 And welcome back to Talk Story with John Wahe'e. And as usual, every so often, I check in with my special stand-in guest, J. Finnell. He's the guy who spends a lot of time on our Citizen News Network. And so he has a sense, he has a sense of what's happening right across the community. And so it's my pleasure from time to time to check in with him. And as we were chatting earlier today, we were talking about some recent articles that were in some of our news media. And they were talking about how Hawaii's political system may be broken. Now, it just so happened that he and I have become, I've had a number of chats, J and I have a number of chats about how the thing seems to be broken on the national level as well. And so the subject interests me. And in some senses, very specific, because when you talk to people, they'll tell you this, that, this. And yet in other senses, it seems to be so amorphous and something that needs to be changed. So Jay, okay, welcome. Good to have you back again. Thank you so much. I wanted to start today actually with the federal government. Cause I spend very little time myself talking to people about that, but I read a lot and it seems that, I don't know, it just, we had a president who was driving, at least me crazy. And then he lost the election and he's still driving me crazy. And we still don't seem to have gotten rid of the kinds of things that are percolating up there. So what's your impression? I mean, where are we? Well, I think we're at the edge of a cliff and we're at great risk of falling down that cliff any day. Okay, so when you say edge of a cliff, what do you need? Like the country book, I have a tell you what I have. I have a sense that we are standing at the edge of the cliff. I just don't know when I look down, what's down there or what I'm falling off of. I'm reminded of a conversation I had with an African guy from Rwanda. And we're talking about genocide. And so I said to him, I guess that's what happens when the government fails and people are divided and they go after each other. And he said, no, he didn't think the government failed at all. And Rwanda, the government was still in place. It says that the people who were the officials in the government had become interested in their own, you know, their own silo, their own self-interest that were corrupt. And, you know, what happened at the end of the day is they had to distract the people out there in order to avoid the hot light of, you know, public information about that corruption. So what they did is they divided the people into the Hutus and the Tutsis, okay, which was an artificial division. And then they encouraged them to kill each other. And in fact, the government actually helped kill people on both sides. And after a while, it became, you know, kind of an occupation, what are you gonna do today? Oh, I'm gonna go kill somebody. And the whole country was involved in this killing. And so- And this is what they had fostered. This is two racial, two different tribes. Not really. No, no, they were actually, I don't think it was a long-term kind of division. I asked him, you know, did the Belgians create this? He said, no, no, this is some sort of very artificial division. And it had something to do with economics, farmers and ranchers, you know, something really not all that consequential. And yet they wound up killing each other. So anyway, so here's where the conversation went. And I am answering your question. So the government had failed, I'm sorry, the government had not failed, but the officials had failed and they wanted to distract people so they caused the genocide. And that was to their interest because then they could, you know, keep on with the corruption and they could, you know, keep operating their own self-interest. And he lives here. He's kind of an exile. He lives in the United States. And he said, and I didn't say it, he said, you know, this kind of thing is happening in the US too. There are so many officials in federal government anyway who are self-interested and who are corrupt and who can't tell the truth. They were unable to tell the truth, but they have to distract the people. And so they create the division. And when that doesn't work so well anymore, when people are not so distracted anymore, then they will raise the heat and create greater distraction and foment unrest and violence. And that's the way this process works. And, you know, you can't really make a distinction between what happened in Rwanda and Africa and what could happen here in the US. That is spooky. Yeah. That is spooky. I mean, that's darker than I thought, you know. And so in a way, but Rwanda wasn't the only place. I mean, in a sense, that's what Hitler did with the Jews. He needed a distraction. And so he put one together. In that case, you know, and they had skate boats. They had skate boats all over the place. In America, we seem to be having more division than ever. And I don't know whether it's been deliberately done by people inside the government, as well as people outside in the same sense as Rwanda, but the consequences are the same. Consequences are that the divisions actually seem to be distracting us from solving problems. I mean, it seems like, for example, in Congress, there was a time when Congress, when the both sides tried to find a common middle. And now it seems like the way to power is to get power is to just divide people. I don't know, Jay, it's nasty. I was reading, every day you read some article about racial tensions in America and how, for example, there was a recent article about students who flew the Confederate flag and I think it was one of the sudden states, Tennessee or something. And other students protested. Protesters got suspended and the people flew the flags, they didn't, all