 Okay, we're back. It's the one o'clock clock. I'm Jay Fidel. This is Think Tech. Our show today is Global Connections. And the title of our discussion with Carlos Suarez is the global perspective on what is happening in our elections. Welcome to Global Connections, Carlos Suarez. Hello, Jay. Aloha. Always a pleasure to reconnect. And I'm coming to you now from Cholula Puebla in Mexico. And as you know, it's been my home now the last couple of years as I'm also with one leg and arm in Texas at times. Normally I'm globetrotting all over the world, but these days like everybody staying home. And well, that's just that's the reality. But here we are. And of course, you know, the United States, wow, I got there's so many things on the plate these days happening. But of course, in barely two months, we now have an election for the president and Congress and many other state and local. And yet the United States being such an important global power, there's keen interest from outside. The world is watching, is curious, is confused. And so as I think you've laid out in the description, we want to touch on a few things. Some of them are things that we should know. And sometimes we need to revisit. Other things are maybe just putting them in a comparative context. Because as it happens, every four years, we have the same discussion. The United States comes to learn many people that we have an indirect election of the president, and it's not a direct election, like most places you count the ballots, the one with most wins. No, we have this funky electoral college. But let me leave that on the background for now. And maybe first want to talk about because here we are today, bringing closure to the Republican National Convention, which is one of the rituals in American politics. Every four years when we have a presidential election, it is a process that, oh, my gosh, compared to other places, it seems to go on for years. And it does quite literally. The campaigns and the process of selecting the candidates, it's the primary process. Gosh, think back how long ago was it when we had those huge groups of, let's say, the Democrats this time, or four years ago, the Republicans, when they had 20 people. And that process of selecting is done obviously by the individual political parties, the two parties in the US system. And we won't talk about it too much today, but we have to begin just with the understanding that the American political system has two political parties. It is very, very difficult for a third party to gain enough across a national level to be a player. So if you want to be president of the United States, not only do you have to be 35 naturally born, you have to basically be, well, how shall we say, you have to choose A or B, you have to be one of the main parties, because if you're an independent third party candidate, you have a big, big hurdle to get enough across the board. So just begin with the two-party system. What we have now culminating today is the end of the Republican Party choosing their, or not choosing, but formalizing the process of nominating their candidate. President Trump is the current president and leader of that party, the Republican Party. So he is the obvious nominee. He's being renominated because his term will end in January. So he's hoping to gain a reelection in November, and they go through these rituals. And of course, we're living today in this pandemic era, it has changed everything. We've had a long, long tradition in maybe modern American politics, where these conventions were sort of a very exciting time for the party activists, come together, all the different states are represented. It goes through the motions over days, very patriotic. Today, given the reality that we couldn't see everybody come together, it's taken online, virtual. So, you know, different, maybe different aspects about that, maybe some of it is a little bit more choreographed or more tightly controlled. Some of it is a little bit... What's been going on with Trump this week is all theater. There's nothing left to the imagination, except trying to believe what he has to say, because it's really remarkable how they're all on the same page, but that page is not the reality of some other global world. Well, remember before becoming president, what was his profession, his job, among, you know, head of his Trump organization, a reality TV host, and in some ways his own presidency, and certainly this production right now, is that it's something made for television, you know, to sort of give it that feel. When you think back and you compare, compare, I'm thinking I don't know why, the Madison Square Garden, filled with people, right up to the last seat, and they're all hooting and hollering, and they have signs for their favorite son, and then they go, you know, through this procedure of calling for that state to cast its ballots from the state of Massachusetts, and they give a roll call basically, very young, this long tradition. And it wasn't always for sure about who would be nominated, there were fights behind the scene, scenes and all that. Those days, I suggest to you, and I really like your opinion about this, those days seem to me to be over, that this is not a convention along the lines that we have seen in our lifetimes, or in many lifetimes before. This is theatrical and it is a kind of inefficient, really very inefficient. All this trouble, boiling, boiling trouble out of Shakespeare, and you already know exactly what's going to happen. It's almost like, why go through this? As you mentioned, you know, it takes years to get through this political process. Every country in Europe is more efficient. I don't know why we don't clean it up. Anyway, those are my reactions. Well, yeah, I mean, you've put it well. And clearly, the other thing, a couple of quick observations is traditionally what