 Ah, it's a Tuesday, it's a fifth of May in Cinco de Mayo, and we are happy to be here with Peter Haffenberg, who is a leader in the Jewish community, among other communities, in many communities. But I think I would define him first as an historian who ranges from every element of history in every period and how that applies not only to the present, but believe it or not, the future, at George Santiana, you gotta study history. Welcome to the show, Peter. So nice to have you here. Thank you very much, good to be back. Thank you. So we have, yeah. You're gonna have to pull in some books off your shelf, actually, with that background. That's what it's like, for sure, yeah. So let's just, let's go right into what we were talking about before. First, as leader of the Jewish community, I have seen lots of email going on in the past, oh, month or so, maybe more, where the Jewish community is reaching out to other communities. And I find that very interesting. It reminds me, actually, of a movie I saw recently, maybe it was kind of propaganda movie about how the Israeli government is reaching out to other communities in the COVID crisis to help them. And so the Jewish community here is doing that. Can you talk about it? Sure, so I'm not really a leader, I would say a representative of some folks, but we don't have much of a formal structure. So let me say participants, and equal among a lot of equals. Well, first and foremost, the community has tried to take care of particularly the elderly in our community, those who are isolated in one way or another. And that is meant for folks who might be listening, for example, making sure we just had Passover, making sure the elderly had what they would normally have for Passover, make sure they're healthy, make sure they have walkers, et cetera. In doing so, we have worked with various people, I've worked with various other nonprofits. So formally the synagogue is part of the interfaith group here. There's interfaith council, Jewish community services, serves Jewish members of the community, but our superb professional social worker is in touch with the Loa United Way, et cetera. Hawaii, at least Honolulu in this part of the island is a little bit of a chetil. Everybody knows everybody's business. I would say we're less successful coordinating, for example, the neighbor islands, but the neighbor islands have very small Jewish communities and they're doing what they can. The goal has really been several fold, which will make sense to you and everybody else. One, making sure people have food. So we've tried to put people in touch either with food banks or delivering food. Secondly, trying to avoid social isolation. It seems ironic since we're always on the web and social media, but most of us live a hybrid life where sure we're on the web, but then we go out. And so the web is complementary or supplemental. Some of the older people in particular have found this to be socially isolating. And most of the newspapers these days and the radio shows are reminding us that there are some very significant mental health consequences of this quarantine. Not just people who might be predisposed, but those who also perhaps might have seen quote unquote normal horrible words used for let's just say acclimated and socialized who now their lives are very disruptive. So I don't think the Jewish community is doing anything differently than any other community, but we're trying to address issues in ways which also I think address some of the underlying issues like differences in ages, elderly versus young, right? Some of the Jews in the community don't have particularly significant amounts of money. So they're economic issues. One of our most active members used to live on the street and Jewish community services has helped him get up and running. He has to job now, income, et cetera. So we're addressing a lot of the issues which I think every community is addressing. But you know what, the structures that you're finding, building, encouraging here, we're only a couple of months into this. Remember it really never even began until what, early February maybe. And now it's like flowering out and depending on how you evaluate the steps the administration has taken and the administration's push to restart the economy we could have much more, much more COVID here and elsewhere. And so I guess my thought is that the structures that you have found that you are building where one community helps another community or helps the members of all communities, those are gonna be more in need as we go forward. Whatever those steps and skills and arrangements are, I suggest to you that in two or three months there could be much greater need for them in greater degree, don't you think? Completely agree with you. Let me just give you one example among many. Many of us in education have worried that not all the DOE kids have computers or other devices. And even though sometimes we have devices, don't have wifi. There's a significant amount of community work. I am amazed at the number of people who cross, ethnic, professional, racial, age borders who've come together to work on this. It's really impressive. It's not a political venture, it's what we call a social venture. All the seniors, and I just been really fortunate in the last two or three weeks to meet, obviously through Zoom, not in person, an incredible group of people who are addressing exactly what you're talking about because even if the virus were to go away, it is necessary for our young kids to make it to be connected. They just have to have connectivity. We have other responsibilities, privacy, what games they're gonna play, et cetera. But those are really marginal issues. And there are significant pockets, Kalihi, Wainae, where the kids and the families are not connected. And that's a kind of issue which was made apparent with the virus. It wasn't created by the virus, but it was as if the virus removed the fog, made it very clear that these kids are gonna be left even further behind if we don't take advantage of this crisis and do