, because it’s still technically on.) So, if we’re moving into that mode, what comes next?

Read the tea-leaves and see.

Once the Watergate Congress had arrived in Washington, ready to put the Nixon era behind them, they also made sure to bring in a new stand on Vietnam: lose at any cost. Right now, only the Cindy Sheehans of the party are moaning that tune. The leadership is doing its best to pretend they are doing something else.

But when the Congress decides to stop sending troops, and then to stop funding the war itself, it won’t be long before we get the rest of the Democrats’ Vietnam strategy: watch American servicemen on tv trying to escape from a nation the Congress made them give away.

It didn’t take us nearly as long to get here this time. At this point in the Vietnam episode, we were only up to May of 1967. It would be another eight years before the children of the Haight and their compatriots in the media succeeded in engineering the American defeat—a defeat that would frame the global image of the US until, ironically enough, we beat Saddam in the original Gulf War.

Of course, it makes sense that we would move more quickly this time. After all, the learning curve wasn’t nearly as steep. The media and the leftover counter-culture had been loaded for bear since September of 2001, when International A.N.S.W.E.R. first let the world know that it wasn’t going to stand for any standing-up-for-America-type behavior.

For the War for Iraqi Liberation, we barely had a six-month window. The media—even those embedded with the troops—soon reverted to their natural “blame America first” mentality. The pundits and the Democratic politicians were in full bray against the war by the end of 2003 (having temporarily given up on trying to get the people to pin the label on the war in Afghanistan, which by then we clearly seemed to have won. At this point, they barely bother to pretend they don't want us to lose.

Unfortunately for them, the American people weren’t thirsty enough to drink the Flavor-aid right then. But they’d get there. And the Democrats knew it.

Although they lost in 2004 (despite their pal Dan Rather’s valiant effort to libel the president with doctored documents), they kept up the drumbeat. Everything bad was because of Iraq. Everything good was despite it. If the stock market went up, it was because the oil companies were manipulating everything in order to make more money out of the war. If any disaster happened, it would have been avoidable had we not had all our resources flailing away in Iraq.

The booming economy was swept under the rug. The new schools, roads and infrastructure built by Americans in Iraq stayed in the closet, while the daily body count of soldiers and the uncountable toll of civilians was announced with great and unseemly glee. Each thousand-death mark was breathlessly awaited and scrupulously observed.

Every mistake, misstep, or malfunction of the US in Iraq was blasted from the rooftops. We stared at the naked Iraqi pyramid from Abu-Ghraib for months, regardless of whether it had any real news value that day or not. The outrage of the president and his senior officials and the fact that the perpetrators were caught and punished were totally ignored. As far as the Big 3 media were concerned, Abu-Ghraib was the real American soldier.

Just as when the nation brayed for the head of Lt. William Calley and the peace movement demanded immediate troop withdrawal for the My Lai massacre, the Abu-Ghraib photos have been used as an excuse to justify backing away from supporting the war, and every event since has been twisted in that direction.

“The people” are tired of the war, and the media is eager to exult in its defeat of the imperial US monster that roams the world forcing its will on weaker nations. A good 30 years of counter-culture indoctrination, thanks to the good offices of the National Eduational Association (and the other NEA, the National Endowment for the Arts) gives them a good shot at doing just that.

This time, we may have beaten Saddam, but the midterm elections make it more than likely we will soon fall back to our fallback position and let the Congress lose the war.

Oh, by the way. You may be wondering why I didn't mention the President's new initiative in Iraq--the "surge" he announced this week. That's because it really doesn't matter much. We can surge and make it work, or we can surge and do it wrong--the media and the liberal cloud over this nation will stay the same.

If we win, they will paint it as "democracy at the point of a gun." If we lose, they will crow, "I told you so."

I hope I’m wrong. But the signs don’t look good. I don’t see anything out there to stop the love-train from papering the Middle East with a false, unlasting peace.

Don’t shoot the messenger, man. I just say what I see.

And what I see is a major bummer.