happens to it, in addition to that roll call and all that, if a candidate or the candidates are coming, by then they've had the primary. Sometimes it's clear there's a clear winner. Sometimes it's not, and there's a jockeying that goes on, and it's the old image of the smoke filled cigar rooms, you know, dealing in the background, and a wheeling and dealing that goes on. And eventually, a candidate emerges. So indeed, sometimes as they go into these conventions, they don't have a clear candidate. Today we do. We've got Joe Biden, who essentially beat out the others, he steps in. And so what is the convention? It's less about substance and let's say program, even though traditionally, you have a program that gets discussed and approved. The programs in general tend to be pretty extreme, either very conservative or more than what maybe can be often realistically implemented. But it's a goal that's aspirational. This time we have so little substance, and even as it turns out for the Republican convention, there's no real new pro programmer platform. It's more or less dusting off the 2016 story. And I think the latest is a slogan, you know, make America great again, again, somehow. And then that's kind of a puzzle, because well, here we are in the middle of a very difficult reality that certainly the president didn't expect to be in. Let's say nine months ago, he he's facing now, you know, a challenge on so many levels, pandemic, the worst hurricane in the Gulf right now, obviously the whole social protest movement. What a mess. Meanwhile, put on the show to sort of distract attention on some level. But regardless, this now formalizes the process, both parties after this now have their candidates in place in two months time, we will have the election. Suffice it to say that in most other parts of the world, you do not have a process that it goes on for so long. In many of the European countries where there are parliamentary systems of government, it's a very quick process, often a couple of months. Sometimes because there's not always a fixed date for the election. Usually it's within a five-year period, for example, they must have a general election. But that can be called sometimes at any given moment. Usually, you know, by when you have to do it. And so there's a time. But in some cases, you often see where they will call an election early from some maneuvers, either to try and solidify more support. And that can work sometimes at backfires, like we saw in the UK with Theresa May, she called the election and ended up losing support. Well, very different, very fluid. Just wondering this, Carlos, I mean, again, the perspective countries and people outside the US. So what we have in the Republican convention is a bunch of family members who are obviously loyal, a bunch of loyal members of the government around him. The ones who have survived is tests of loyalty, so to speak, over the years. And they're all on the same page and they're all engaging in the same distractions and disinformation and lying and so forth. It's quite remarkable that he tells you he's doing really well on immigration, when in fact he's busted the chops of so many people. It's remarkable when he tells you that he's done a great job on COVID, when in fact, a lot of people, including me, feel that he is actually complicit in killing 170,000 people and infecting 5.5 million. So he lies. And I'm wondering, in Europe, they saw Hitler as a liar and he was a major liar. He understood how to twist the facts in propaganda, how to repeat a big lie and get the German people who were otherwise relatively liberal in those days to go along with him and to join his team and accept the lies and believe cult-like in the lies. Query, this is really an important question and I've been reading as a background to it, I've been reading on tyranny by Timothy Snyder, a history professor at Yale, about the comparison psychologically and sociologically and historically between what happened in Europe in the 30s and what's happening now with Trump. So my question to you is, if a leader in Europe, say Western Europe, just for a good comparison, did that kind of lying, you know, big lying, huge big lying and repeated lying, would he or she be able to get away with it or would he be shattered down? Well, I mean, that's a fair question. I think my quick answer, it depends and I say that because I think it depends where in which specific kind of country because Europe is a collection of, well, at least the EU today has 27 member states, but there are many European countries, a handful that are not in that, but leave it at that. The point is that you have some where you have a considerable amount of legitimacy, credibility, a well-informed public, a media that will hold them accountable. I can't imagine something like that happening in, you know, a Denmark or, you know, a Norway or, I don't know, even the, well, just naming a few that where you have, I guess, a little bit more credibility and legitimacy of the system. On the other hand, you know, many countries are today, even under very authoritarian populist leaders, the president of, I'm sorry, the prime minister in Poland, in Hungary, to a less degree Italy, although they've lost, you know, in and out, but they, even in recent past, they had this media mogul, Berlusconi, who himself, while not maybe lying on the scale of President Trump, nevertheless, using media, manipulating this information. I guess my point there is that we do see a rise of populism in a handful of countries in Europe. Those are worrisome trends. And at the local level, you know, the rise of some of those. But yeah, I think you have a fair point in that my sense overall is that the European public's probably are a little bit more vigilant of that and call it for it. But nevertheless, I mean, you have some far right parties that also, you