of this stuff. But the difference is at one time in our lives that there would only have been news in Tennessee. But now the whole nation knows it. And so everything is more divisive. I don't know what's your sense of all of that. Where is all of this going? I don't know how we got to where we are. It's very hard from an historic point of view, an historic analysis to figure out where we are and rather how we got here. But one very interesting commentator was the Bernstein in, you know, Carl Bernstein. And he hasn't written a book like his partner Woodruff, but he certainly has spoken about what's happening. And his latest comments revolve around the notion that we are having a civil war and we are arguably in a coup. I think he said that we're in a coup. We have some people want to take over the government illegally without relying on the constitution or the rule of law. They just want to take it over by any means. And I think you can see that. You can see that. And it seems like, it seems to me like we can say that we are in some senses in a cultural war, in a war where there really is two to America's in. And because of that, because it's tied to something else than our own freedom or our families as a whole. And in the belief system, what I'm sensing is that some of the norms no longer seem to exist. In other words, we are right. So we need to prevail under any circumstances. And I don't know what you Jay, but it seems like there seems to be an undercurrent which I never in my life thought I would see happen in America. And that is the idea that maybe we ought to try a little totalitarianism for a while. Maybe we ought to have a situation where winner takes all and the rest of you that don't agree tough luck. We see it on the right with our former president going around and still insisting he won an election. And some of you support, we see it on the left who are saying, not as maybe not as dramatically as the former president, but they're going around and basically saying, look, I'm tired of these idiots, who believe differently than me on cultural issues. And we ought to get into a situation where one vote will wipe them out. And then we have a president who looks awful weak because he's trying to balance the whole thing. I don't know, this is my set. I think that the measure is, do people have confidence in the government? Do people think the government is able to solve their problems? I'm reminded of the 30s in this country where we had a depression and there was a soup lines and people starving middle class, formerly middle class people starving. And there grew up a right wing constituency that favored the Nazis, that favored totalitarianism. There was a substantial number of people in the East Coast who went to Nazi rallies in the 30s on a number of occasions. Madison Square Garden in New York was filled the place. And there was the swastika on the stage. And the Nazis had come from Germany to show the way. Bottom line is I think when people no longer believe that the government can solve the problems of the state, that's when they consider other options like this. That's when they consider throwing out the baby with the best. There seems to be that drift or totalitarianism, though not only here, but across the planet. You got that going on in various other countries as well. The desire for a strong leader, the desire for straightening things out. And which brings us really, because you and I can do that for a while, but it brings us to, what are some of the causes that led up to this? You and I were talking today earlier about like how our government over the years have been taught, I've been caught telling lies. We actually lied. And the difference is people found out about it, start not to trust it, not to trust them and then begin reacting. We got a one minute break at this time. But when we come back, I want to talk a little bit about how the government got caught telling its own lies over not only one side or the other, but just in various times. And maybe start to apply this to the malaise that appears to be happening in Hawaii today. We'll end up in this state. So here we go. We got a short little message for everyone out there. Thank you. Aloha, I'm Joshua Cooper and welcome to Cooper Union. We look at what's happening with human rights around the world. And we invite you to tune in every Tuesday where we feature the voices of the people from the front lines, sharing the struggles for self-determination for the importance of sustainability and solidarity with one another to make the world a better place for all of humanity. If you can't catch it live, you can also look at thinktechhawaii.com as well as on Vimeo and many other places to catch the amazing shows where we hear from authors, activists, academics, analysts, and artists who are contributing to positive social change around the planet. Aloha yamekopono. Thank you for joining us for justice. And welcome back to Talk Story with John Wahee and our regular check-in guy, Jay Fibel. So here we are, Jay. We're just talking about what may have led to the brokenness that we see in the United States today. And one of the causes appears to be the fact that people, that leaders, that our leaders got caught telling lies. And in this modern day and age, when that happens, it goes right across, everybody knows about that. I'm not just talking about Donald Trump, who we actually people documented him telling 40,000 lies. In some respects, he told so many that it no longer became interesting, but starting with our entrance into the war in the desert, I mean, we went into Iraq. Oh, starting before that, John, starting in Vietnam. Vietnam was a huge big lie. Vietnam was a lie, yes. And we kept claiming to it for some reason. And in fact, it might have been the