something positive, which is to get them connected. So I agree with you. And that's a case where I think that out of this crisis, some real good can come. More kids and families being connected. And even though a lot of people worked very hard on it, the political and social push for it came with the DOE's decision right to go online. So the DOE had not gone online. These kids, of course, would still not be connected, but probably there wouldn't be the attention or the political push to get them connected. So I'm not being Pollyanna-esque by any means at all. We're not out of the forest. And this has been a horrific experience. So this is not denying any of that. Here's a case where some positive social networking and positive developments can come to help our kids in particular. Well, I'm not good on that, but there's plenty of work to be done. Absolutely. And you'll have to agree with me that our society, it's not a small thing, is being reordered. Not only our lives in these islands are being changed and would be changed in some ways permanently and possibly in very profound ways changed permanently, but our lives in the country, and for that matter in the world, are being changed and will change. A little tiny virus, that big, smaller than a hair on your head will change, is changing everything. Not too many up there, right. Somebody else will say, right. So I want to go to that. This country started off with... What did the Tocqueville say? It was the wonderment about democracy. Is that as tumultuous? Didn't he say that? And for a long time, I said, oh, tumult is good. Tumultuous means a better democracy. First amendment, everybody say what's on your mind, and then we somehow we create a social fabric. But in recent years, it seems like it's gone too much. And even to be tumultuous, you need to have a basic belief, a basic commonality of purpose. You have to have a basic agreement. Call it a social agreement, social fabric. What do you mean a social contract? Social contract. And we seem to have lost that. And one of the things you and I talked about before the show was the May 4th, 50th anniversary of Kent State, which was really not the best indicator of how well American democracy has worked. It's a very sad story. There's a PBS movie on it that really brings tears to your eyes. But in the larger scheme of things, the founders till now, and now we're really in the soup right now, but from the founders till now, Kent State was an indicia of something. What does it tell us? Well, Kent State, in addition to Jackson State, as the two events suggest, and there's nothing new I would add. So I'm referring to what I've read and what people are far more scholarly about it than I would suggest. One is certainly the generational crisis and the image of an older governor who wants to run for Senate, having National Guardsmen turn on white kids. Kent State was primarily white. Kent State was generally a radical campus in the census connected to the labor movement. But I think that was a sign that the establishment, quote unquote, was cracking. I mean, when an establishment turns to 20 year old kids, ask them to pivot and fire into other 20 year old kids, the establishment has cracked. And I think in many ways, that was more of a shock than Jackson State, because Jackson State was another example of the establishment murdering African Americans. So to a certain degree, and it's horrific, Jackson State was almost normal operating procedure. If you look at the late 60s, the attacks, they continued even to the bombing of the move home in Philadelphia. But the idea of the National Guard, who were generally white kids, many of them probably from the same schools as the kids at Kent State. I think that, and Nixon's reaction to that, because most historians agree that his paranoia and his fear was ratcheted up. And that probably led to Watergate. And we know the implications of Watergate, excuse me, both in bringing in young liberals, but also in really questioning the institution. So to go back to what you said about the social fabric, it seems to me that the tumultuousness, which is very healthy, works if you at least have some basic faith in the institutions. The institutions are imperfect in the institutions have to change, and that's part of the democratic nature. But when significant number of people and significant number of political leaders attack the press, and Jefferson reminded us that that was the most important estate was the press. When they attack the legal system, we all know their problems with the legal system. They've always been problems with the legal system. But to criticize a decision of the legal system, and then to move to correct that is so different than undermining the entire institutions. So if the Tocqueville were here, and I'm not a Tocqueville expert, I mean, I read some, but I'm hardly an expert, he would probably say, I mean, two things in answer to your comments. One is that America is wrestling with the $64,000 modern question of can you have liberty and equality coexistent? How everyone can find each. And can you have liberty and equality coexisting when you don't have trust in the institutions? Well, you can't, and certainly you can't have it when my liberty is more important than your liberty or my equality is more important than your equality. And the way some of those get resolved is through the institutions, but through the participation of institutions. So I'm gonna sound like a really old fart that I am. And I gave a talk a couple of months ago at one of the senior homes, and I said, really that if two things, if we protect two things, we will have a surprising resolution of our problems. One is the constitutional guarantee of birth citizenship. It's guaranteed in the constitution. And secondly, the constitutional guarantee of having the right to vote. If you really have both of those, particularly not voter suppression, but the right to vote, then really the participatory nature of the institutions and the tumultuousness, it's not gonna be perfect. But part of our