know, carry out a lot of the similar tactics and strategies. And so it varies. But more to the point, in most of the European political systems, you would not have a leader like Donald Trump come through the system that way because the parliamentary democracies and the political parties that basically are in them tend to, again, it's a little bit over generalized, there are some exceptions. But it tends to be very difficult for somebody to get in from the outside. It's less common. Now, it's not that it's been common in the US either, but of course, Trump has now broken that he's not a political leader figure, he comes out of the private business world. Europe has had a handful of those, but more generally, they tend to have very, you know, professional politicians who govern and a political culture that has often been maybe more accepting of that of a political class critical, of course, and there's plenty of protests all around. But I think the American ethos, the American ideals, often this idea of the man on horseback, you know, the entrepreneur, the billionaire, for many, and particularly those who maybe aren't really steeped in a lot of history or are interested in those details, you know, Trump comes across as well, he tells them like it is, he's different, you know, he's shaking it up. Obviously, when you dig deeper, and even when you talk to even prominent conservatives, increasingly many are saying, wait a minute, this guy doesn't represent our ideals and values, he is destroying the party, what have you. So it will vary, but boy, Trump is certainly a phenomenon that is part of the product of the US and the media and the sort of the emphasis on individualism and sort of even these concepts of freedom, you know, freedom to say what you want, to do what you want, freedom from government intervention, etc. All of these are puzzles. You know, maybe let me continue quickly. I mentioned at the outset, of course, the Electoral College, we revisit this all the time, this doesn't exist anywhere else. The United States is rather unique in having an indirect election of its leader, of the president. And it's sometimes complicated to clarify, most of our viewers will understand it in general, but we just want to remind what we are voting for when we cast a ballot in the fall election is who is going or the state that you live in, which delegates are going to be given to them. And every state has a specific number of delegates, which is a formula based on the number of representatives plus the number of senators. So Hawaii has four, California 55, etc. And the result is in 48 of the 50 states, this is where it gets a little messy 48 of them have a rule that says winner takes all whoever wins the popular vote in that state, the political party gets all of those delegates. So in Hawaii, the Democrat candidate Joe Biden will win the majority vote, all four delegates will go to the Democratic Party, and they will, they then will forward the specific delegates, there are specific people that are named and they're usually party leaders, insiders, loyal, who have pledged to cast their vote that way. Let me quickly just say that there are two states, Nebraska and Maine that don't stick to that. Theoretically, they can choose to divide their their delegation, I think they only have three, three delegates, but they could choose to go two and one. They don't often do that, but they could. But anyhow, what is this, they may be foreclosed from that. I think this litigation, maybe even the Supreme Court, for the proposition that they are bound, that they can't they can't exercise discretion. That's right. And last time there were some puzzles because a handful of the delegates chose not to not to move forward with Donald Trump and instead put in I think John Kasich in some cases or maybe the other senator from Utah, this guy, of course. But here, more to the point, what is one of the most important implications of this? When we have an election, because certain states are very solid, either blue for Democrats or red for Republicans, the election ultimately is taking place in six or seven or eight swing states, states that could go either way. And that's where all the energy and resources are being put. And that's the game. And the magic formula is not the popular vote, as we know in the last election. And again, in 2000, it went the other way. The other candidate who did not get the popular vote won the electoral college vote. So the magic number of 270 is simply a majority of the 538 electoral delegates. And the 538 is 435 reps, 100 senators, plus three additional for the District of Columbia. So you have to get a majority of those delegates. That wins the presidency. How is the number of delegates for a given state determined? It's a simple formula. The number of representatives plus the number of senators. So Hawaii has two plus two, Texas has 27 plus 229, California 53 plus 255. And the idea in general, the idea was in the early, and again, this is the formula from 1787 when they adopted the Constitution. Many of the states in the South at the time, the Southern states, very small populations, planned patient economy, etc., they had a fear that by strictly population, the states like Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, they would control the process and always have the selection. So it was a way of trying to guarantee some measure of, you know, sort of a compromise, giving some smaller states a little bit more voice. The same idea in the Congress, the reason we have the bipartisan, I'm sorry, bicameral, the two chambers, the Senate gives representation equally to every state. So South Dakota has two senators, California has two senators. That's a, you know, part of the formula of dividing power up a little. Well, again, back to this. A lot of people in this country would like to throw out the Electoral