Zinnsanity!

Interesting article by Howard Zinn over at Smirking Chimp, via The Progressive. In it, the "people's historian," who just last year made another gazillion dollars on his document reader to accompany his incredibly shitty A People's History of the United States (notice, not THE People's History of the United States, because eggheads like Zinn don't believe in specificity or firm stands on anything), asserts that "we," including the media and the public, were fooled into Bush's war. He then proceeds to argue that, had "we" but known our US history and the stories of presidents continually lying us into wars since 1776, "we" never would have fallen for Chimpy's Desert Adventure.

Howard, Howard. How do I hate thee? Let me count the ways...better take off my shoes for this. And my pants, too, so I'll have one more appendage upon which to keep track of my growing hate for you, you soft-headed fool. See here as I begin with the last one first and wave my literal and figurative dick at you.

NOBODY was "fooled" into the Iraq war! People may have rationalized it; the media may have told it that way. That doesn't make it so! NOBODY believed that shit Powell and the rest of the monkey-fellaters from the White House were selling about WMD's and Al Qaeda. And anybody that says they believed it, whole hog, uh I swear I am just that fucking retarded, yessiree--those people are LYING TO YOU.

But the great Howard Zinn has figured this all out for us. See, those assholes aren't trying to cover up their gleeful support for a war they COMPLETELY UNDERSTOOD AND/OR SUPPORTED, no; they're just innocent victims of that big, bad ol' government that always treats people like shit and lies to us and my goodness what can WE little old things do about it?

Fuck you, Howard. Move to a fucking anarchist farm out in Vermont or else grow up. The problem with the "people" is the THE PEOPLE. It's not that they don't "know history" (or, to be clear about what we're talking about, that they don't know YOUR brand of history), it's that they can't conceive of how to confront the liars telling the obvious lies. The solution to that, it seems, is a better politics, not a better history. History is not a proactive force, it's a retroactive one. Anyone who tells you differently is either a charlatan or a moron. Either way, he's an historian.