Dana Blankenhorn

Not Good Enough

The apology of Pope Benedict XVI for the Church's sex abuse scandal is not good enough.

Not by a long shot.

His words remind me of what a child says when he or she is caught taking the toy of another child. The personal shame and repentance may be real. But is anything really changing?

In this case it's clear nothing is changing. This is certain because we haven't heard of the Church doing anything in the other countries where it works. The Church is acting like this is some sort of American aberration, when the only aberrant thing about it is priests here were caught, and the Church as a whole was held to account.

"It wasn't just sexual abuse, it was spiritual abuse," one victim told CNN, but he wasn't the only one spiritually abused. His whole family was, and his whole congregation was.

There are few crimes in this world whose impact can compare with that of child sexual abuse. It happens every day -- in every denomination and creed -- and it destroys everyone it touches.

This isn't a gay crime. It's a crime of power.

When done against a child by a person who claims authority from God, it's even worse. The chance of the victim opening up to anyone, and seeking a cure for the hurt and anger inside them, drops to near zero. And the resulting scars last a lifetime.

Passing the Media Torch

Perhaps the most important story coming out of Pennsylvania may be this.

The media torch has been passed. Not to a new generation, but to a new medium.

Not that the incoming medium notices. To read DailyKos you would think that idiocy were triumphant. Yet despite the constant drumbeat of "Obama's going down" from TV "pundits" and newspaper wags, nothing has really happened. Polls have barely budged.

This would not have been the case 20 years ago, or even 4 years ago. Michael Dukakis was destroyed for simply looking goofy in a tank, Howard Dean by a misrepresented attempt to rev up his supporters. The power of pundits and the media to make (and break) candidates has gone unquestioned for decades now.

What happened?

Something very important.

Community Server

Think of this as Volume 11, Number 16 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

---

My health is good. We're happy. But there are days when I do wish I were 30 years younger, full of piss-and-vinegar.

Days like today.

Because if I were 28 again, and just starting out, this is the kind of business plan I would dearly love to implement. It's what I dreamed of when I first put "Have Modem, Will Travel" on my business cards over 25 years ago. (The picture is from that time. That's my old Kaypro II on the right. The kitten, LoMeow, lived to the age of 18.)

I call it the Community Server, and it's designed to activate rural communities and the back-end of the Internet revolution, the people who right now are either off-line or turned off by what they see online.

Let's start with some facts. Many types of demand can be aggregated and delivered at low cost. Not just diapers and TVs, as Wal-Mart did. Not just electricity as co-ops have for years. But telecommunications as well.

I've described over the years how cheaply WiFi can be delivered, and how copper wires can be transformed by going all-digital. But now that you've got people an on-ramp, where are they going?

To a directory, first of all. City directories and phone directories. Get the data and put it online.

Build a database of it, with each listing a virtual page. The front-end can be Elgg, it can be Marc Canter's PeopleAggregator, it can be Drupal, or (here's a good idea) it can be WordPress.

Take your time selecting the platform, because it's an important choice. You want to be able to add the capabilities of sites like FaceBook, YouTube, and MySpace, as your users demand them. Few users will demand many of these new features right off -- most will be happy with a blog -- but when they're ready you need to be ready. And your platform choice will determine that readiness. You're looking for an open source platform with an active community and a real business behind it.

Your community server could be hosted in your service area, but it doesn't have to be. If you've already aggregated Internet connectivity it might be fun to host it yourself. Otherwise leave it to the pros, and get near a major Internet Exchange.  In time you'll be the cloud. For now get next to one.

So far I haven't really told you much. Anyone can do this. Many people do and wind up with empty servers. I've done it myself.

What's the secret sauce?

The Manipulators

We don't like being talked down to.

(This is actually a marketing talk, by Seth Godin, done at Google, but it's worth listening to whatever business you're in. Notice that he's not talking down to anyone.)

The reason the Obama "bitter" deal hasn't hurt him is the same reason the "Jeremiah Wright" deal didn't hurt him.

This election is not about him.

What all the manipulators who are pissing-and-moaning about it, whether on the TeeVee or online, don't realize is something just as important.

This election is not about them, either.

This election is about us. You and me.

Crisis elections are like that.

Anyone want to deny we're in a crisis (other than the manipulators)?

A World Without a Moral Center

As I may have mentioned here before I'm scheduled to visit Chengdu, China next month. Blogging will be sporadic.

Given the recent headlines over the torch run I'm certain you're wondering what I might tell my hosts.

The answer is -- not much.

For one thing I expect few there to know English. But even without the language barrier I'd mainly want to listen. Listen to my son try to puzzle out the language barrier after three years of Mandarin. Listen to people greet me, and try to explain things by speaking Szechuan ve-ry slow-ly (as though that would help).

But there's another, more important reason. I no longer have cause to condemn anyone.

Neither, frankly, do you.

Rage, Rage Against the Dying of the Light

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

What is true for mortal man is also true for ideas, for concepts, for myths and values, for political theses.

That's what we're dealing with in events like the supposed "bitter" contretemps and Barack Obama.

Forget for a moment whether Barack Obama is a black man or white. He is, first of all, a Hawaiian.

Hawaiians surf. They stand on a board above the waves and they ride the water the way Texans ride horses. Obama surfs history the way painters like Picasso surf artistic trends or the way a Tom Brady surfs through defenses seeking a receiver.