College. They don't feel it's democratic. And it is not a matter of two senators per state. It's not democratic either. But, you know, why do we have two Dakotas? Why can't they merge into one? Just kidding me. So, but my, you know, my concern, my interest is you can have all the polls you want. You can have all the young liberals you want saying to throw out the Electoral College. What's the chance of that happening? Well, I think the short version is nil, very close to nothing. It is a constitutional amendment. We haven't had one of those in literally a century. It requires basically all the state, three quarters of the state legislatures, two thirds of the Congress, both houses. And it's just unlikely to happen. Because there are, you know, some would argue that, for example, the Republican Party has benefited from it more because it has been able to garner the support of a lot of small states, the sort of whole red center of the U.S. versus the more populated coastal, you know, more liberal districts, let's say. And so once you have one party that doesn't want to change it, good luck. It's not going to happen. So unfortunately, we are stuck with it. And so some analysts say, well, let's put the best spin on it. It is, you know, it is what it is, blah, blah, blah. Unfortunately, in the modern era, because I don't think the founders knew in 1787, you know, that we would have social media networks and television and all this. Today, it does become, ultimately, it becomes a game in those swing states, which are a specific handful, and they often are the same ones for a while. It's remarkable. You know, just a Woody Allen thought. I like to have Woody Allen thoughts. You know, it's just like the Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's court. It's the same notion. If I could go back to 1787 and explain to those guys what's happening this year, they would, they would be so interested and they would change some of the things they've been, they were thinking about, and it would be a grand service to them if they could only have somebody tell them what the future would really bring. Yeah, quite a, quite a puzzle. And you know, I'm thinking there often are shows. There's one I watched recently on Netflix called Outlander, where they go like, and this woman goes back in time to Ireland or Scotland, I think, blah, blah, but the other thing to say real quickly, I wanted, before I forgot, I wanted to mention about the electoral college situation. Let me think of what it was that is, it, gosh, how can I put this? Let me think I'm trying to phrase it in a different way. Oh gosh, I'm having a brain fart. Right now it escaped me what I wanted to say. I'll come back to it in a moment. But I think, you know, I can't underscore how much of a puzzle it is for the outside world, too, that every four years is like, wait a minute, Hillary Clinton got three million more votes, but Donald Trump got the office. And it just, you have to kind of wrap yourselves around that. It isn't easy to understand. Here's what I was just remembering, that in many ways, back in 1787, the founders, and we have lots of essays and documents they wrote, the Federalist Papers, Hamilton, John Jay, and others, they had a real fear of democracy in the way that they did not believe that the average person, the average citizen that today, of course, we all assume, yes, I'm a person, I have a vote, my vote counts. But in 1787, certainly those leaders that were forming and writing this constitution, they did not want to go outside and let everybody have a single vote. And so the indirect election was a way of kind of saying, no, let these representatives, they will hear the voice and they will have input from the population. But ultimately, these party insiders, they weren't called that, but these maybe educated, civic responsibility people, they would move forward and cast a vote. And theoretically, again, the idea is that they could choose to, at the end of the day, because let's remember, let me maybe clarify this, the election is November 3rd. The delegates actually formally cast their vote in December. There's a time somewhere in the middle of December where formally they have to do it. Now, in the pandemic time, I don't know if it's going to be done online or by mail or what, that'll be interesting to see. But normally, they literally go in Washington DC to an office where they cast their vote, these delegates. And then that formalizes it. And then the following January, whatever it is, the 20th or so, is the inauguration, the transfer of power. Never mind that we're here, before I forget this, in a comparative perspective too, we are facing an election today like we have not seen in the United States, where the entire system and the credibility and legitimacy of the outcome is going to be at stake. And I can predict with a pretty high degree of certainty, we're not going to know the outcome the next day on Wednesday. There's probably going to be some fuss and fight and legal battles. Hopefully, it won't take more than days or weeks. But it's very likely that we're going to see some of this. And you can already see Trump and some of the supporters, specifically the president, kind of setting it up for that. Allegations of mail fraud and so on and the mail post-service and all the challenges there. If I win, it'll be a legitimate election. If I lose, it'll be a rigged election. Exactly. So I have to win. Yeah. And again, when asked that, I mean, it's astonishing that a president, a sitting president, cannot say, of course, I will abide by the results of the, I mean, by saying that we'll wait and see is already stirring more confusion and eroding legitimacy and trust. And it's setting up a future safety. I told you so. We knew and everybody knew and blah, blah, blah. That's astonishing because again, the United States has had a