 It's Wednesday. It's 11 o'clock. It's February the 2nd, 2022. Welcome to What Now America. I'm Tim Apachele, your host. Today's title is Unanswered Questions of Burning Issues, USA 2022. We have a program that often deals with various topics and subjects, but the ones that seem to be dominating the headlines in 2021 and certainly 2022 are the following. The January 6th insurrection, the politics, what is threatening our democracy, the social order, the things in our social agenda, racism, and equality issues that dominates our headlines, the pandemic, of course, and then our perspective. What do we need to do to tie this all up together and put it in perspective so that we can differentiate between the facts versus distractions? And that's a little bit what we're going to try to tackle today. I'd like to introduce my guests. First off, we're going to Jay Fidel. And then we have two new guests. We have Cynthia Tai, who's the executive director of Project Expedite Justice. And then we have Karen Buzzard, who is a emeritus professor. And we're going to go directly to you, Cynthia. Tell us a little bit about what you do, and then we'll go into the question. Sure. Thank you, Tim, and Aloha to you all. My name is Cynthia Tai. I'm the executive director of Project Expedite Justice. I'm delighted to be here with you all today. By way of background, I am 30 years in. I'm a lawyer with a special niche in international criminal law and worked at the International Criminal Court in The Hague. So I am very interested in the insurrection and can't speak more about what it means to me in the context of global transition. All right. Thank you. You're welcome. First question is, how does our January 6 insurrection either mimic things you've seen in other countries? And are there any similarities or is it unique to ourselves? No, it is spot on dictator 101. As I say, it's not novel. It's not unique and we are not special. The insurrection in and of itself marks a cornerstone, I think, or a milestone, if you will, in our democratic experiment or system in this way. Insurrections are quite commonly referred to as post-election violence when the quote unquote loser seizes power over the over the power of the vote, if you will. We call it post-election violence and it's frequently referred to in the context of transitional justice. We see transitional justice appearing right before our very eyes in countries such as Sudan, South Sudan, and a general conflating of democratic ideals. What this tells me as a global citizen is that the United States and the population of the United States need to lean in and seize this moment and recognize it for what it truly is. It is a marker. We're at a crossroad or junction and we must determine whether or not we value democracy, if at all, or not. You know, I've heard the term anocracy recently and I've never heard that term before. I guess it's the transition between a democracy and autocracy. Right. In your opinion and from what you've seen in other societies, are we transitioning away from a democracy? Yes. And what do you think is the underlying forces that's pushing that? I think for a general population that is used to having certain markers or, if you will, certain comfort level, we are accustomed or entitled to say, well, somebody else will take care of it. Somebody else will do these things. That's over. It is not somebody else's problem. We, as citizens, are entitled to the vote. We own the vote. And it's up to us to use those avenues of access to create a more positive environment. Instead, what we're doing is we're turning backwards with name calling. As a former Senate staffer, I'm appalled at the tone, the tenor, and the way that we are choosing to communicate. This is not dialogue anymore. This is just what five-year-olds, how they fight. It's not a productive discussion. We need to strip ourselves of the labels, put humanity first, forget politics. If we don't like what we see, we vote them out. You know, it seems the media has a role in this because when Donald Trump came down that escalator five years ago to announce his campaign, the language he was using, the rhetoric that he was using, the name calling, the racism that he was espousing, wasn't really directly called out vehemently by the media. And so somehow it gained a foothold, it gained traction, and then it got worse from there. Isn't that the way talkers these happen is through language and the media cooperating with it? Yes, it's the repetition of the message. And our media, I think, is focused. Like, if you just sit in front of the TV for six hours, you will see the same message. Then you go to Twitter, you see the same message there. And we're not very, we're individualistic. We have lost our sense of the collective, right? So as individuals, we're looking for something to belong to. And unfortunately, I think that's where Donald Trump found his foothold. And that's what happens in most societies. Those with power and control, which is what it always boils down to, will attempt to retain it at all costs. You know, one of the guests we had on the show yesterday said that one of the things that can reverse direction is when a violence event occurs, there's enough law enforcement to put it down and put it down effectively. And actually, as it said in example, have you seen that in other countries where the law enforcement was appropriate, measured to the incident? And did it work? Did a strong response actually work to quell future acts of violence or events of violence? I would say that the insurrection in itself was quite unique in this way is that they were armed, right? In most country situations, the