 We are a prospect of widespread violence in the United States. I'm Jay Fidel. This is ThinkTech. This is American Issues Take Two. And we have a special group today, aside from our regular contributors, Stephanie Stulldalton. We have Cynthia Sinclair. Hi, Cynthia. So nice to see you. And Chuck Crumpton. Thank you very much. We really appreciate you coming around. So let's talk about, let's get current on the news, okay? Let's get current on Merrick Garland. Chuck, why don't you talk about what's going on with Merrick Garland and the material that was seized at Mar-a-Lago? Well, thanks, Stephanie and Cynthia, I'm more completely up to date. But basically, in a situation where there's been a Republican right-wing backlash against the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago. The only people who have the inventory of what was taken and the search warrant and underlying affidavit without any legal restrictions against disclosing those are Trump and his lawyers. They've chosen not to do that. So Merrick Garland has gone public today to say, we, the Department of Justice, are moving for the court to make those records of what was taken and the affidavit and subpoena that were issued public so that we can be transparent about exactly what's going on here. It sure sounds like there's something that Merrick Garland feels the public ought to know in those materials. And it makes me all the more curious as to what was seized and how very, very important it is to the national interest. And Cynthia, of course, in Cincinnati there was a Trumper motivated by Trump's comments about violence who attacked the FBI office in Cincinnati. Can you talk about that? Well, it isn't just Trump talking about violence. It's across the Republican conservative line. They are all talking about violence. Is this the next, you know, civil war? And everybody says, okay, what's next civil war? And you hear it across the board from sitting congressmen just horrifying. And they're all going after the FBI. So funny thing now we've got some guy with a AR-15 style weapon and this nail gun goes into the FBI headquarters and starts shooting. Once they realize that he's in trouble, he and he's going to get caught because there's a lot of armed FBI agents inside. Of course, he runs. It's sort of like some people say he was wounded in the process. Some people say no, he has got away clean. So that's kind of up in the air. One thing that is an official statement is that they've got him cornered. As of 9.30 this morning anyway, they didn't have him in custody yet, but he was cornered. But this is just a start. I mean, when we've got handfuls of Republican sitting congressmen and women saying that we need to defund the FBI, we need to get rid of the FBI completely. We know that this isn't just Trump saying, oh, everybody go fight for me. This is every conservative that toes the Trump line saying that. Fox News constantly, every single time I tuned in last night, nothing but poor Trump, always the victim. Oh, look, it's a partisan witch hunt. How many times have we heard that out of those idiots? Partisan witch hunt. Yeah, right. It's not a partisan witch hunt. And I love seeing Merrick Garland come out this morning and say, listen, my guys don't do that. They're being trumped up to be something they're not. They were doing their job and I signed off on the warrant. So I'm not the warrant, but the search. So. Okay, Stephanie. Try to hold your dander down and give us your comment on how things have going, how things have gone since the Mar-a-Lago teaser. Well, as we've found more information, we've been given more information, which we've been given very little information. We know that Merrick Garland was willing to remain silent on this as the Chuck has informed us that there's a procedure of the DOJ to not talk about these moves to the public when there's an investigation ongoing. But what Merrick Garland has taken advantage of the situation for is to put Trump on the chessboard, move him around on the chessboard to get him in position to have to reveal whether he wants to show us what's in there, what was taken, what really is on the list and what is on the list that the FBI left that they took. So I think that's a brilliant move. My esteem for Merrick Garland has been restored and amplified after our months and months here of concern that nothing much is happening. So I think we have an interesting rest of the week or certainly tomorrow to find out how the Trump people are going to play this back to Merrick Garland. And it could be that they refuse to open it. That's another way to continue the grift and to continue the conspiracy and all of that. I mean, maybe my chip is on now that they might want to continue the grift by not allowing it because, as Chuck said also, he has to approve this. It is the search E that has to approve the sharing of the document publicly. So we have that coming soon, hopefully tomorrow. But if not, then maybe we will know more about the wizard behind the curtain if they're going to reveal the curtain. But it might be so bad