Iowa: One And A Half Victory Parties

There was a part of me that was relaxed: Barack will win Iowa. He will win all four. There was a part of me that was still anxious. Got to watch and make sure though.

First I had thought of going to the party in Harlem. Then I decided to go to the DL21C one near Times Square instead. Elizabeth Caputo's last question to me at the December Baby? party had been "Will you join DL21C?" I said, "I have no interest in DL21C." But later I kind of thought about it and produced this: I Want To Join The DL21C Steering Committee, 2.0 Screen Time, 5.0 Face Time, Of Racialism, Progressive Group Dynamics. I was not going to say no to joining, but I would only join if the organization agreed to go 2.0. I had said, it is that or death to the organization. That was a look at the trends. That was not a "threat." I am in the business of killing rival tech companies, political organizations are not my domain. What I had meant was minus 2.0 DL21C will shrink in size and importance. Just look at BarackObama.com. You think Barack will fold up the tent in January 2009? No way. That is when BarackObama.com will kind of launch. That will be his vehicle for eight years in the White House, that will be the primary attraction of his presidential library. And it is a stripped down version of both Facebook and MeetUp.

I got out of the train and walked over to the venue. Outside there were a few Hillary and a few Obama supporters holding placards for the benefit of TV cameras. I recognized Arthur. One woman gave me a placard to hold and tried to get me on TV. I hope it worked.

There was playful banter among the two crowds. One guy gave me a glove. That was handy in the cold.

Then we all walked in. I was pleasantly surprised to see there were booths for the top three candidates. I mean, DL21C is a neutral organization, officially. Members might have their choices, but the organization is neutral. Like their trip to New Hampshire, it is for supporters of any candidate. But this still surprised me because Danny Hamburger had created a ruckus over email with me about why you are posting links to your blog at the DL21C Facebook group wall? That was the beginning of the end of any semblance of civility between us.

Next time he met me, he growled at me, "I am serious!" And walked away.

I walk inside and see Hakeem Jeffries. I walk over to him. He looked like he just got there. We make small talk. Then he said he was thinking of going to the main Obama 2008 victory party that was somewhere downtown. He asked me if I wanted to go.

I got to know Hakeem before he became an elected official. I like him. NYC political organizations are full of people who are never going to run for anything. But he ran, and I saw it. When you meet him, you meet a pro.

I was not too excited about the prospect of walking outside right after I had just walked in from the cold.

So when I moved on, he was still standing there with a few people. I was a little torn though. But I walked upstairs. I went to the Obama table. Made some small talk. Then situated myself in front of the nearest TV from that table.

Soon enough I find myself flanked. Danny Babyface IamnobabyfacebecauseIgrewabeardsinceyoulastsawme Hamburger to my left. Mike Luchipuchinachi Thereisdumbwrittenallovermeandthereisawhitetrashtatooonmyforehead in the front kind of in the way of the TV. In Berkshire, England, these two would have been skinheads engaged in hate crimes, but here they don't even get to engage in hate speech, so they settle for rude speech. In the solar system they got asteroids. At DL21C they got Danny Babyface IamnobabyfacebecauseIgrewabeardsinceyoulastsawme Hamburger and Mike Luchipuchinachi Thereisdumbwrittenallovermeandthereisawhitetrashtatooonmyforehead. These two are total float objects. They don't have the slightest clue what they are doing on this planet. They don't know where they came from. They have no idea where they are going. They live from one meaningless conversation to the next, one beer to the next. Especially this Mikie guy, there is dumb written on the sole of his feet, I will bet you. His only political relevance is Dave Pollak probably says hello to him once every three months. Otherwise this guy could not speak two sentences of politics. He could not knock on doors to hand out flyers.

I talked about the last hurrah of the white male here a few days back: John Hot Air Edwards. What I meant was Barack's victory and Edwards' loss should not be seen as the last hurrah of the white male. Bill Clinton won for being the best candidate in 1992. In 2008 that best candidate happens to be Barack. This is not about color, this is about merits.

But Danny Babyface IamnobabyfacebecauseIgrewabeardsinceyoulastsawme Hamburger and Mike Luchipuchinachi Thereisdumbwrittenallovermeandthereisawhitetrashtatooonmyforehead are the theme song for the last hurrah of the white male. I have not read any of the Harry Potter books, but I am sure there are characters like these two thrown somewhere in there.

I heard a few repetitions of do you understand, and then leave. Leave? I am thinking Hakeem. Is that guy still downstairs? The idea of his offer sounded tempting. I also thought of this elderly white lady in this story: Holiday Party 4: Is This Where The Bingo Game Is At?. How about giving these two guys the same treatment? Will that make their day? I rushed down to see if Hakeem was still there, but he was gone. I did not know the location for the downtown party. So I turned around to go back up to go get the location from the Obama table. And these two dimwits, I noticed, had followed me out to the gate and had been looking at me walk away. They had expected some kind of a shouting match when they said "Leave!" Nothing dramatic like that happened. Or maybe a fire alarm. I am sure they were gunning for that.

