Dear World, Welcome to Better Than Machines. Love, BTM

The Twitpic of "Dear World, We're Back! Love, U.S.A." now has over 170,000 views. Stemming from that and the other social media sites that picked up the picture, at its peak, Better Than Machines' traffic reached about 35 times its normal levels. Over the last few days, people from 21 countries have visited BTM.

To all of you who've found your way here through Twitter, Digg, Stumbleupon, and other sites:  

Welcome. I hope you'll stick around. There's a lot going on and a lot to talk about. 

While the inauguration of President Obama marked a major victory for the people of the United States and the world, it by no means marked the end of a struggle. If anything, it's a beginning. "We're back" doesn't mean everyone can stop paying attention now. "We're back" means we just removed one of the single biggest obstacles to our progress as a people.  

Now it's time to bring on some of that progress. We now have a presidential administration that is not actively hostile to ordinary working Americans. But that doesn't mean that this administration will just give us what we want. Once you're actually in the Oval Office, suddenly all the money men are whispering in your ear, suddenly it's a lot easier just to give the Chamber of Commerce whatever it wants. 

After Franklin Roosevelt's election in 1932, a group of labor leaders and reformers met him with a number of specific plans they wanted the president to implement. Roosevelt responded: "I agree with you, I want to do it, now make me do it."

We are in the same position today: We just elected a progressive Democrat for president, after witnessing the utter failure of a political and economic philosophy built on greed. Back then, FDR did good things because the American Left was fired up and engaged. 

President Obama believes a lot of the right things. Now it's time for us to make President Obama do the right things. Stay tuned as BTM does its small part.