 Thanks so much for joining us on Think Tech Hawaii, support us, encourage us, stick with us. We're here for you. For more difficult conversations to make good trouble, we have with us today David Larson, former chair of the American Virus Association section of dispute resolution, a distinguished professor at Hamlin, Mitchell Hamlin School of Law at Hamlin University, and Ben Davis, professor at Washington and Lee in Charlottesville, Virginia. Ben is not to be held responsible for the demonstration that went south there sometime. Had they consulted Ben first, it would have never happened like that. So as we head into 2024, and as I've shared my standing joke is I'm going to Vietnam in September, October, I think I'll get a one-way ticket and see what happens in November before I get my return trip. So gentlemen, is there any path to responsible choice that you see? Well, I'm always an optimist. So I hope there's a path to responsible choice. One thing I'm hoping is that we have a lot of pending criminal cases against our former president. And although the strategy has been and somewhat successfully, the delay delay delay, I'm hoping that we can get at least one conviction. And I think that those convictions will be pretty significant and that a lot of people who maybe haven't been paying close enough attention will suddenly have their attention grabbed and will say, I've got to reconsider what I've been thinking. This is a convicted felon and I don't see how he could really be the president of our country. So I'm hoping that some of these cases that are pending maybe will sober up some people and lead them to more responsible choices. I was thinking about these various statistics that come out, I mean, sort of independent of sort of where the political parties are and all that, but that when they do these polls of Americans, there's like these amazing numbers, like 80% of the people are agreed on certain things, like the women's right to choose, you know, really not one in the government in the middle of it. I mean, there's a lot of what I would call, you know, the freedom oriented American wanting to just have your life and not having the government in the middle of your life, right? I think there's a certain amount of that, and I think that the probably the most powerful thing going on right now is the overruling of road. I think that that is so huge across America. I mean, you had this sort of Alabama IVF thing too, which was just bunkers for people. But I think that at least from every, even in very red states, right, there's been basically efforts to overrule. I saw that there was, for example, the Florida Supreme Court just said, the sixth week ban is okay. And at the same time, they said, putting the constitutional amendment on the November ballot is okay too, right? So, and then the fact that that amendment is on the ballot there, and those kinds of amendments or efforts to restrict abortion have essentially all been decided in the way of women's freedom in since Dobbs has gone down. You know, I just think that this is a very sobering moment with regards to that, that I wouldn't even say it's an undercurrent. I say it is something that is front of mind of a lot of people. Whatever the political games being played on, you know, the other thing is that it's terribly complicated is the whole thing going on in Gaza, right? That is really very, very, very difficult for, I mean, it's horrific for the people who are there, okay? And it's horrific what happened on October 7th, but you know, the six months of what's been going on is really very, very difficult, and no one really sees a way out of it, except I always think the diplomats, get the diplomats talking, the diplomats, let's get a ceasefire for an hour, you know? Okay, now let's get it for two hours. Let's get it for five hours. Let's get some food in. Let's get one truck in. Okay, let's get three trucks in. We don't have to solve every problem. Let's deal with these right here, right? But, you know, it's watching what's going on and is just horrific to watch. I mean, I saw today, for example, and Dave, he might really appreciate this. For the targeting, apparently, artificial intelligence has been used for determining targets, right? And apparently, the artificial intelligence, something called lavender, it's got a 10% error rate, okay? You know, if you're running a 10% error rate like in a GM factory, you're fired, you know, on parts. I mean, because the Americans were at 5% error rates, and that was considered horrific compared to the Japanese who were 200 parts per million, you know what I mean? But when you're talking about 100,000 errors per million, that's like a, you know, that's a real comment on the state of AI, you know, that kind of an error rate. So anyway, so, and then, you know, the other thing, I'm sorry to go on like this is this real question about, we used to have this view that at the, at the shoreline, there was going to be unanimity between the Republican and Democratic parties on foreign policy. Basically, there was the, you know, that the divisions ended at the shoreline. Right now, it seems that we're all over the place. We're all over the place. And Trump has an envoy who's actually over there attempting to make January 2025 foreign policy on the presumption that they're going to have the power to carry it out. But yeah, I mean, we're going to talk about responsible choices. It's about, you know, sort of who speaks for America, you know, in this crazy social media world, right? Yeah, there's so many things to talk about. You know, talking about Gaza, you know, that has serious implications for the current administration. You know, there's a movement that we're not going to vote for Democrats. We're going to vote uncommitted. You know, what are the implications of that for the upcoming election? Is that going to result in electing the opposing candidate because you've stayed on the sidelines? So clearly something has to happen. Something has to change because too many people are being alienated for very credible reasons based on what's catastrophic and the number of innocent people and children that are getting killed. So we've got to find a way to stop the carnage that's going on. So that's what's the path forward? One path forward is we have to find some solution if we want to move forward. So yes, Gaza is a huge problem. What's another