facts are generally peaceful protesters, ordinary citizens like you and I. And we march forward opposing the regime, right? But we're not armed. And this situation was different because they were very tactile, right? These are former members of our US forces that were, I would say, tricked by the media into thinking that it was okay to go into a government building, hurt other people, damage property on the name of like democracy, you've got to be kidding. That's just criminal behavior. Do you see anything in our future or any particular leader or figure had even celebrity that can turn the, you know, to turn the temperature down on where we're at today? Or are we accelerating to a hotter fry pan of discontent and grievance? I think that it's not going to be up to one individual because I think it's all about kind of a popularity contest, if you will, gaining attention, correct? So it's not going to be one sliver. It could be a collective. And I go back to that word often because we are individuals, we live in a capitalist society. It's not about us per se, me as a human, or as an American citizen. It's about the collective. It's all of us. You know, I think about the violence, the genocide that occurred in Rwanda and between the Hutus and the Titsis. And, you know, certainly that was a tribal affair. Yesterday was suggested that we're in a tribal affair, that we're in our own silos of tribalism. And that never used to be the case. We always had common ground. We had a social compact. Have we retracted into our own silos of tribal boundaries? Yes. You can create, I actually worked on the Kenya case, which I am proud to say is a senior trial lawyer at the International Criminal Court. And that case was built around divided political parties. So it wasn't a tribal affair, although I think that was the root of it or certainly a marker. What it really was was opposing political parties. And the loser was organized to, you know, if we lose, you do this. It was all sort of agenda, shall I say. So what's the catalyst that takes, you know, centuries of people living side by side, neighbor to neighbor, whether it be Protestant or Catholic in Northern Ireland, or the Tutsis and the Hutus living side by side as neighbors and friends. What's the catalyst that actually causes them to polarize and eventually try to kill each other? I think power and control is a huge one. The Hutus Institute, that's right. They live side by side as neighbors and as friends. But within a hundred days that all disappeared because of power and control triggered by the assassination of the then president. Similarly in Kenya, they were polarized just as we are politically creating a divide. The election was simply the triggering events, right? The transfer of power. Right. Okay. Thank you so much, Cynthia. I appreciate it. My apologies to my good friend, Winston Welch. I forgot to mention Winston in the introduction and welcome, Winston. Aloha. No worries. Jay, to you, our democracy. What forces do you see at play that is undermining our democracy from your perspective? Well, I think it broke somewhere along the line. Your discussion with Cynthia was really interesting to me and provocative. I was thinking, well, a frying pan, but before we were in the frying pan, we were in the boiling water. We didn't feel the heat coming up like a frog and it was coming up a little at a time. This is over a long period of time. Certainly Vietnam was involved and lots of social changes in the country, this satisfaction with the country, with the government, with the way things worked. When people become dissatisfied, then it begins to break down. Right now, we're no longer in the boiling water or rather the water that's becoming warmer and warmer. I think we are in the frying pan. What you guys reminded me of a moment ago was the Hawaii constitutional rule calling for a constitutional convention every 10 years, where people are elected to a constitutional group and they have the power, not complete power, but some power to examine the whole system and to suggest new constitutional provisions, a new constitution if you want to go all the way. Of course, it doesn't have to be ratified, but they get a chance to examine it. I think that's kind of where we are now in the country and similar to other countries. We're at a point where like it or not, a constitutional revision or not, we are in a convention and the convention is examining whether we like this government and everyone has a role like it or not. If you don't want it, don't participate or do something negative. If you do want it, well, you better do something. Everything is up for grabs. That's where we are now. Thank you, Cynthia. Thank you. Thank you, Tim, for suggesting that possibility to me, but this is a total process involving everyone and it's a convention. Alrighty. Thank you, Jay. Karen, staying on the same topic of democracy. This country for years and certainly when we have major conflicts, be it World War I, World War II, events like that, 9-11, people came together, called a social compact, called it what you will. We seem to be losing our social compact and we seem to be diminishing. Is that a result of education, not informing our children what our government is, what the purpose of it is, what are the fundamentals of democracy and the interaction of our government with democracy? Is that the source of our problem or are we just losing our social compact because of other forces such as technology? What do you think? Well, several factors I would list. One is what you mentioned. I think we're in an era of disinformation. They call it the information age, but it's a