It wasn't long ago when conservatives were the radicals. Now we're all squares.
Remembering Dennis Hopper ...
Who's a conservative?
The lives and deaths of Dennis Hopper
For the general public, Dennis Hopper was identified to the end with the '60s counterculture, thanks to his career-making role as a hippie biker in Easy Rider. So when he died this past weekend, you're forgiven if you were surprised to read that he spent the last few decades of his life as a Republican. Unlike many famous figures who moved from one end of the spectrum to the other, Hopper never underwent a big public conversion. The man who once "was probably as Left as you could get without being a Communist" voted for Ronald Reagan in 1980, but he didn't make a stink about it at the time; the closest he came to giving his past persona a public burial came when he disavowed the drug abuse that just about wrecked his career in the 1970s. When no less a leftist than Abbie Hoffman criticized celebrity ex-dopers for issuing atonements that "look like cartoon confessions extracted under threat," the old radical nonetheless singled out Hopper's renunciation as one of a few "sincere" repudiations "by people I know and admire." This was in 1987, seven years after the actor started quietly casting his ballots for the GOP.
Not many people could vote for Reagan while maintaining the admiration of Abbie Hoffman, but Hopper's cultural impact was much larger than his private political sympathies. In virtually all his roles, including the roles he played in the gossip columns, Hopper exuded an individualism too explosive to be reduced to mere ideology, be it left, right, or libertarian. It was the individualism of a talented actor eager to play eccentric characters and the individualism of a self-destructive rascal who alienated his colleagues, the individualism of the counterculture's cosmic cowboys and the individualism of a Kansas Republican. It was the individualism of someone willing not just to stare into the abyss but to fall into it, climb out, then merrily dive back in.
"If this narrative had been Medieval, could there be any doubt at all of the theme or the moral teaching intended?" Gillis asks. "Sinners wander the countryside on a secular quest, encountering God's message but failing to acknowledge Him. They seek worldly pleasure at the expense of spiritual fulfillment, finding treasure and discussing it under a tree, only finally to die a horrid death by the wayside." That might not match the popular understanding of the movie's message, but it isn't far from at least one of the filmmakers' views. "My heroes are not right, they're wrong," Hopper's co-writer and co-star Peter Fonda said. "Liberty's become a whore, and we're all taking the easy ride."
Easy Rider took place in a modern western landscape ... In their stops along the road, Gillis argues, the protagonists "were given choices, opportunities to find meaning in their lives beyond that gas tank filled with money, beyond the pleasure of the brothel or the bottle, beyond the aimless wandering, meaning offered through spiritual commitment. Could there be a more conservative theme?
"Culture War" ... I think the war imagery has robbed us of our souls, and put bureaucratic rules and regimentation in their place.
Dennis Hopper - Interview w/ Jiminy Glick
It was conservatives, not stereotypical hippies btw, who coined the term "the establishment."
Dennis Hopper, Reactionary Radical
I don’t really have to convince you that Easy Rider is a reactionary picture, do I? The only characters depicted as unqualifiably virtuous are the homesteading family, living on their own acreage, raising their own food, teaching their young. If they’re not Treichlers then Dennis Hopper is playing Ron Ziegler. The only American Dream worth the snores is based in liberty and a community- (or family-) oriented independence, which the filmmakers associated with the country’s founders. Dennis Hopper (an admittedly unorthodox Kansas Republican) and Peter Fonda (a gun-loving libertarian) did not make a movie glorifying tripping hippies and condemning the southern gun culture; rather, as exasperated Fonda explained, “My movie is about the lack of freedom. My heroes are not right, they’re wrong. … Liberty’s become a whore, and we’re all taking the easy ride.”
“The best radicals,” Bill argues, “are reactionaries at heart. They despise the official order, be it state capitalism, militarism, communism, or what have you, but wish not merely to remove the malignancy but to replace it with an organic system, rooted in human nature and human affection. However angry, theirs — ours — is a politics of love.
Conservatives prefer "an organic system" (natural order), not the "official order" of the state. Because of course, rules and regulations break the "organic system" ...
As we're experiencing right now.
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