As do we all, once we realize it. But journalists are stuck in the eternal now, and have no concept of this idea of surfing.

Thus they see scandal where there is, in fact, the death rattle of their own assumptions of political myth, value, and power, and the alchemy in which both are created.

What Barack Obama said last week in Pennsylvania was the simple truth. It should surprise no one that people turn bitter when their jobs disappear, when politicians in both parties use that to gain power and then do nothing about it.

The Clintons promised to help, but instead took that power and endorsed free trade agreements which guaranteed the jobs would never come back. The Bushes blamed the blacks, the browns, all the "others," then continued the march away from production, towards consumption.

There is no lie there. There is no scandal.

Tribes of the GOP

Think of this as Volume 11, Number 15 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

---

Back in 1968 it was easy to identify the Democratic tribes splitting off from the party by the way they dressed and the way they looked.

White, black, brown, male, female, young, old -- each tribe had its own look and its own outlook.

It's tougher now. About the only black Republicans are on TV. Republicans are generally Euro-Americans, aged 30 and higher. They blend in. It's only when they start talking that you detect the tribal differences.

Anthropologists had two ways to discern the tribal identity of Nixon-era Republicans, by where they sat and by what they obsessed over. 

Where they were definitions include:

• Wall Street Republicans -- Urban only if they had an apartment in New York itself (maybe Philly), otherwise strictly suburban or exurban. Their first concern is money, getting it, keeping it, getting more of it, keeping other people from getting any.
• Church Street Republicans -- Usually found in megachurches or in front of their TV sets. Densest populations in the South and Southwest, but found in every state. Their first concern is morality, usually others, and using the power of the state to force that morality into a mold their preacher approves of.
• Easy Street Republicans -- Mostly found in Florida, Arizona, and California, these are Wall Street Republicans who made their pile. Often found in motor homes, on golf courses, or on condo balconies.
• Talk Show Republicans -- Often found in pick-up trucks on on job sites. They like them some Rush Limbaugh. Used to call themselves Reagan Democrats. Archie Bunker's real kids. The kind of people other Republicans like to rob.
• Professional Republicans -- Mostly found in Washington and its suburbs, or on TV.  Professional greasemen (and women),  sucking either at the government teat or those of other Republicans, mainly the Wall Street variety. Rush Limbaugh himself.
  

Wolf Blitzer Will You Please Go Now?

Let me say at the top I found protests over the Beijing Olympic torch in San Francisco to be silly.

The United States has no credibility in accusing anyone else of human rights abuses, or of ignoring democracy. After the last 8 years of suppression and war, our ability to tell the world what to do about itself is exhausted. It's a sick joke. And it will remain that way long after we change our ways -- assuming we ever do.

I had just finished work yesterday and was flipping around the TV when the protests arrived in Wolf Blitzer's Situation Room.

It was a disgusting display. Not the protests. Not the reaction by authorities. Not the irony of China glorying in an event first staged by Nazis. Not even the Chinese goons who have been part of the parade of continents. 

All that was to be expected.

What was unexpected was Blitzer's narration, which was so over-the-top in attacking the protesters and worrying about the feelings of the poor Chinese government that I was, once more, ashamed to be an American.

Housing Bailout, Dollar Bubble

Here's how it's all going down. (Picture from Rev2.org.)

The Federal Reserve prints enough money so that banks can write-off the Big Shitpile and acquire the liquidity they need to make new mortgage loans.

That's what is in fact happening. The Fed has opened its lending facilities to investment banks as well as commercial banks, and is taking whatever junk these guys have for collateral. That's a nice CDO based on Las Vegas sub-prime mortgages you have there, I'll loan you 100 cents on the dollar for it.

It's possible that J.P. Morgan is telling the truth, and the loans being passed to the Fed's hands in the Bear Stearns deal aren't the worst of the worst. But that's just the tip of the iceberg. The IMF estimates there's $1 trillion of dodgy paper about, most of it American (although some is British, which is why the Pound is under $2 while the Euro climbs to near $1.60.)

The consumer aim in all this? To keep nominal home values at a level such that millions more home loans won't go underwater. That is, say your $300,000 home should really be worth $150,000 in a real market, as it should. The Fed pumps enough new dollars into the system that it's still worth near $300,000, and you feel pretty good. Trouble is the $300,000 is really worth what $150,000 was worth before the bailout started. The market has done its job but you don't notice until you do the math.

Ending the Zero Sum Game

Perhaps the grossest myth of the last American generation is the Zero Sum Myth.

This myth was very much on display yesterday during the Iraq testimony. This is why it seemed at times that Gen. David Petraeus and the Democrats questioning him were speaking different languages, living on different planets.

To Petraeus, as to John McCain and the great majority of Republicans, there can only be two outcomes in Iraq. You win, you lose. The idea of some different, muddier, more real outcome is entirely foreign to them. Listen to any of them closely, listen to them tolerantly, and this comes through. You don't have to argue with it. It's simply their reality.

The point was brought home by Barack Obama's questioning (above). Is there an outcome other than a fully democratic (well Republican) Iraq, under American control, with no Al Qaeda and no influence from Iran, which you might define as victory, he asked? Petraeus reacted as though Obama were speaking his father's native Luo language. It was, to him, inconceivable.

This is in the nature of the Nixon Thesis of Conflict. It's at the heart of it, really. Life is a zero sum game. You either win or you lose. Peaceful coexistence is impossible. There can be no meeting of the minds, no agreeing to disagree.