very stable political system overall. I mean, it's had social turmoil and had a civil war, etc. But we've not had an election in the recent past, where the stake is so prominent of the legitimacy, the credibility, the accusations of fraud and so on. We're likely to see that and let's hope it doesn't also get revealed in massive violence because that's potential as well. We've had, look in these last days, another incident there in Kenosha, Wisconsin, violence in the streets, protest movements that are continuing. It could get ugly. He's already said he's going to send troops there. Sounds like martial law to me. So it's a mess. And then add to that the foreign entanglement by what we know the Russians are meddling once again. Will it be as effective or just more chaos and particularly with social media? So these are strange times we're living in and a little bit worrisome, very worrisome for some. Increasingly, you know, not just the fringe margin questioning it, but many, many credible sources saying, look, our democratic institutions are really at stake on the line. And it will be difficult to bring back trust and credibility as we get through this. It's not going to be easy. Well, after the war, you know, this was the greatest generation, set the liberal world order for all these years, the Marshall Plan. You and I have talked about that before. And I can imagine a lot of countries, a lot of people have grown up in that thought that the U.S. has led the world in a moral approach in liberal world order in democracy. Democracy equals the U.S., right or wrong. That's the way a lot of people in this world, the seven or eight billion people in this world have seen us under Trump that obviously hasn't hasn't been the case. And he's turned in on himself and isolated and going nationalistic and populistic and all that. But this election and the kinds of phenomena that you describe, I wonder how people feel about that. If I were living again in Western Europe and I saw this sort of thing happening, this confusion and all these remarkable statements about he's not going to be bound by the election and so forth, I would be terrified that this is the last leg of the liberal world order and it's falling apart. It's on fire. I mean, am I right about that? Oh, absolutely. And some of it is generational. Obviously Europeans, particularly Europeans who are let's say over 50 or 60, who understand the legacy of the Cold War, the legacy of the World War. Younger populations, I think as they are in many places, tend to be a little bit less historical in their grounding. But I can imagine and I can assure you that there are many Europeans who are looking at this and shaking their heads because even not just the democracy that is eroding, but this obviously this global pandemic crisis, United States should be the leader, should be as traditionally looked upon. And now even in the last 24 or 48 hours, we have the CDC coming out with some new guidelines that are really just eroding its credibility. This is the premier public health agency of the world that together with the World Health Organization should be leading this and instead it's being politicized. So again, the world is looking, I think, very weirdly. And I don't pretend to say that I know the world's perspective, but certainly the elites and those who understand and plug in and follow American politics are dismayed and just quite confused and really disappointed because it's difficult to explain. And yet again, it's not as if it doesn't exist in other places. Europe has its share of populism and the rise of some of these same pressures. But I think it's remarkable to see, I think, the United States political culture on display in a way that is eroding our credibility in the world. Yeah. So over the past few years, and I'm sure there's taken it toll, I'm sure that Angela Merkel and Macron, they both don't think much about Trump and they don't like them much. And I think their followers and their respective countries don't like them too much. And the question I put to you is, we haven't seen the end of this. If he wins, there'll be more of the degradation of respect. One writer for an Irish newspaper came up with this notion about it. It's time to pity the United States. And that really has caught on, I think, that people in Europe pity the United States now. And ultimately, it's a question of whether they will continue to treat us with the kind of respect they have in the past in terms of foreign policy, in terms of global trade, and in terms of the reserve currency. And I suggest to you, Carlos, that going forward, if he wins again, those things will further deteriorate almost immediately and we will lose what we have left in terms of world leadership. What do you think? Well, absolutely. There are definitely clear signs of that. And again, it's the kind of thing that it's on one hand, it's difficult to measure and quantify, but we know it's there. It's also difficult to see, well, how do you fix it? How do you get beyond that? I think it also coincides with the United States kind of having to come to terms with even the irrespective of Trump and this current, let's say aberration, United States losing relative power and having to come to terms with a changing world where we must become more humble, more, we need a seat at the table. There's no question about that. We don't have it right now. And when we show up, we sort of elbow everybody and make a mess. But the United States needs a seat at that table as a partner, as a inspiration. Today, sadly, many of the ideals that the United States at times tries to promote, you know, democracy, freedom, liberties, look at what's happened in Belarus. We have no feedback or input or statement from the US government about that. What's happening in China, again, similar, you know, situation there. There's a trade war, but