What if the Hippies had "won"?

[Lone_Wolf]

I often say that I grew up among hippies, musicians, modern-day prophets and other interesting personalities, and I've often wondered what the world of 2010 would look if my mother's people had "won", other than that hash no doubt would be legal.

[Sir Ironside]

They did win, they became the Yuppies.

[Straha]

That implies a more populist, left-libertarian, more secular and less cynical America. You could get this be putting a kibosh on the 60s as we know it by having Nixon win in 1960. The dead hand of the 50s continues on well into the 1970s. The result of this is a backlash by the boomer generation against the continued status quo of social conservatism+economic statism.

1961-1969 Richard Nixon
1969-1977 Harold Stassen
1977-1985 Gerald Ford(GOP)
1985-1993 Jerry Brown(Dem)
1993-2001 Gary Hart(dem)
2001-2005 Lincoln Chaffee(gop)
2005-2013 Howard Dean(dem)

[Straha]

Granted, this POD kills the hippie movement entirely, but it gets an America with many of their goals achieved.

Hell, given the cultural context, we could see pseudo-hippies in the 80s/90s, but with a different technological/media environment and a rather calmer Americ it wouldn't play out like the 60s movements of OTL.

[bobc]

What does it mean for the hippies to have "won"?
What year? 1968?

The Generation of WW2 veterans (sort of, let us say those born from 1901 to 1924) where ages 44 to 67. Most of them were deeply hostile to this movement, and were largely in charge of the institutions of the day. Granted, that generation wasn't much involved in street fighting either as hippies, police, or soldiers.

The Hippie Generation (say those born between 1943 and 1960) were supplemented by some of the "Silent Generation" born between 1925 and 1942 who were going through mid-life crises and joining in.

However, the Hippie Generation were not all Hippies. Perhaps half of them were on that side of things, and half were strongly against. So, for the Hippies to have won, first there would need to be general support from that generation.

[Lone_Wolf]

To BobC:

What I meant was that the world we live in today haven't changed all that much from before the Hippie-era, I mean the world is still based on the gathering of wealth and military power.
If more people who believed in the ideals so many of my mother's generation believed in had reached high positions things most likely would be a lot different today.
I doubt the world would have been a global version of Ashbury-Haight in '67 and Allan Ginsberg probably wouldn't have ended up in the White House, but a world where "ordinary" people took the whole "Make the World a Better Place" thing to heart.
Personally I would have preferred a world where the Disco Era never ended, but I still think a world with people like Dylan or Lennon in leading positions - like PM John Lennon - that would allow them to implement the ideas they sing about, I just think it's an interest concept.

[Admiral Canaris]

A world not based on wealth and military power is an impossibility under human government. If the major nations in the West went for that, we would be living in the Greater Global Community of Socialist Soviet Republics due to having lost the Cold War, and there wouldn't be any Internet for this message board to exist on.

Sadly, might makes right in the world of global politics. Kindness if shown, is mistaken for weakness -- or may in fact be that thing under another name.

If we restrict ourselves to more realistic consequences (ie greater/more pervasive influence of the atomic left-wing movement, New Age religion, pacifism, drug liberalism etc), Straha's model is a good start. The longer the proto-hippe sentiment is kept down, the stronger it will become, over a period of a decade or two.

[bobc]

Originally Posted by Lone_Wolf

To BobC:

What I meant was that the world we live in today haven't changed all that much from before the Hippie-era, I mean the world is still based on the gathering of wealth and military power.
If more people who believed in the ideals so many of my mother's generation believed in had reached high positions things most likely would be a lot different today.

The Gurus of the day, would likely have been far harsher towards dissent than the actual people in charge.
They would likely have been more likely to start a war over some obscure ideological dispute than the so-called war-mongers.

And don't forget the civil conflict between the People's Committee for Justice and the People's Front for Justice and Peace.