problem is the sense of people feeling alienated, feeling resentful, sometimes for good reason, sometimes for absurd reasons. I don't mean this in a partisan way, but really putting on camouflage and bringing guns in the state capital, because you feel somehow you've been cheated is an absurdity beyond an absurdity. And as all of us recognize, if this were 40 years ago and they were Black Panthers, they would now be funerals. That would not be tolerated. And that's the kind of idea of liberty which to talk about worried about, right? I mean, that is making my liberty so important. You're denying the liberty of others. And I don't mean it in a partisan way at all. I'm not talking about who's supporting it, et cetera. But that the institution, you might not like the institution of the Michigan governor. Okay, so vote, you know, run your candidates. Don't storm the capital. But we have people in high places who are systematically undermining the right to vote. I mean, it's visible, it's out there, it's transparent. And one step after another, they're undermining that special right that you talked about. It's in the constitution. I mean, it's a special right. It's protected by the constitution. You could argue that 700,000 people died in the American Civil War in part for that. Not entirely, of course not. There are lots of reasons people fought. But one of the legacies was birth citizenship. African Americans who had been in this country longer than white immigrants, right? I mean, here's an Irish immigrant fighting in the Civil War and here's an African American family that's been here for 250 years. You can't tell me with birth citizenship that that African American family doesn't have the rights or the poor white family has been here forever at the right. So it's not, sometimes it's not rocket science. Sometimes it's just going back. And if really, if you could spend so much energy protecting second amendment, you ought to spend a lot of energy equally protecting the other amendments as well. There's nothing sacred about the second amendment. It's an important amendment, but it's nothing more sacred about it than any other amendment. So the first amendment is under tremendous pressure now. I mean, here's a president that stands in a press conference and he calls a reporter fake news. And the reporter just sits there. I mean, I wonder if you or I, we were there. Would we just sit there and say, oh, okay, you can call me fake news. I'm not so sure I would do that. I would call a drive for saying that, but they don't. But I'm pretty impressed with the composure of a lot of them. And he seems, I don't want to make this partisan because other presidents have done things like call on certain people, establish special relationships, Nixon and Agnew had a bit, I mean, Agnew is completely paranoid about the press. But I think you're right. In my lifetime, my 60 years, I don't remember an administration or a president being so directly abusive. That I don't remember. I have a balance in power where the Senate, the Senate will go back into session this week only to confirm judges, right wing judges, their special kind of judge, even though we have an international crisis on our hands, they will not deal with that. Just confirm the judges. I mean, I think McConnell, right. McConnell's very worried that Trump's not gonna win. So if Trump, if it gets to the point that Trump does not win and Biden does win, then we're back to Obama and McConnell will practice obstructionism and not appoint anybody for eight years. So while Biden seems to agree to only sit for one term. So I think it's quite clear what McConnell's trying to do, right? Trying very quickly to fill all these positions, knowing quite well that you don't come November, they may not be Republican. Now, I think it's gonna be very interesting what happens with Justice Ginsburg, who's in the hospital tonight. Yes, infection. And we send her all, Misha Berach, and all good health. And really regardless of your partisanship, I mean, she's an amazing person. I will be interesting if she has to withdraw because you can bet that McConnell is gonna say, well, you know, let's hurry up and fill it by moments. But what I'm saying always, the way the government has worked in, you know, fundamental ways since the founders, it's not working in that way anymore. Things that we have assumed to be right. We went to school and learn. Things that made our parents tell us this is the greatest country on earth that made us feel that the federal government was really a fabulous institution that was calculated to protect us and defend us and give us the rule of law. No longer can feel that way in our lifetime. I mean, you know, I'm getting old, it's a long time already. And I am here to go away all those years and years of law study and all that, it's not the same. And then I told you before the show about this Irish writer who writes an article for the New York Times and he says, you know, we have had many reactions to the United States. Europe has had many relationships with the United States, but there's only one that counts now and that is pity. We pity the United States. You know, and what's resonant about that is that I do too, don't you? I pity the country. The country has fallen on hard times and there are indicia that these great principles are being torn asunder and we're on the decline because as you said, all great powers ultimately have to decline. Where are we on the continuum historically, Peter? Historically we're in decline, but we still have, a lot of the strengths are still there as far as the US. And I would predict that once this virus is overcome, there will still be many people who want to move here. Now, having said that, it's a relatively short lived ascent, but I'm not sure that looking historically democracies, pure democracies or those that are trying to be democratic really do a very good job of being world powers. I mean, being a world, you know, being a world power and we're just talking and speculating out loud and again, it's something that