5 Ways Congressional Republicans Are Like Hipsters

The modern hipster and Tea Partier have followed such similar flight paths that Republicans have become little more than Thrillist editors with American flag pins.

By Jordan Burchette
RYOT.org

If there are two things that are becoming epidemic in this country, it’s preening, entitled hipsters and fractious, crackpot conservatives.

But it’s not just their rapid, cancer-like population growth and blinding whiteness that bind these two demographics. In fact, the emergence of the modern hipster and Tea Partier have followed such similar flight paths that republicans have become little more than Thrillist editors wearing American flag pins.

Don’t get us wrong. We loves us some republicans; we just haven’t been able to find any this millennium. As for hipsters, they can all die in a bacon-grease fire.

The following is just a smattering of uncanny resemblances between the GOP and LMFAO. Feel free to share more in the comments.

CRAPPING ON EVERYTHING WITHOUT OFFERING AN ALTERNATIVE


As Walter Sobchak astutely observed about the Nazis in The Big Lebowski, “Say what you want about the tenets of national socialism, dude, at least it’s an ethos.”

That’s more than you can say for the average hipster, a neo-nihilist with so little meaning in his life that nothing anyone else cares about could possibly matter either. It’s been said from time immemorial: stand for nothing, and you’ll fall for the latest American Apparel ad.

The GOP has followed suit, carpet-bombing its opposition with criticism, all the while comforted by the luxury of not having to propose anything better. If it’s such a terrible health care law — and it most assuredly is — assemble a bipartisan coalition to fix it; don’t fill the bath with wet cement just to avoid throwing the baby out with it.


RETRO-OBSESSED


Hipsters and republicans both long for a bygone, simpler time — as long as that time still has iPads and truck nuts.

Of course, the definition of yesteryear does differ some. Hipsters long for an era when televisions belonged on the floor, bikes had only one speed and men didn’t yet realize how pointless mustaches are.

Whereas for republicans, the good ol’ days evoke two-parent families, civil obedience and strictly defined gender roles. The fact that they also coincided with the subjugation of women, hanging of blacks and closeting/beating of 4 percent of the male population shouldn’t take the bloom off that rose.


IRONY


Irony is the social currency of the hipster who, without it, would be humiliatingly exposed before his peers as a thoughtful, caring citizen of the world. Eff. That. It’s much easier to just wear your apathetic ideology on a $42 cotton T-shirt that says, “Pittsburgh Steelers 1978 Super Bowl Champs,” when in actuality you hate football worse than shampoo.

Republicans have made similarly disingenuous overtures to the mentally ill and their role in the gun debate, when in reality they wouldn’t pee on a post-traumatic Asperger’s schizo if he were on fire. (OK, add more pee on him.) It’s how they can get away with opposing a health coverage mandate that their preeminent think tank masterminded. Too bad that won’t all fit on a T-shirt.


THE PHONEY EVERYMAN


Nobody works harder or spends bigger to appear effortless and poor than hipsters. Meticulously matted hair, pre-worn dungarees, precision face muff — it’s not easy making life look this hard.

Perry and Cupp: These aren’t great thinkers, they’re fencing terminology. GOP drama queens, too, labor desperately to appear salt-of-the-earth, but that’s just as carefully crafted — and financed — a facade. Whether it’s Rick Perry’s recent Clark Kent makeover or the trust-fund-amentalist mash-up that is SE Cupp, republicans want you to know that they’re Joe Lunchbuckets just like the rest of us, no matter what their tax deductions say.

What else could explain how George W. Bush — a New England-bred, Ivy League-educated blue blood — acquired an Ozark cotton farmer’s accent? It’s been just five years since the man left office and already he’s considered a Marxist by current standards.


SELF-DENIAL

Johnny Carson used to joke that the least-uttered sentence in the English language was “Isn’t that the banjo player’s Porsche?” But that was before legions of well-heeled hipsters began taking up the incest guitar.

Today, our least-uttered sentence is “I’m a hipster.” Because everyone knows a hipster when they see one — unless it’s them. And in today’s republican party, everyone can identify a wackadoo, right-wing asshat except when they’re it.

When Ted Cruz leads a parade of impressionable legislators to padlock the federal government, New York congressman Peter King is quick to brand Cruz a “false prophet.” But what would King call the guy who demanded an investigation of a mosque planned a thousand feet from Ground Zero, and suggested that The New York Times “be indicted under the Espionage Act?” (Hint: It was him.)

We could go on, and in this paragraph we probably will. Because the similarities between flat-earth birthers and fixed-gear bikers, unlike Internet articles, are almost never-ending. Whether it’s their mutual penchants for flannel (republicans for hunting quail, hipsters for hunting drunk, promiscuous Girls viewers), or clamoring for attention because neither of their fathers loved them, these two secretly-gay demographics should just bone and get it over with already.

Oh, and screw you, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and all of your spineless, squawking democrat brethren, too.