for Trump and he will understand that what will be the effect on his his gang will his gang be strong enough to continue to ignore miscreants, misdemeanors, felonies, whatever. Will they do that? Let's see what he's got a lot on his mind right now about what to do. But the point is that Merrick Garland has set him into this situation. He's in this niche and he can't get out of it without declaring himself. But, you know, somehow it's somehow Trump is the fulcrum of all of this right now, yet again, all the all the interest is pointed. What is what is Donald Trump going to do? The world wonders about Donald Trump every day. He's sort of taking over our consciousness, sucking all the air out of the room as usual. So, you know, if we take a differential on this, Chuck, make yourself a right wing Republican just for a moment. I know that may be hard for you. What do you do if in this circumstance? And let's assume for this discussion, and I think it's a reasonable assumption, that there's some really incendiary material in what was seized. You know, Merrick Garland had to know there was an important material there, secret or top secret material, what have you, or plans about the conspiracy. It would be, you know, pretty, pretty dynamite to have that out there. So if you are a if you're Trump, if you are a hypothetical right wing Republican now, what do you do in the circumstances that Merrick Garland has created in the traditional arena? Well, what we've seen in a lot of Republicans, including many of the great deal of seniority in the Congress, is they've looked at Trump and the right wing position on rule of law issues, constitutional issues, and they've decided they have two choices. Quit, don't run again, which many of them have. Or if you are going to run again, the great majority say, you know, you got to throw your lot in with Trump because that's where the money and the support is. And for those who have stood up against Trump, either an impeachment or any other proceedings, most of those have not done well in the primaries. So we need to put this into a context. And again, right wing Republican or not, we're seeing a situation where people at the heads of government law enforcement, Homeland Security, many other Secret Service, have basically gone directly against black letter rule of law principles in destroying evidence, in deleting evidence, in failing to stand up to the constitutional requirements that their oaths of office impose. So the fact that this is widespread among not only elected officials, but appointed officials, it brings home to us that you've got a few people who are standing up to this. Christopher Ray was not appointed by Biden. He was appointed by Trump. Trump fired Comey because he was investigating improper influence over the 2016 elections. And he fired McCabe the same way? Yeah. Well, you know, Cynthia, I'm sorry, just to the rule of law itself. Cynthia, what I don't understand is the attack on the FBI. This really hasn't before. You know, in the movie, the Comey rule, and in Comey's book, you see Trump trying to corrupt and make the FBI belong to him. And when he is unable to corrupt the leaders of the FBI, in the case of Comey and McCabe and at least half of us and others that he tried to corrupt and failed to corrupt, then he wrote them off. He was trying to undermine the entire American intelligence system. And now it's open war. So have we crossed the Rubicon here when a Trump walks into the office in Cincinnati? Have we crossed the Rubicon where where the right wing Republicans are essentially declaring war against the FBI, which is, you know, I mean, any reasonable rational person would say the FBI is as Merrick Garland indicated, doing its job. But now we have an open confrontation between the Trump team and the FBI itself. They're getting about corruption. Well, January 6th, you know, we crossed the Rubicon on January 6th, not today or yesterday or Monday or whatever the day the search was. But we know that January 6th was the most important day that showed us the level of violence that is percolating in American society, not just, you know, in the military or in the government. Or this is just regular Joe Blow likes to play army man out in the back field. And they got six guns to go do it with because we know they're not hunting deer with assault rifles, they're just not. And so we know all these things. That's what makes this so dangerous. When we've got these dog whistles going on from every Trump, you know, sycophant and every Fox News person, that's what they're doing. They're just saying, listen, we got to fight back. Now the FBI is partisan. You know, we have to remember every single thing they say is projection. Whatever they accuse the other person of doing, it's the thing that they are doing themselves and we have to remember that I have been looking through a lens of projection in every single thing that I look at that they do. And nine times out of ten, just a little bit down the road, we find out, sure enough, it's what they were doing. And it's narcissistic stuff. That's