interests me but I think it'd be worth studying. You know, there's a democracy and we're certainly an imperfect one, right? So certainly can find lots of criticisms but relatively speaking, for example, you know, Britain, when Britain was great, it was not a democracy. It was democratic, more democratic than a lot of other regimes at the time. But I'm not sure democracies do a very good job of transforming the world to be democratic and remaining democratic. The ancients talked about that a lot, that in exercising your power overseas, you often threaten your own liberty and there are lots of, and Kent State's a good example about that than trying to assert power in Southeast Asia and assert it in a certain way, right? I mean, Americans have asserted power through trade, intellectual life, migration, right, Americans moving places, but through napalm and then expanding that into Cambodian Laos was a different kind and the British had some very similar issues where exerting power caused concern back home. So I think I would probably begin with the proposition of whether a democracy can exercise power without robbing itself of its own democracy and that's not Peter Hopper, that's an old theme in history among great powers. Many of the powers like the Irish countries that pity us have never fortunately for them assumed being a great power and it's fortunate for them. You can look at a lot of countries who seem relatively peaceful, relatively prosperous. Well, they haven't extended their tentacles very far. So there is something and Rousseau wrote a lot about this. I mean, Rousseau believed that a democratic system or a republic can really only function in a small scale. So Rousseau looked at places like Geneva or looked at the Italian city-states and that's one of the things that we talked about before that's still a great experiment. Like, can the US be a great power, remain imperfect but still democratic and promote that democracy overseas? Well, until recently, I think there wouldn't be a whole big issue about it but there certainly is now we've folded in on ourselves and become nationalistic and we don't wanna help anybody and that's very troubling. But I wanted to ask you one more thing and that is as we go down the pike here we're gonna have a serious recession if not a depression in this country. Certainly here in Hawaii, certainly. Yeah, sure, because we've mistakenly depended on only one element of our economy and I think there will be serious economic recessions and depressions in various states and parts of the country and probably around the world now. I mean, in fact, we're falling into a kind of a 1930s thing and I mean, yeah, we may be able to deal at some level with the COVID but the COVID isn't gonna be solved sufficiently quickly to prevent this recession and depression and the question I ask you is, how stable can the world be? It was not stable in the 20s after the First World War. And after the, what do you call it, the Spanish Shirt Flu. Great depression, right. And it was not stable in the 30s. I mean, our discussion earlier, FDR like saved us. If it hadn't been him, that one man, that one person with Eleanor Roosevelt behind him. Yes, that's for Belladar, right? Where would we be now? We might be a whole different kettle of fish way over on the right side of things and we might have lost our democracy right then in the 30s. Remember, there were large meetings of Nazi groups in this country who did sig hail a number of times the thousands of people in attendance in New York City of all places. So my question though is, I know it's not easy but recessions, depressions in the past have led the country to the brink of governmental change, of governmental stress, of evolving a government to something very different. Are we on that path now? I'm gonna give you not a very satisfying answer but I think it's important to be honest, right? Not to overly speculate. I think we're actually at the crossroads because I think that because of the virus and because of the current reactionary movements around the world, generally progressive movement has been revived. So I look out and I see in various places battles but battles mean that, you know, the other side neither side has one but I do agree with you most certainly a recession living here in Hawaii. We're looking at depression era statistics and many things that are not gonna come back. And so we're at a crossroads. Does that mean that people, you know pull up their bridges and help each other? The depression has two legacies, right? The legacy of my beloved father who helped everybody he could and the legacy of some of the other people who said, well, you know, I made it so you need to make it. I don't know which way we'll go but I will say regardless of critics say about FDR. FDR as a president was able to make most of America feel that he cared about them, made most of America feel that he was doing something to help America and trying not to turn one party against each other. I mean historians will always debate particular aspects of FDR. And most economists would agree that it was the war which eventually took us out of the Great Depression. But it was a new deal which reduced the rate of the Great Depression and economists are always loved their high school calculus. So it did make a big dent in it. But I would say even as somebody who tends to be on the populist side of life, it does require at the very least a sympathetic leadership. In other words, a leadership that doesn't stoke the fire, a leadership that doesn't turn to reactionary nationalism. And the reactionary nationalists are, they are ascendant but they don't have the field only to themselves. And one of the ways that they may be controlled is if we can still believe in international organizations. We still have to have faith in the United Nations, the World Bank, the IMF. It's really a crisis of a Keynesian view of the world which doesn't say that everybody's equal. It's hard to argue that everybody can be equal but it's really not hard to argue that everybody deserves a