first big lie that the whole country knew about. You know, that this was not something that we did things that we really weren't able to justify in terms of what we were there for. And so we stopped with that. And it seems to trickle on, you know, and the Iraqi war. I mean, the lie that comes to me that clear us to which is something you mentioned earlier conversations was the idea of weapons of mass destruction. In fact, I understand, I'm not supposed to be, I don't know, sound Netflix, or something there's a- You know, there's a movie called Official Secrets. In 1989, the UK passed the Official Secrets Act. And the movie is, it's a documentary, essentially, a docudrama, whatever, based on the true story of a woman who was a small town girl, came to London and worked in a government office there. And across her desk was a memorandum from the American administration to Tony Blair, which talked about weapons of mass destruction, but which also, you know, scared her because she knew that this was not true. And that they were trying to get Blair, who was apparently willing to go along with it, to join them, the Americans in the war. And so she turned this over illegally to a peace action, you know, peace activist organization, and it got to make the front page and so forth. Well, they arrested her and charged her with revealing official secrets. And this is the story of her decision to do that. She confessed to doing it, but she argued that the war itself was illegal. And therefore she was, you know, duty bound, conscience bound to reveal it. At the end, the crown did not prosecute her because it was politically disadvantageous for them to do that. Bottom line is the US was engaged in a great big lie and trying to get other people like Blair to join them in the lie. But do you know the consequences of all of this? I mean, from Vietnam. I mean, you see, the World War II was like, you know, the clean war. I mean, though it was like in my mind anyway, it justified all the regrettable situation. I mean, it was justified, you know? And then you come to like Vietnam and it gets to be questionable. And then you get to Iraqi and there's a lie. And then all of a sudden we're spending years in places like Iran, I mean, Iraq and Afghanistan. And then when we pull out, we just walk away and thousands of people have died. And it was, you gotta ask yourself for what, you know? And it's, I think this just underscores some of the trauma that lead us to today. But you know, bringing all of this home. Okay, here we are. So wait, one more point though, John. You know, deep in the American culture, American history is this notion of exceptionalism. The United States, because of its constitution, its democracy, its melting pot, you know, social experience, its business acumen, all those things, is exceptional. And that we have seen ourselves as the best country on earth. My mother told me that every day when I was growing up, thank goodness you live in the best country on earth. So I think a lot of people have believed this over their lives about its exceptionalism. And when you find out that in fact, you're not exceptional, when you find out that the country is incompetent in some areas, its system actually doesn't solve problems, that it is making mistakes in various ways, that it is losing ground in the geopolitical competition, you say, hey, they were lying to us. It's the same sort of thing. They told us we were exceptional. We're not exceptional. And then you become discouraged. Yeah, I absolutely, absolutely believe that because, well, I think two things happened. I think a lot of people in general, most people in general just get discouraged. But then again, I think you also have people who refuse to believe that that was a lie. I mean, for their own mind's sake, they got to still cling on to the idea that we are still exceptional. And then you have others who wanna exploit that, that fact that maybe things are not the same. And the same thing, I wanna bring some of this home with the time that we got left. And it seemed when I was growing up in Hawaii, this is paradise. This is the place where everything was perfect. Your legislature, I came up and grew up during the time after the Democratic Revolution of 1954, the bad guys that had been taken out, the plantations were gone, the Democrats were gonna get in there, they're gonna have social reform, they're gonna have a great society, and all the rest of it. And it's been over 50 years in the same malaise as taking place in Hawaii in its own way that may be taking, gripping the rest of the United States. And you gotta wonder, how does this all happen? Where do people get into the situation where they just don't feel like anybody knows where we're going? Well, I think, you know, Hawaii is a special situation, a special case because it's an island state and it's 2,500 miles from the mainland. And we have this sort of, what do you wanna call it, complicated relationship with the mainland. I mean, some things we see as cargo cult in the sense that if it's from... It's a great description, by the way. If it's from the mainland, it must be good, okay? Yeah, yeah, I got it. Which is often wrong, often wrong, but we do have that. The other is, the flip side is paranoia. If it's from the mainland, it must be bad. You know, we hate those people. Yeah, yeah, right, not fit for the local, for local consumption, something like that. And so we, you know, sometimes we are right about these things, this dual decision process. And sometimes we are wrong about it, but I think ultimately we are infected by what happens on the mainland. So they got the anti-vaxxers on the mainland before you know it. There's somebody in front of the state capital with a protest about anti-vaxxers. My goodness, that's not