what narcissists do. They blame the other person so they don't have to have any blame on themselves. And that's what we're looking at. And it's not just his sycophants, but it's, well, unless you count 40 million people, his sycophants and they kind of maybe are. So we have to be careful. It's dangerous times, very dangerous times. Well, you know, Stephanie, we have this second amendment issue going on at the same time and and that's largely connected with the with the massacres around the country. And PBS did a little report on it and pointed out there were virtually hundreds of them where groups of people, not just one person, but groups of school children and the like have been killed over the past year or so, hundreds and hundreds of them around the country. They don't all get reported. And so we have these innocent children being killed by people with guns. And the question I put to you is what Cynthia was talking about with the boys with the guns in the Capitol, this guy who attacked the FBI office because he was aggravated over, you know, the FBI's search warrant in Mar-a-Lago. Is there is there a kind of conflation here? Is the line being blurred between these people who walk into a school and shoot children and the guy who walks into the Cincinnati office and wants to attack the FBI, children are not the government, right? And now the FBI is government. So are we are those two things coming together here? The children is not necessarily a political act. It's something else. It's something other than a political act. Maybe it's a statement of support for assault weapons. I don't know, but are these things becoming conflated? Well, I think that they're taking us back or reminding us that we're not all out of pro-magnet yet. If we get here on Think Tech, the metaphor, the metaphor of 2001, the movie, the black obelisk is discovered by the whoever they were, the Neanderthals or the whatever people they were, and all of them pick up their stick and their bat and their rock and they just start attacking it. OK, so we've come a long way from that as the movie showed us. So I think the movie probably overstated where we might be. If that theme is acceptable to you, I'm sure there are many interpretations but that was one I have when it's just that we all haven't come along yet. And until recently, maybe 20th century, or maybe that that that festival you described of people go to Woodstock 99, you create Woodstock, you can't do it again because all of the social compact has been fractured. So all the agreements and courtesies and conventions and and certainly any barriers, overt barriers as the founders put in like you got to own land, you got to be a boy, you got to do this, you got. So everything has been pulled away and we're really down now to there are no expectations, there's you don't have to do anything you don't want to do. This is America. And I think this is why the Europeans and the Australians are really kind of fed up with it and don't welcome it and talk about who are the tourists that they're getting, are they us or are they getting nice tourists like Japanese people and those who have courtesies and have conventions for how to act and relate. And so I think there's so I think there's some argument to be made for this kind of reconstruction of our society and the direction that I'm maybe maybe we have to reconstruction may not be the exact right word. That's the right word, but we're reconstructing. But this might be a bad patch. We have to get through to get to a better patch. I don't know. But we're not all there yet. And too many of us are still picking up those sticks and hitting on that black obelisk. So I think that what what we need to do is understand that better and know that that's who Trump has unleashed. OK, so he's given all of those. We were ignoring those people before there were still some some ways of, you know, the majority was bigger to stay with what we knew to do. And now he's empowered people that are fully free to do anything to default to Cro-Magnon, to default to cave activity, to default to the worst level of human behavior possible. You know, Stephanie raises a very interesting point, Chuck. And I am mentioning that movie about Woodstock 99. These kids, you know, all relatively young, quarter million of them at Rome Air Force Base in 99 and an attempt to recreate the Woodstock of of ancient York. They the music, the noise, the commotion, the the topless women just drove them to insanity. And one of the commentators, you know, who who is making, you know, some something out of this, I mean, trying to make something out of this, said that this was Lord of the Flies. This was the ultimate human chaos. And so, you know, I used to think that the what would happen in the streets, you know, created by the divisions in our country would be team team red against team blue and, you know, team red would definitely have weapons, team blue, maybe not, maybe not, but they'd be fighting in the streets. And you can identify who is team red and who is team blue as you could. And, you know, was it