At the gate Mike Luchipuchinachi Thereisdumbwrittenallovermeandthereisawhitetrashtatooonmyforehead says, "Can I help you with something?"

I guess I could have said, go get the flyer on the Obama table that has the directions to the big Obama party downtown, but that would have been a master-servant kind of thing, and I am an egalitarian kind of guy, so I went and got it myself. Arthur at the table is like, "Don't go, don't go!"

The Maoists of Nepal are the biggest, most ultra-left group this world saw after the end of the Cold War. I have played a role in mainstreaming them. That is tough. Two dumb white guy assholes talking rude, that is not tough.

When I got to the location downtown, Jackie had just stepped out to smoke. She gave an excited hello. Inside the place was packed. You could barely walk from one end of the room to the next. I did not see Hakeem but I saw a bunch of others. I was so glad. So many familiar faces. This was not a neutral crowd. Jordan was there. And so many others. People were just happy.

After greeting a few people, I found a place to stand and was glued to the screen. Not long after I felt this gentle nudge to my right. "What are you thinking?"

There was this serene, beautiful, slim woman looking at me. If I look like I am thinking when I am watching TV, I am impressed with myself.

She said she lives in Brooklyn.

"Me too."

"Park Slope."

"I live south of the park. Near the movie theater?"

Yes.

She said she was like Barack, both black and white. I find that so very attractive.

"Everybody's mixed, they just don't say it," she said.

She later asked for my card. My business card is highly misleading. My name on it is correct, everything else is slightly misleading. There is a random number on it that is not a phone number, there is a phone number that does not belong to anybody. There is a website address: the site does not exist. There is an email address that works but that I seldom check. The point being, google my name to get my contact info.

I said to email to my gmail address. She also gave me her email address.

I decided I was going to email her tomorrow. Let's hang out. I like it she lives walking distance. Prospect Park is the most parkey park in the city. She sounded up for it.

For a little while I was a little anxious about the results. Barack was neck and neck with the other two. And I was a little tense. But then soon enough he took the lead and the lead just got wider and wider and wider.

"There is no competition!" I high-fived a few people.

Barack's victory speech said it all. There was no competition. His speech stood out.

DFNYC, Drinking Liberally, Manhattan Young Dems, DL21C. There was this phase when I went to many of their events, and to numerous Nepali events in Queens. Then I veered to Obama 2008 while still going to a few events from the old organizations. I have been one of the early Obama volunteers. But I resisted getting into structured organization from the very beginning. (NYC, Obama, Structure, Me) I am not a blogger, I am a digital democrat. BarackObama.com works great for me, or at least did during summer. You find events to go to, and you go to them. I went to events in all four boroughs. It was so much fun to go to some of these far flung events. So different from the bar routine of the Manhattan events. Like there is this huge garden in Astoria. That was great.

I am so into Obama 2008, but I have stayed away from structural organization. Does not work for me. The group dynamics of a slow moving organization just does not float my boat. And so my style has been to keep the intensity by just showing up to experience events.

But I have met Barack. He is like Muhammad Ali or something. There's no more famous politician to meet after him.

Most important, I have my startup to look into. I am so excited. Finally I might be able to strike the kind of 2.0 and 5.0 balance that I have wanted. Not even corporations have the 2.0, 5.0 thing going on. Political organizations kind of thrive on inefficiency, slow movements, checks and balances, stuff like that.

Barack's Iowa victory has been so clear, it made me want to think in terms of a potential running mate, even though I have said I will not really do so before February 5. Hillary? Edwards? Spitzer? That Virginia guy? Somebody else? Who?

Obama proved something amazing in Iowa, that he could get young people to show up and caucus. This guy is now Mr. Organization Master in my book.

2.0 Screen Time, 5.0 Face Time, Of Racialism, Progressive Group Dynamics

Recently a reporter asked Google CEO Eric Schmidt what he thought of 2.0 and what he thought 3.0 might be. He said 2.0 was just a marketing term. Not so. 2.0 is a very concrete milestone for web technology.

Web 5.0: Face Time
A Web 3.0 Manifesto

The other day I was hanging out with team member two - I stole him from Morgan Stanley, they just promoted him, but he is quitting nevertheless - of my tech startup at his place, his girlfriend who lives in New Haven and cousin who lived only a few blocks away, joined a little later, my first time seeing them. And when it was just the two of us early on, at one point he was saying 5.0 this and 5.0 that. And I said, "I hope you realize you and I are the only people who talk of 5.0." The term has not caught on.

I lived cloud group dynamics for two years for Nepal's democracy and social justice movements. The price I paid: weak social muscles. After we hung out for a little while, an hour or two, more perhaps, the idea of going to the movie came up. I skipped that part. It got a little too much for me. I later wrote to him: sorry, weak social muscles. Cab drivers who don't get into the habit of daily, elaborate exercise end up with back problems. 2.0 cloud group dyanmics, if not accompanied by a rich emotional, social life, can result in weak social muscles. It is an occupational hazard. As we build our team, we will have to remember. 5.0 is key.

