The Plight of the Liberals

We wrote a poem:

An Empire complex—where to begin?
We can start with an epigram thorough and hearty.

Why are we stuck with this mess that we're in?
Bush's quagmire, Iraq; the liberals', the Democratic party.

Complicity

Before we get to the death of Lady Bird Johnson, let's examine the impending (metaphorical) death of another onerous loser: McCain's spectacular dreams, for higher power coming crashing to earth. It is remarkable that on the day his top aides quit and the crowds murmur that he's bleeding money out of a slipshod operation, he announces that his two campaigns, against the people of Iraq and towards his presidential aspirations, are going just dandy. While it is tempting to draw further parallels, we must be careful: his campaign for president is teetering on failure, but the venture in Iraq is a criminal enterprise. So while we're weakly rooting for someone better for president, our hearts and minds go out to the Iraqi people and we have no joy in celebrating the butchery McCain has designed and abetted for them.
This is important to point out because a lot of commentators, and liberals especially, buy into this claptrap about the war "not going well." A presidential campaign can go well or it cannot go well; this rape and murder of a nation can never "go well." Ever. So while we will get drunk on cake and celebrate when McCain eventually bows out (and we'll recall his simultaneous statements on his dual Titanics), it is important to be clear about where the parallels lie and where they just obfuscate the obvious truth.
Speaking of obfuscation, CNN should fire their puppet Sanjay Gupta*, who out-and-out lies repeatedly and clearly willfully, in his libeling of Michael Moore and his new film SiCKO. If the first clip of Moore being ambushed on Wolf Blitzer isn't enough to make your blood boil, Gupta's blatant disregard for the truth on the Larry King follow-up is fairly outrageous. Of course, firing Gupta doesn't solve the real problem: Fox News is as bad as CNN. Maybe people think it should read the other way around (i.e., CNN is as bad as Fox), but if they're equal, why split hairs? Fox gets hammered time and again, deservedly so, for its racist, sexist, war-mongering demagoguery. Yet CNN regularly features the racist salvos of Glenn Beck and the racist capitalist droolings of Lou Dobbs, just to mention the worst of the pack. Yet liberals who dis Fox cop to CNN as if it's better.
Obfuscation and propaganda didn't start with the cable news channels and it doesn't end with them, either. We can look no further than the gross obit of Lady Bird Johnson who just seems so sweet and charming after being written up in her New York Times obit. The Times has the temerity to suggest that, well let me just quote:

"She was an early supporter of the environment and, in championing highway beautification, worked to banish billboards and plant flowers and trees."

Lady Bird Johnson's husband held a bloody shift conducting one of the most criminal and evil chapters in the history of humans on this earth, the american war against the people of Indochina. I've never heard hide nor hair of her criticism of these crimes at all. In particular, LBJ personally authorized the use of Agent Orange, an anti-life herbicide that obliterated miles and miles of vegetation and killed millions of animals and people. Her steadfast resolve in defending and standing by the scum that was her husband is clear in the obit, but nowhere is pronounced her complicity and the blood on her hands for any of this. As we like to say around here, Hell Burns Hotter Tonight.

*Call 404-827-1500 and press #2 to tell them.

Miseducation

So we wanted the post below to stay at the top a little bit longer, but we wanted to tell everyone about the new additions. Besides a house-cleaning of sorts, fixing old mistakes from the first readings, we added some links into our popular world map. Not all, but some of the locations now link to specific texts in the site about them. That isn't the big news, though. We added a classic text that frankly should've been on the site a long time ago: Carter Godwin Woodson's The Mis-Education of the Negro .
Now, before we suggest that you read our post below seeking assistance from PHP and Drupal people (or funds to hire someone), we'd like to voice a complaint out into the wilderness of the internet. We've been hearing Nina Simone in commercials lately and it is irritating us: Nina is ours, she didn't get the honor she deserved when she was alive with us, and we certainly don't want to continue the insult by using her powerful voice to sell a stupid car. Listen to her music, but don't use it in commercials.
Now read the post below and uh, go stop the war.

We're so sick of the internet.

Let's be honest. The greatest networking system in the history of humankind and the best we can do is post videos of each other whining about how the Democrats enable Bush. A million monkeys on a million typewriters collectively lamenting that a CIA agent was outed for political reasons. This is craziness. If every single CIA agent was outed - and sentenced to hard labor - it would be a good day for the entire world. Instead, we're exchanging crazy talk.
But we haven't given up on the internet. So many people visit History Is A Weapon, they link to us and use articles here to back up their online arguments. It's great. On top of that, we see ever so brief glimpses of what the internet could be: indymedia.org, protest.net, moveon (complain all you want, but it combines massive numbers of people into a fundraising and hissy-fitting might), campusactivism: the list goes on. Through the piles of silly online petitions and closed-circuit activist list-servs, there is the faintest sight of the possible future and it looks good.
The big dilemma is how to use online networks to build offline activism. Sure, we can advertise another march around another government building, but after more than a decade of connectivity we're reduced to forwarding grainy daily show reruns.
Well, our complaints are wearing us down. We want to make something new, something online and spectacularly dangerous. The kind of thing that takes over, changes everything, and skips well past hope into the realm of revolutionary possibility. Yes, it's ambitious, but none of us are getting any younger and while History Is A Weapon is great, the future is the terrain of choice.
Want to help? We need some friends who know Drupal and PHP. If you don't have that, send us some money so that we can hire some people who do (or at least buy a book or two on the subject).
We're going to make your favorite thing, we just need to get some coders who can make the brick and mortar. If you want to help, send us an email.
Update:We'll be leaving this post up for a while, so don't hesitate to respond even if it has been a few weeks.