Portland and Seattle back a few years ago in the early days of the Trump administration, but I no longer feel that I want to throw my revised model at you and see if you agree. And this is based in part of what Stephanie had to say. This is Lord of the Flies. This is insanity. This is a human condition gone back to, you know, the state of nature. And when they get out on the street, you won't be able to tell team red from team blue. It'll all be something like Woodstock 99, where they just all go nuts. And what is it like in the violence that could happen because of Trump's ability to liberate people, to let them express their most base human instincts in public? What will it be like? Do you have a thought about that? It's a great question, Jay. And it goes to the heart of the matter because and I think one of the things that brings to mind is that portion of the famous Yates poem, Sailing to Byzantium, right? If things fall apart to center, that's not whole. And what we see at all levels of society is a breakdown in not just the socioeconomic fabric, the political fabric, but the moral fabric, the human connection fabric of society itself. It manifests differently at different levels. The way that somebody who can get a hold of an AR-15 and go into a public school will manifest it is going to be really different than the way that a guy who is a member of Congress who thinks that he can inflame people to attack law enforcement is going to do it. Their objectives and their methods are different, but you've gotten at the heart of the matter. The question is, where does it go from here? OK, let's assume it goes into the street and it's all hard to find who's on what side. And all we know is there's a horrendous bloodshed as in a state of nature. Cynthia, how does the government respond to that? Will the government be able to handle that? I mean, on the one side, you think of the autocrats that come in and say, we're taking charge. You know, we're nationalizing the National Guard. We're declaring an emergency. If you don't listen to us as in Hong Kong, we're going to hold you away. And we're going to stop this this noise. That's one possibility. And the other possibility is the government is unable to do it or doesn't want to do it. Does a GOP conservative want to stop the chaos? You know, I'm not sure that they think that far ahead. They want the chaos. They want to break the rule of law, but they don't know what follows it. So, you know, make make me a prediction. Make me an observation about what happens when the government decides it's time to stop this. I don't know if it's possible, to be honest. And I cite the Kyle Rittenhouse trial as a perfect example of we're going to encourage you, then we're going to make you a hero if you go out into the streets and shoot people that you don't agree with. And that's exactly what happened. And of course, all of this self-defense stuff is nonsense. And the judge was giving all kinds of partiality to Kyle Rittenhouse, which is the reason he got off the way he did and his lawyer was at that. You know, the prosecutor wasn't that great either. But still, what it is that set a precedent for the courts to be able to go look, that's a precedent. So we have somebody else in that shoots somebody in the street. What do we say? We look to precedent. Precedent is Kyle Rittenhouse. Oh, it's OK. You go free. The next person, it's like this chipping away at the rule of law, setting precedent after precedent after precedent. So pretty soon the government's powerless to do anything because take it to the court, well, we know how broken the Supreme Court is. So if it goes all the way up to the Supreme Court, we know which way they're going to fall. And so it's because of our rule of law, it's going to go to the courts. The government, I don't know if the government can do a lot. What? Declare martial law? Well, if it was Biden, I might think that was an OK thing. But if it's a Republican that's in office and they declare martial law, it's autocracy on a fast-courced dictatorship, I think, I mean, that's what I say. Those are my predictions. Yeah. Well, Stephanie, you know, it opens a question about what we as law-abiding citizens and I feel a strong feeling that all four of us are law-abiding citizens. OK, no argument there. We believe in the rule of law. We still believe in the system and the Constitution. But what do we do to protect ourselves? What do we do to protect our children in schools? But more than that, what do we do to protect our communities? When the melee comes to us? Because if the melee comes in Cincinnati, I'm just picking that city. It may be monkey see monkey do in some other city. And you have copycat melees elsewhere. Before you know it, the whole country, she is burning. What is an ordinary human being person like us guys? What do we do? What do we do? You know, what are you going to do? Write your congressman? I don't think so. Congress won't be able to act. The courts won't be able to act. The only, you know, branch of government to be able to do anything is the executive. But