This is the 20th anniversary of Freewayblogger.com — a site I haven’t updated in several years, but whose headline photo and opening emphasis on the Russo-Republican Alliance remains as relevant today as ever. As does the philosophy behind the format: the easiest way to transmit a simple message to the largest number of people possible is by serial posting on freeways using the formula of easy-to-see and hard-to-reach. Signs can be made almost any size and legibility can be determined by imagining the sign placed on windshields when standing at the posting spot: the sign will appear at the size and angle, for the same duration as it would on the windshield.
Most of all, freewayblogging allows you to protest what you believe needs to be protested as opposed to what you and hundreds or thousands of others who can be brought together in the same place at the same time believe needs to be protested, because it’s those last conditions that have rendered us practically voiceless. This was particularly obvious to the rest of the world when we allowed the right wing media machine to gaslight one third of the nation into thinking Saddam Hussein was in any way responsible for 9/11. Because they weren’t able to gaslight the rest of the people on earth, our seeming lack of protest made the silent two-thirds of the country look either apathetic or like idiots. But that was only because you can’t organize mass protests over things like that, or when they try to legitimize bald-faced treason like January 6th. Or now that they’re working on the undermining the next election with their spurious claims of voter fraud.
I will go to my grave not understanding why we don’t use the one means of political expression granted to us that is absolutely unlimited: signposting on public property. But I will not go there thinking my efforts have been in vain. The first institutions to show interest in freewayblogging were — and I still get a kick out of this — The Mensa Society and High Times Magazine. But after that my signs appeared all over the left blogosphere and with articles and interviews in the US alternative and mainstream European Press, most notably Le Monde, Der Stern and the UK Independent. Those, along with articles in De Morgan (Belgium/Holland) the Irish Times, Sunday Herald, Al Watai in Qatar and others generated hundreds of e-mails to me all saying pretty much the same thing: “Thank You for being the kind of American we remember.” Brought tears to my eyes — the good kind — thinking of how my father would’ve felt to see this. He believed patriotism was a lot more than simply honoring the nation, he believed true patriotism was action that inspired others to honor our nation. Crazy, huh?
Probably the most auspicious part of the first year was interest by the mainstream US press, and being interviewed by Time, Newsweek, Rolling Stone, The Boston Globe and MTV. Of those, only the last two actually ran articles but nevertheless, for an activist that was a hell of a start. I knew enough about Wahhabi Islam to know they despised secularists and that Osama Bin Laden would’ve worked with Woody Allen before he’d work with Saddam Hussein. The Bush administration couldn’t gaslight me because I didn’t trust them, but as it turns out I was getting gaslit big time by somebody I absolutely did trust, and if I’m late here it’s because anniversaries like this are bittersweet at best.
I was 42 years old and getting more recognition than most people get in their lifetimes. By just about any account, 2004 should’ve been the best year of my life.
I cried like a fucking baby every single day in 2004.