decent life. That everybody deserves. There are no- We have to have people committed to everybody regardless of orientation or race or age as a right to housing and food and employment and safety. And I think if we phrase it that way, rather than absolute equality, we may get somewhere. Americans fight, Americans just have this uncomfortability, uncomfortableness with absolute equality. But if you went out and asked the person at Costco, should everybody have a decent life? Most people would say yes. If you said should everybody be equal, most people in America would probably say no. Yeah, that would work for it. But just sheer decency. Nobody really should be living on the streets really in America. Number of kids, this virus crisis, if schools didn't step up and provide breakfast and lunch, there are a lot of kids who wouldn't have meals. That's just, you know, we would say that's a shawnda. That's just unacceptable. That's something we found here recently. How widespread that is. No, it's horrible. And that's when questions like asserting your power overseas kind of become absurd to tell other people how they should live, force them. And I mean, in that way, we're fighting the Kent State, Jackson State battle still, right? I mean, why should we be involved so much overseas, not necessarily doing positive things when so many people here at home are suffering? Now, that doesn't mean we're treating from the world, but it means interacting with the world in a more reasonable way. Yeah, so one last thing, you know, when I think of this intersection, this crossroads you described, I think of it as a fairly immediate prospect. It's not 10 years away. It's not even five years away. It's a year or two away, really, because we're dealing with a crisis that affects every country on the planet. And we're dealing with governments that become unstable with that crisis. And so something has to happen fairly quickly if we want the lid to stay on. And it seems to me also that when you take the, the president administration, which is reactionary and which enjoys being reactionary and you let them stay in power, that will encourage them to be more reactionary. And then the risk is way higher. So it seems to me that, and I was gonna ask you, what do we do to avoid taking the wrong fork on this road? Well, at the very least, and I'm not being partisan about it, just practical, at the very least we elect somebody else. We cannot afford to continue down this path because in my view, I'm interested in yours, to continue down this path is to almost ensure a huge catastrophe. Well, I think catastrophe not just economically, but also socially. I mean, this country is built on either forced or free immigrants. Either people brought here in chains who built this society. So to, for example, throw up walls and be just in and of itself anti-immigrant is breaking a social contract. Economically, clearly, clearly, we have to continue a mixed economy. You know, free enterprise cannot exist by itself. It needs government and government needs free enterprise, but it has to be a governmental relationship with business, which is an honest one. It seems that too many people, again, at least the perception is, are using their connections, not for the public good. And sometimes it's just an impression. Sometimes you just need in public. Look, FDR was very wealthy. He came from wealth. He had the advantage of going to warm springs where most polio victims have not had the advantage. Okay, we know that. But instead of dismissing it, he recognized it was important also for him to have a decent public image. And that's part of what's going on. There's no even sense that there, you need to at least appear to be decent. If inside your own heart, I mean, Queen Elizabeth said, I'm not gonna look inside your own heart. Just go to the Anglican church on a Sunday. Just do that. And you know, if you believe something else after Sunday prayer, okay. But sometimes it is important to go through the rituals of decency. You can't transform everybody. And the rituals of decency tend to be reinforcing. The more you're decent to other people, the more it becomes natural. And I would hope that, again, it's not partisan. I would hope though, we would have political leaders would appear not to wanna throw gasoline on the fire and would appear not to be interested in government for their own self-interest. I think what it might lead to is more and more people talking about term limits. I personally, we can talk about that some other time. I don't agree with them, but I could see if this current administration stays in power, I can see one strategy of the other side as pushing as much as possible, term limits. Now there's so much more to talk about, Peter. We only scratch the surface. We, and then we always have to go forward. We have to do it again. We have to see the dynamic of history moving. And so quickly, within a few weeks, everything changes. And then the conversation spins. It spins like a flashing ball and everything changes. And we see it in a different light. And so I'd like to do that with you again soon. Of course we can do it next Tuesday at five, if you want to. Whatever is good for you, but be well, wear your mask, please. Thank you. Tell everybody to wear your mask. Okay. Wash your hands, Peter. I did, actually yesterday. Yeah, I can skip it the rest of the day. And you don't even know whether I'm wearing pants or not. You don't know that. No, nor do you know. Did you see that very funny CNN? It was very funny. It's a very bright telephonic, sorry, individual telephonic, that's not the correct word, but whatever it would say. Anyhow, he looked good on screen and he had a nice tie and a nice shirt and jacket and the camera pulled back and he had no pants. It was very funny. It was cute. It wasn't malicious or photographic in any way. It was just very cute because he always talked about, well, I can teach you my pajamas. Well, you gotta be careful. Camera's no. Okay, we're gonna cut this show now before you stand up, okay? No, no, I do have-