disinformation age. Unfortunately, a lot of the interpersonal systems that we were kind of basis of our society earlier was communities, families, so forth have broken down. We rely more and more on things like social media, Fox News, CNN, others to provide information. Often their information is really, I would call it provocative to attempt to create anger and discontent and unhappiness. I grew up actually in a town in Missouri where a lot of my friends are on the other side of the political spectrum than I am. I see the human side of them as well as the political side of them, but I think the goal of our media has been to kind of eliminate the human side and just focus on the political side of the spectrum. I watched a documentary the other night called, I don't know if you've ever seen this, the social dilemma about how the social media basically has assumed control of a lot of people's lives and they rely on it and basically the programmers of the social media, their whole goal is to provoke people. They put out provocative things because it's addictive and gets ratings. That plus Fox News, CNBC, we get these media channels whose whole goal is provocation. I think that's a huge factor. The other factor that I see just from my community in Southwest Missouri has been what I call the Walmartization of the chain store phenomenon which broke down a lot of the local communities because I grew up in a community that has square, had all sorts of local people who ran all the stores. Walmart moved in in the 70s and all the jobs were gone. The downtown now is a ghost town and then add that with NAFTA, NAFTA or whatever, then you see all the jobs even moving out of Walmart into foreign countries and that's left these communities sort of barren without work. So I think there's kind of two factors that I see the disinformation and the economic factor. Well, that's a great point, Karen, and that is we become isolated if not by the pandemic, certainly by social media and our opportunities for social interaction has diminished substantially since I was a kid growing up and as you described where you grew up. Is there a solution to that, to break out of our isolation so that we are in the marketplace of ideas from our neighbors and our friends and our family where there is more sharing of information rather than being fed what you're told to believe through our cable network media? Well, there used to be something called the fairness doctrine which Ronald Reagan did away with, which would do away really with Fox News and CNBC to MSNBC because they have to present both sides of every issue. They can't just present one side to the extreme, which is kind of the idea of repetition where you repeat the same thing over and over again. So that would be a factor in reinstating that. I've seen that called for now and also I think we're in an era of monopoly where we have these four major monopolies that need to be broken up and that would go a long way, I think as well because we have Facebook, Google, Apple, Microsoft, etc. So they can stick an Amazon. So they're controlling a lot of what goes on right now. So I think there needs to be more regulation, I guess I would call it a media with the FCC and the FEC too. One last question and that is, is there an intersection where people say, well, wait a minute, you're messing around with the First Amendment rights, but we did have the fairness doctrine. And I remember those days where there was a segregation, if you will, from news facts versus the opinion desk or the commentary desk. And now that's been blurred substantially and now people can't distinguish between facts and commentary. Your opinion about that? Well, I think that Fox News, for example, pretty much isn't really news or as it used to be defined, it's all opinion. So the whole idea of news has become irrelevant or whatever. The idea that there's integrity behind the stories that were searched, there's facts rather than opinions. It seems like that has gone by the wayside to even allow it to be called Fox News is questionable. Well, I agree. I'll just leave it at that. Hey, Winston, I'd like to talk about the social order. You know, yesterday we had discussions about how we are been putting our own silos. To what degree has racism, in your opinion, created, and I'll call it white fear or white fear of replacement and how that's been used as a wedge issue by either Donald Trump or his followers? To what degree has that played into our national grievance and this movement to supplant democracy with autocracy? Well, I don't know that we can place the blame just on racism and even our unconscious biases that we may have because at the end of the day, all humans are racist, sexist, heterophobic, homophobic, agist and all of that. It's just trying to overcome those worst instincts as we get older. Children aren't like that, but they learn it somehow in books and that's why you have people melting down over the so-called critical race theory, which other people, critical race history, other people might just call it history or teaching reality from different perspectives. But while some people may hear the dog whistle of white supremacy, good people on both sides type of thing after you're Charlottesville, you actually had more black Americans voting for Donald Trump the second time around than you did the first time around. So there's, and I think more Hispanics actually in that as well. So I don't know that it's necessarily race. I don't know that it's necessarily any one. Did Donald Trump play the race card from the moment he started his candidacy and people gravitated to it, not just the white supremacist but other