there's not a lot of attention to the sort of the democratic deficit there. And instead, we've seen now, sadly, our current leader in the US praising dictators and coddling up to them in ways and then completely attacking and eroding trust and personal relationships with democratic leaders, traditional allies. So we're in a strange environment. It's going to take time to, and so yeah, you can imagine one scenario if we have continuity four more years, more erosion of that same, it's not going to get better. The US will continue to be more and more isolated and marginalized. And I could just imagine, you know, Macron and Merkel, who probably talk several times a week on a regular basis and meet each other every few weeks, just rolling their eyes, like counting and hoping that, you know, the US can move beyond this. Otherwise, they also know that they, if they have to deal with it, you, by now, enough experience how you deal with it somehow, you know, keeping a certain distance, being very careful, monitoring the Twitter war, because it's for Trump, it's all about that. And the unpredictability, the chaos, it is, it's nerve-wracking for anybody. Imagine preparing for a meeting with Trump, you know, how do you brief your leaders, your staff, you know, it's a different strategy from traditional times when, you know, countries came together with their interests and the traditional negotiation and diplomacy is, let's find a win-win solution we can all benefit. Let me understand your interests and make sure that you get what you need and vice versa, not today. We have a zero-sum transactional president who can say one thing in the morning and tweet something else in the afternoon and that's not an easy way to negotiate across borders to carry out diplomacy. No, you wind up with a kind of bankruptcy, including business bankruptcy, but beyond business bankruptcy. So my last question to you, Carlos, is actually the one that interests me most, aside from the perspective of other countries, other leaders, the populations of other countries in Europe and elsewhere. What about the U.S.? You've described some social political processes that are profound and the question is whether the American voter, the American electorate, including the base, I suppose, maybe they're an important group to distinguish here in dealing with this, whether they understand this, they understand the way other countries feel about us, how the relations have degraded, how their perceptions of American government, American democracy, American fairness and morality have changed. What about the people here in this country? I mean, again, a little crass to say this, but the short answer is that most people in the U.S., most Americans don't have a lot of interest, awareness, knowledge of foreign perceptions of the U.S. Nevermind foreign policy, which itself is complicated and messy, but the view that others have of the U.S. And there's a small group that, yes, do travel and anybody who does global travel knows that. The image is the stereotypes of the ugly American, but unless you're literally a foreign policy junkie, you are not likely to be aware of this. Now, the Pew Research Center, very prominent research think tank in the U.S., regularly publishes reports and analyses on foreign perceptions of the U.S. And I myself, most recently, I teach every couple of years, of course, at HPU on images from abroad, the perception of the U.S., different places. And so when we have seen over the years these regular studies, it's suffice it to say that we are at a point today where many parts of the world look down upon the U.S. in a way that has just never been seen before, a very negative perception. There's some interesting variation. There are a few places where the president remains very popular, the Philippines and on parts of Eastern Europe, a couple of Middle East countries. But by and large, and for the most part, it has been a pretty steady erosion under the current president. And again, while he may have made it more than it might otherwise have been, in some ways, he also reflects trends that were going on already. The U.S. has been disconnected more and more, for example, with Latin America, a region that is so important and so deeply connected. But effectively, the United States has neglected it. It has not been nurturing the relations in ways that maybe 25, 30 years ago, there was all this outreach, you know, NAFTA and promoting, you know, trade and even, you know, defending human rights, promoting democracy today, not much. Other places again, it will vary, but the U.S. is no longer calling the shots in the way that it might have been 20, 30 years ago. And I think that's where we are now, where the world is now seeing that, and the U.S. is no longer having the influence it might have had in the past. A final note, let me just say this, that irrespective of all this, the United States still remains a very powerful force for soft power. And what we mean by that is maybe cultural appeal, you know, the role of popular culture, music, you know, television, etc., you know, cinema, and even just the attraction that despite criticism people may have all over the world, it still is a place that attracts many of the best and brightest, many of the hardest working. And although the pandemic has certainly put a pinch on that, I think it's fair to say that the United States will continue to be a country that draws people for the opportunities, for the connections, etc. You know, we say in Spanish about that, from your lips to God's ears. Carlos Juarez, a professor at the University of the Americas in Puebla, New Mexico, also associated with HPU, and whose middle name is Fulbright, because he's been on so many, so many Fulbright scholarships all over the world. Thank you so much, Carlos. It's great to talk to you. Look forward to our next one. Aloha.