how can you affect that? And if the executive, as Cynthia says, is a right-wing Republican, huh, that's going to go straight to autocracy. I'm so query, what does the ordinary human being, law-abiding person do now? Well, I think that it's a very complicated question and there is no answer, Pat, you know, to give to give now. But what can we think about doing? I mean, we are looking to elections. That's that's how we get our problem solved is through elections, right? Well, we haven't done a real good job with that. But when we go to elections, aren't we looking for leadership? We're looking for leaders, but we're looking for leaders who will take responsibility and not leaders who are going to take power. And I see that as a dichotomy of the people that are running now and are winning and are the people that are not prepared for the office. Are going into that office to to serve, to be obsequious and serve some leader. They appreciate but a leader that's not in the game for taking responsibility and moving the country forward, but to take power. And I think that one of the signs of that that we should know now is is the the mendacity. I mean, that once people can't tell the truth, remember, it used to be your integrity was the most important thing that that you had of in your life was to protect your integrity. It was your honor. I mean, you guys, you still shoot each other in duals in that 6 a.m. You know, over this a lot for centuries. I mean, this was really important. And that those of us who are still affiliating us with those values have to keep holding the line and look look to others to to affiliate with who are holding those values. That's that's because it all devolves on us. And that's the problem with the democracy is it's all about us. You like you said, there is nobody to send the letter to Santa Claus isn't going to put him on the bad list, not give him any presents anymore. There's nobody out there. It's just us. So, you know, so yeah, so we are evaluating this. Jack, you know, we make we make the the the assumption of fundamental assumption that we will know what's going on, that we can make decisions or not make decisions, we can appreciate or be outraged, whatever the case may be, take action, not take action, based on information. But, you know, I offer you two recent incidents, one in Hong Kong, where the where the PRC arrested Jimmy Lai and shut his newspaper down. And that was the end of that. And so the freedom of the press in Hong Kong is severely curtailed now. And you don't know what's going on if there's any protest or anybody arrested or what have you already street violence. And then in Nicaragua, just a couple of days ago, the president of Nicaragua arrested the the leader of the newspaper and put him in jail and made him disappear into jail at the newspaper. And then he seized all the, you know, the assets of the newspaper and closed it down. That's the price of, you know, the price of criticizing a leader in an autocratic country. And so it seems to me that if we do have street violence that needs to be addressed, we won't necessarily know. We won't. You can't assume the times in the post will stay online. You can't assume that you can sit back with your bonbons and watch MSNBC and CNN. You can't assume you're going to know anything. You may be in a blackout of news. How right am I about that? And how does that affect the equation that we are dealing with today? Well, drastic shock. Yeah. Well, I think it goes directly to Stephanie's point is that you can either take a role of responsibility or you can take a role of power. Media generally has opted for power at the expense of responsibility, at the expense of truth. Until that tide shifts, we're going to be at the mercy of trying to find independent, reliable sources of information. There you go. Which is the mendacity part of it. Yes, the lies that aside from the availability of the press online to inform you, there's other press and who knows where the line is that will lie to you and officials that will lie to you in order to quell any response to what is going on in the streets. So, well, let me let me we're going to have to close up to you guys. Stephanie, let me take you first. OK, what are your closing thoughts about this and your level of concern about it? And how real? You know, we've been talking about, you know, like we're making a lot of assumptions here that there will be something happening in the street. How real is that risk and how concerned are you about that risk and the result of it? Very good question. I am extremely concerned. I don't want to end my life living in that kind of a society. And right now this man has everybody acting like we did on the sixth grade school yard and our only resources are to, you know, fist fight it out afterwards and do those things we they're so childish and at such the level of default to this basic aggression we do have. We do have to and we're trying to manage that. But my my concern is that we not live in that kind of a world. And what we can do about it, I I'm just very I am very concerned