2.0 and 5.0 have to go hand in hand. That is a given for my startup. Recently I suggested the same for DL21C, an organization I have long respected as the top political organization in the city.

I Want To Join The DL21C Steering Committee

I suggested the 2.0, 5.0 thing to DL21C, but there are a few differences. With my startup, I just go ahead and decide. A political organization is a different organism. But its adoption of 2.0 and 5.0 does not have to be as total as for my startup. But I can't see how it can skip it entirely.

Made me think, though.

Imagine a high quality video. Then you reduce the quality of the video. Then you turn it black and white. Then you get rid of the imagery altogether. Then you get rid of the music. Then you put the words from the video down on a piece of paper. Face time can be said to be that high quality video, an email is that piece of paper with words only.

When I put out theories on gender, I am always worried if I am just talking stereotypes, or if I am upto something after all. Like the proposition that men are instrumental - think action movies - and women are relational. The high quality video is great for the relational mindset. You see many details to the conversation that you want to see. But to the instrumental mindset, the email works just fine. The mind does not even know what it is missing. But to the relational mindset, an email has many fill in the blanks. You see meaning that was not put in there, but to you it is as real as if it was put in there. Can lead to a lot of misunderstanding and confusion.

So there is that major content difference between 2.0 and 5.0. But 2.0 does not just come in the form of words. Besides content, there is a major interactivity difference.

TV is not interactive. It is one way. You watch. Newspapers are not interactive: crossword puzzles don't count, or not that much. But when the internet came along, it was different. It was interactive. You could click, you could search, you could send and receive email. That was Web 1.0. The current DL21C website is a great example of a Web 1.0 site. All Web 2.0 did was take interactivity to a whole new level. So much more interaction became possible. Facebook is the flagship example of a 2.0 application.

Geography is irrelevant. That is the basic postulate that makes the current technology feel highly inadequate. All the features are not there. And perhaps the richness of face time will never really be replicated.

But compare 2.0 interactivity to 5.0 interactivity. Face time interactivity is so much richer. There are so many additional elements. There is so much more emotional interplay during face time. The degree of difference is just humongous.

Content, interactivity. And then there is the social dynamic that comes into play.

To overgeneralize, let's say Queens is a largely brown crowd, Brooklyn is a largely black crowd, Manhattan is a largely white crowd, Bronx is primarily Hispanic. New York City is at once the capital city of the world, the most diverse place on earth, and also its most segregated in some ways.

So when someone brown like me shows up at a "progressive" event that is predominantly white, I don't hear alarm bells ringing in my head, but I do notice it is a predominantly white crowd, and it is racial, not racist, but racial.

It did not take me long to get to know all the top people at all the top political organizations in Manhattan after I moved into the city. And I can stand my own when it comes to politics. And over time you do get to know a few people here, a few people there. And at that point the city feels like a small town.

But this city is the Amazon forest of humanity: all possible human life forms live in this city. You routinely meet jerks. I don't love this city because it is devoid of racists, but because they might reveal themselves once, but then they don't have to stay in your face.

My favorite one is where some random, dumbass white guy will go ahead and "slap" a conversation between a white woman and a nonwhite guy. It is like they sense budding intimacy and will not put up with it. There are a few problems with that. First, not everyone is trying to hook up. Most conversations are social. Second, he is invading the personal space of two individuals and is being racist and sexist at the same time in suggesting who these two individuals may or may not talk to, or to what extent. Such dumbasses are ripe targets for some basic verbal jujutsu. One oneliner, and they don't know what to think next.

There is an underlying value system that decides why a crowd is predominantly brown, or black, or white or Hispanic. A total reliance on 5.0 says that value system comes before the individual. And that is why I put so much emphasis on a seamless 2.0 and 5.0. For political action, that is my big reason to emphasize 2.0. I can't imagine a decided move towards a post-ISMs individual group dynamic without a seamless 2.0 and 5.0.

And there is a major major efficiency issue. 2.0 is just so much more efficient. 2.0 enriches 5.0.

So: content, interactivity, post-ISMs individual group dynamics, and efficiency. But then there is another angle to content. There's all that stuff online that I just can not convey during face time. I will have to email you a blog post to make a point once in a while.

As to what particular combo of 2.0 and 5.0 is right for an individual, it is for the individual to decide. The same applies to organizations. For my startup, it is total, with an emphasis on 2.0. For a political organization like DL21C, it can be a Lite version, with the major emphasis on 5.0.

DL21C has an enormous reservoir of untapped social and political capital in terms of all the members it has in three big cities, and all the guests it is able to summon: pretty much the who is who of American politics. I wish there were a movies version of DL21C, I'd like to meet Al Pacino, I once said to Elizabeth. DL21C is like Arabs before they realized they were sitting on top of oil, politically speaking.

December Baby?