The reason I write this blog is to clarify the hippie-counterculture-freaky state of mind. To streamline our ideals and put shape to our very wide pallet of colors. This allows people to figure out where they are in this mish-mash of ideals. One of the issues that is really challenging, and illuminating is the issue of vaccines. It is a hot-bed of debate or even more insidious, quiet staunch beliefs. Within the hippie tribe, this issue is a delicate topic. My friends vary widely, and we must use our hippie superpower of acceptance to cruise along with each other.

But let us put into perspective where power lies - it is in unity of ideals. The stronger the guiding principles are, and the more the population adheres to them, is willing to stand up for them - the more political power that group has. The hip has had their moments in the sunshine, mostly guided by music and social movements. But it has been the Political Right that has held the power slot for most of history because they use simple rhetoric, easy to understand platforms, and clear boundaries which makes it easy to understand and ‘join’. On the other hand, the Left has historically been divided, and we fight amongst ourselves because the ideal of inclusion is a messy process.

Using this guideline for projection of political power, I see that the ‘regular’ Left is rising because it has a clear agenda, where the Right is starting to splinter. What does this have to do with vaccinations? Because the vaccination issue is where we can see clarity or muddled ideals. The Left is clarifying itself with the tools of science. It is just harder to dispute science studies, and they are using this tool to get through all the confusing messages. They are wielding it for decisiveness on issues like climate change, voting, and vaccination.

But back to the hippie world; we are very divided. I have a hippie friend who did not vaccinate her kids (this is standard for hippie values), and she got a lot of flak from her conservative family, but when covid hit, she got her kids the vaccine but now, her conservative family is very anti covid vaccine and is giving her flak about that. We are flopping all over the place and we just can’t win.

Now the far Right is using the same divisive information that the far Left is basing its decisions on. So, we are in a beetle-battle-muddle-fuddle (see Dr. Suess’s tongue twisters). Is there a solution? The answer is ‘no’. We will be entrenched in confusion for a while. But my point is that if the far Left wants to have political power, we need to get it together and create a uniform informed platform to operate under because confusion amongst ourselves leads only to political weakness.