and we just have to keep working by little bitty steps because one of the reasons I wanted to to state was these people that are like the Trump groups that affiliate with him, they're there because they now have power and they have and they can exert some agency through this man who does it in a way that doesn't solve their problems and that their problems are said to come from their discontent and their difficulties in in reaching their own goals and living their own lives fully, which I really question how they how they conclude that and what what is it in their lives that is is not good, not not enough? What what is it that they're the question we need to find out is what is making these people so aggressive and discontented with our way of life? Why are they in such a state of mind that they will tear it down to shreds and rather than try and make it better in cooperation with others? That is a very important question. Why do I feel that Cynthia has an answer to that? The Dunning-Cougar effect. What is that? They want power. They don't think they have power and so they want to hang on to somebody that does have power because they think if they stand close enough, they'll get some too. Basically. What are your comments now in summary? In summary, I have a couple of quotes here for us today. Of course. OK, good. You know me, right? So I, Ron, Philip Kowski, who is a lawyer, he was a Republican, he was part of the Lincoln project, said nothing could confirm Trump's guilt more than this statement this morning suggesting the FBI planted evidence. He got caught. He knows it. And this is what guilty people say. Expect this to be the new GOP talking point. Well, that is a really good thing that shows us why he's got to undermine the FBI so that people will believe that they planted evidence because they're such crummy people that can't be trusted. This is what I want to end with. Trump himself signed into law in 2018, stiffening the penalty for mishandling classified information to five years in prison. He did it himself. He has mishandled classified documents. He already did it by taking them there. They retrieved 15 boxes, you know, that was classified. So they already know it was, which is how they got this whole warrant and this whole everything that, you know, all of it going to begin with subpoena for their video stuff, all of it came from that. So then they took away 12 boxes on Monday. So he didn't give them everything. And we don't know if there's somebody. This is the thing, let's hope that there's somebody in his camp that is ratting on him, that's willing to, you know, step out and inform on him. And so maybe there's an informant. Maybe it just came from the information and the interviews that DOJ did, information that they got through those interviews and not an informant. But I like to think it was an informant and we're going to learn more. Yeah, well, I hope we never, we never find that he shipped off a bunch of boxes to Vladimir for safekeeping. Yeah, that's horrifying. So, this is all kind of disturbing. One of the points that I think is central here is Cynthia's reminded to us that we crossed the Rubicon on January 6th. That's where this became very visible in terms of the violence, you know, by the Trump team on the country. And I guess my question to you and my request for your summarization is, is this part of the insurrection? Is this just a continuation of the insurrection? It seems like you have the insurrection, you have the guns, you have these unhinged people. And now it all sort of comes together in a in a in a struggle by the unhinged group against a whole government wherever it may be and the population wherever it may be. I mean, are we having a national insurrection now? Is this a continuation but an expansion? Yes, absolutely. I'm asking. OK, I'm not disagree with your answer, but I want Chuck's answer. Sorry, Cynthia is right. Yes, and actually we crossed the Rubicon and many other rivers a long time ago. As far back as March of 2017 at an inauguration that we're going to pay for for many, many, many years to come. But ultimately, the question is going to be what you've all brought up is. Can we find and support in our leadership in ourselves? Moral conviction and fiber that will achieve a balance between our respect and appreciation for our differences and our connection in our common humanity? We've come a long, long way from that. And I think if we use that measuring stick for people who want leadership in these times, it's going to be a pretty clear litmus test. OK, what a great discussion. I would I would respond to your comments, Chuck, with only a small question. It's only if we find these values. And my question is, who exactly is the we? And on that note, this is American issues. Take two with Stephanie Stoll, Dalton, Cynthia Sinclair and Chuck Crumpton. This was a really interesting discussion. Thank you so much, all of you. Aloha, thank you so much for watching think tech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn and donate to us at think tech Hawaii dot com. Mahalo.