people gravitated to it and he gained popularity and no one said no to what he was saying. Absolutely. He played that card, but he also played a lot of other cards and people are listening to what they want to hear and especially if you're in your own echo chamber, as our other panelists have said, it's very hard to break out of that. And so if you've looked at Fox News, you've got Harris Faulkner. She's a very well-spoken intelligent black lady and you look at there and if you're black, you say, well, here's the moderator of the show and she looks like me. And so hopefully she's representing at least some African American or black viewpoints on this and bringing that in. So it's not just a it's complex and the messaging is hard to pull out, but I think I would go back to what Cynthia was saying as well and Karen, which was that this breakdown started a long time ago. And while we did have the main square with the small shops, those days are they're not over yet. Those shops are sometimes being repopulated. Sometimes they're not, but whereas probably all of us are of a certain age where maybe our mothers didn't work full time because they didn't have to work to keep up with the demands of everything. And so in those days where the family was of a different structure and your economic pressure wasn't so great, you had maybe more cohesiveness. You also had a time when people were involved civically in many different organizations, whether it was being a Girl Scout leader or volunteer to patrol their parks or work in the soup kitchen or whatever that is. And at these days, people are so overwhelmed and exhausted or overworked or just don't care or even for a simple thing like going to help the homeless. It becomes this political issue suddenly. Instead of helping your fellow man, it suddenly becomes much more than that. And you have to get involved in the theoretical discussion about why the situation exists. And then at the end of the day, people aren't stepping up and getting active and engaged at the lowest level, which is actually knowing their neighbor, being friends with their neighbor and having a discussion with their neighbor that says, Hey, we share 90% of reality here. We want good schools, we want accountable government, we want safe streets. And then that the noise of the 10% actually ends up becoming the 90% because that's what we're being fed by these algorithms, by these by the fang companies as Karen was talking about. So if we're going to do anything, it needs to not just be at a level where we're trying to hold our elected representatives accountable, elect yourself representative, be your your neighbor's ambassador, make sure you know the lady to houses down. Does she need you to help her go shopping? Because you know her, whatever, are you involved? How many civic organizations are you involved in? Are you a Rotarian? Are you a Kiwanis? Are you on your PTA? Are you helping a kid to read? These are basic questions where we need to delve back into society and recommit ourselves to, as Cynthia was saying, the common, the common good, it's the us and but we are the us. And let me hit on that point. I might even want to go around the table real quick with all a guess is to what degree does Gen Gen Z and millennials have a role in doing what you're suggesting and certainly doing what Cynthia mentioned in her earlier discussion was we're disengaged. We're not seeing the obvious. We're not seeing how things are democracies slowly being replaced with autocracy. To what degree does Gen Z and millennials get involved? And what do they do to try to reverse things? Well, they are our hope. Our younger generation is our hope. They are the same size, I believe, in terms of population as the baby boot-a-moor generation and they will inherit the planet if there is one left. So my argument would be jump in now and jump in hard because quite frankly you have a longer lifespan and they can control a lot of the tech moves. They are the largest consumer interest that speaks to large marketing companies, correct? Correct. So I would argue that they have to form a different type of relationship with themselves. They have to control media and form a collective of their own if not together with a larger society. Secondly, to Karen's point, I think there has been some discussion about the First Amendment right to free speech, but I question whether why, where's the line anymore? Where's the line between First Amendment that we are so wholly attached to for a good reason? However, where does that cross into incitement? As we saw with January 6th and where does that cross into heat speech which is colonized? Where's the line? Yeah, good points. And I at this point I'm willing to say let's err on the side of preserving our media and maybe broaching a little bit on the First Amendment and our free liberal way of applying that to media. So I know Jay would say something different to that. Jay, your comments about our Gen Z and our millennials and being part of the solution here. I think there are some very bright and admirable people out there, young people, and you keep saying, we all keep saying, hopefully they're going to come together and save us. But in my heart, Tim, I don't believe they can or will. I think it's sporadic, it's anecdotal, and it's not going to happen. And to continue my metaphor before from the whole thing about our constitutional convention, A, it's a convention, but it's not constitutional. And B, it's not succeeding. It's a failing convention. It's cruising toward Lord of the Flies. I'm sorry. Neil Milner in the show that you moderated yesterday said, write up, I mean, a very thoughtful