locally grown at all. That comes directly from the mainland, yeah. The local, if we do our own history, the local response is the exact opposite. Because of Hawaii's experience in the 1800s with infectious diseases, Hawaii has always been actually in the forefront of getting things vaccinated. But yeah, we seem to get infected with all these various movements, you know? And which is good in some respects, you know, in some respects, for example, getting infected by Martin Luther King created the foundation for the Hawaiian movement. Yeah, that's true. And the like. On the other hand, you know, there is this perception that we have to put up with anything economic that comes out of the mainland. I mean, you know, we start building houses that more, more, more, more, more, more. And you got to wonder what happens to the people that don't get the more, you know, don't get the more. I think I look at Kakaako and in some respects, it's beautiful and it's a great place to go and it's a, and yet I wonder, you know, why we have this Kakaako, we have all these people living on the streets. And I think people, I think that juxtaposition sort of affects how people think about how our government's doing as well. Cool. Well, I think we're on a kind of cliff here too, don't you think? I mean, we have those blue tents, we have people who have dropped out. We have people who don't have any money, no prospects. And at the same time, we have multi-millionaires. You know, one of those condos and one of the Howard Hughes buildings went for almost a hundred million dollars, John. And they're way up high, looking down on the blue tents. There's such a tremendous disparity. When you were younger, when I came here in the 60s, there was the disparity, they didn't have a disparity like that. No, no. Everybody got along better. It was all, you know, we're in this thing together. Not now. And at the same time, we are trying to do so much to protect the islands. And so we're setting up these regulations. And so which I, not against, but it seems that every time we do something like that, we start spreading people farther and farther apart. By that I mean, for example, there are hundreds of stories similar to this one in Hawaii, the story I have for my own family was that when a family, a Japanese family was kicked off the plantation for organizing and they had no place else to live. They walked over to my grandfather and he says, Bill on my yard, you know? But there was no regulations telling them they couldn't build a house on his yard. You see what I'm saying? And when I was growing up, people put up shacks on the beach because that's where they wanted to live and everything else all along, the big island along Kauai High. But you see, you can't do all of that anymore. And some of that maybe, you know, I don't know the answers to all of this Jay. And one of the questions we got as we are ending this, which is a logical questions as we are ending this episode is, what are we all gonna do about it? So I'll ask you that and then I'll go. Okay. Well, my law firm had an advisor or a friend of all of us years ago and he was taken off on a trip. So we were at the, you know, the board of directors table there and we wanted to sort of get his best advice while he was on the trip. And I said to him, what's your advice? What shall we think about while you're gone? And he said, be decent and kind to each other. Then you start there and everything else will follow. And I don't see as much decency and kindness as I would like to see in state or county government. I'm sorry. Yeah, and I think that's really good advice. And I just wanted to, and then the other side of decency and kindness though, because this is what my dad told me when I was growing up. He said, son, I'll give you some advice. He said, son, we in Hawaii, we try to do things the Hawaii way, you know, work things out, be nice and so forth. But then he says, you know, there comes a certain point when you just gotta go do what's right and kick some fun. So if we don't like what's going on in Hawaii, guys, get up, participate, don't stand down, stand up and talk up and, you know, do it in a way that it brings people, maybe be able to bring people together, but ultimately we all gotta stand for what we believe. Yeah, I think that points out a very important point. And I'd like to express it and see if you agree with me. And that is this, you know, there's a social compact. Nationally, the social compact, everybody agrees, this is our country and we will work together to make it thrive and make it work best. And we're all committed to that. It's ours, it's a proprietary thing. And we will, it's a social compact, it's an agreement. And the same thing at the state level. There's a fundamental agreement. We're gonna work together. We're gonna be decent and kind, but we're also gonna be, you know, in this agreement to do it better. And I think that somewhere over the last couple generations, we've lost that, partly because we don't trust government. We find that they lied to us, partly because, you know, it's just, it's too hard and we'd rather go back to our own silo, but it's better. However advanced, you know, the society is, however, you know, technological it is, however it's different in a way, you know, it used to be, this change is inevitable. You've got to belly up to the society, to the agreement, to the social compact. And if you do that, if everybody gets on board with that, we'll all do better. Well, our time is up and I'm getting all the signals. I wanna thank my special friend and occasional guests, Jay Fidel, and thank all of you for tuning in to this program. We could be going on for another hour or so of an unfortunate name. We are out of time. Aloha, everybody, and for how are you listening?