guy, a political science guy many, many years. He said, inevitably, we're going to civil war. And I have two questions out of that, which I leave you to today. By the way, this is a great discussion today. No kidding. One is, what does that civil war look like? Because there's no Mason-Dixon line. There's no boundaries. It's not geographical. It's something else. And I suppose in Rwanda, in the genocide, there was no geographical Mason-Dixon line. You can have a civil war with, you know, just go straight to genocide. Just kill your neighbor. No social compact whatsoever. A state of nature. Remember that? That's one thing. And the second thing is what happens, what happens after? It's not the end of the world, but it's a new world, a different world, than a world not nearly as attractive as this one, or the one this one has been. So, I mean, I think, you know, we can all say that in a perfect situation, we could come together and find a way to recreate the social compact and the democratic government we seem to have lost or say are losing. But the real question is, what's that war like? If the convention, as the convention fails? And what's the end game? What kind of world are we going to be in after that all settles down? A lot of people who are here today won't be around. Okay. Thank you, Jay. I've done it again. I've let things go over time, but I'm not going to be able to conclude until I hear from Karen on this point about our younger generation. So, go ahead, Karen. You have the floor. Well, unfortunately, I think our universities, having been at three different universities, have kind of accelerated the problem in some ways because all the universities I was at, there was a shift toward globalism as they called it. It was like, we are unique, come to our university, we're gonna get a global education, except for one university in Missouri, which continued a focus on localism. They worked with the local community. They were part of the local community. They tried to get out in the local community, offer programs, music, they would invite the local community to concerts. I mean, it was miraculous, really, that they were involved. For most universities, they're a little isolated from the local communities. They consider themselves better somehow than the local community. So, there was really no attempt to relate to the local community. So, I think one shift has to go from globalism to localism again, because I think we've gone too far in that direction with NAFKA, with Walmart, with the chain stores, taking over all the local stores. There needs to kind of be a shift back, I would say. And in terms of the students, I think the push has been now on getting, moving from like humanities, which was my area, to jobs, you know, so they're all told that, you know, you have to go to school to get a job. And some of that's economic necessity, because they have institutionalized this, what I call the administrative culture and universities where the administration have taken over the faculty pretty much. So, so the administrators make these huge salaries and they lay off all the faculty and get adjuncts to replace them. So, I think there's been, then the students are put at such financial risk that they have to get jobs to pay for their education. I'm convinced that the lack of civics classes being taught is directly or correlates to some of the mess we're in today, because if people knew what their democracy is all about and the forms of governments that rule within that, there would be more protest and more outrage. So, thank you, Karen. We've run out of time, but I'm going to go around the table real quick in a few sentences or, if you can, a few sentences, your last comments or your opinions. Let's go, start with Cynthia. Thank you, Tim. I would just say that we are at a critical point, at a junction, if you will. And we have to really recognize that, wake up and seize the moment. Volunteer, donate, find something to engage. Go to your neighbor's house as Winston talked about. It is very much about the collective and we've lost that. And until we regain that, you can't really gain momentum or change in any way. Thank you. Thank you, Cynthia. Winston, in a few sentences, yours? Simple one. Let's go for universal service for kids coming out of high school. They donate a year to their nation, whether it's a 501c3 or some other thing like that, where they're getting engaged and active in their community, maybe rotating through three or four over the course of a year. Great. Jay Fidel, yours? I think we forget that power defines us and power increasingly defines us these days without morality and without rules, without the rule of law, without the Constitution. It's raw naked power. And in order to recreate, if we possibly can, a society which is not defined merely by power, we all have to step up and we all have to recreate a government for the people and with rules. Great. Karen, we're almost out of, we are out of time. Your thoughts? Check your sources. I know a lot of, we haven't talked about this, but a lot of the political bots that are put up are Russian misinformation to divide us. I happened to notice on my website where I get a lot of the information from my friends I grew up with. I tracked back their bots and they were Russian origin. So check your sources. Great point. All right, that's it for us. I'd like to say thank you to Cynthia Tye, Karen Buzzard, Winston Welch, Jay Fidel. Join us next week, Wednesday at 11 o'clock for What Now America. I'm Tim Apachele, your host. And by the way, today's Groundhog Day and Jay Fidel's birthday. So let's celebrate as best we can. Aloha, everyone.