way forward? Well, you know, I think we need to keep talking and we need to keep talking about what's going on and how people are behaving. There's this huge movement about, that's kind of aligned with the MAGA movement of, you know, we're patriots and the people that were involved in the insurrection on the 6th, they're patriots. And we're going to carry flags. You know, we're going to show our allegiance by the symbols that we carry. And if you talk to these individuals and you kind of ask, how does your allegiance to the MAGA movement align with patriotism and American values, they'll start talking the long terms of, well, I think we need to be a little more power in the executive. I'm okay with that. You know, I'm okay if we need somebody to be a bit of a dictator. I think that's the best path for America. That's the most American thing. And you got to stop people and pause them and say, wait a minute. You know, that's kind of antithetical to democracy and American values. You know, it's to say that you support immunity for the president and a dictatorship is not patriotism. It's something else, but it certainly is an American patriotism and, you know, at least be honest as to who you are and what you're saying. You know, don't promote something that you don't believe in. If you want a dictator, say you want a dictator, but don't call it American fundamentalism because it isn't. So I think in terms of path forward, we need to keep calling people out on that to say that what you're pretending, what you're advocating is not patriotism. You know, and patriotism is democracy. And what you're talking about is exactly a policy to democracy. Another thing that's got me concerned is kind of the toxic language that Trump's using regularly, which I think has all kinds of implications and creates motivations for a lot of violence. And I'm concerned about violence for election workers, for election officials, for the infrastructure of polling places, of people who are going to vote, who are afraid of maybe even getting attacked when they show up at the polling place. So in terms of path forward, I think we need to not pretend that this is a very real risk and even be more proactive about protecting people who want to vote, the process of voting, polling places, polling officials. And in terms of our path forward, we need to protect our democratic process as a path forward and not kind of be dismissive or ignore what I think are very real threats of violence as we look towards November. So as a path forward, yeah, I'd like to kind of ramp up our efforts to protect our voting process. Another path forward from David's comments that got me thinking about was this increased focus on trying to improve the life of middle-class people and poor people as opposed to the trickle-down vision. It seems to be paying dividends in terms of levels of unemployment that I think are like the 60s. I mean, they have under 4% unemployment in this country. Now, you could say how the numbers are done and all that, but still, that's amazing. One of the paths forward that I think also to be thought about is that on inflation, I saw a number that said that basically 40% of inflation was coming from price increases by companies as opposed to the supply chain and all that kind of stuff that you've heard. It's basically being able to have some sort of pricing power to take advantage of it. So I was kind of actually happy that there have been some Justice Department filings, anti-trust against Apple and Google and these other ones to really look inside of these tech black boxes and see how the kinds of concerns that we have in the anti-trust law are being met. One of the cases that I've always loved to read, it got resolved, was the U.S. versus Microsoft back in the 90s, where you had these findings of fact by the judge, I think it was a Judge Barrington in D.C., and he just basically broke down eloquently how Microsoft sucked all the air out for Netscape and these other companies at the time for purposes of, as part of dominating the search engine environment. And so to have somebody be able to break it down and to help us understand how things are being manipulated, I think that that's a way forward. I think it's important because we do get inundated with a lot of, I don't know if it's called marketing or whatever, to try to tell us that threats abroad in technology are so awful that we have to defend our companies. It's like, again, the patriotism flag that basically meant about creating shareholder value and maximizing profits. It's got nothing to do with patriotism, but they're pulling on that flag. As to the people who want to dictate her, David, you must remember all that talk at some point about the imperial executive. I think it's back to Nixon, even, that they talked about the imperial executive. I mean, the centralization of power in the executive branch, it's been going on for, what, 50, 60 years or something like that. And that is people saying, that's not enough. That's not enough. It's been 50 years of centralizing power in the executive branch. And it's like, no, we want more. And of course, this immunity thing, the fun thing with that is that it just goes back to the fundamental debate back with the guys back in the Declaration of Independence and Constitution time. Some people wanted, essentially, George Washington to have a coronation, like a king when he was the first president. And he was smart enough to say, no, that's okay. That whole yearning for a king, as opposed to the structure that Madison tried to put in place with the separations of powers and federalism and everybody yelling at everybody, but avoiding that exact kind of centralized power to some extent. I just think it's an irony to hear people seeming to yearn for kings. The yearning for kings. Yeah, I think it's a fear of freedom in a way. It's that I'm kind of afraid of what freedom means and what responsibility and what that might bring. So I'd rather have someone telling me, that's the idea of executive imperialism. There's different ways to get there. We have three branches of government, but one way to get there is make some of the branches ineffectual and unoperative. So let's make Congress, let's make Congress impotent. Let's make sure that Congress can't pass anything, which is kind of we read right now. The country still has to operate. There are things that have to be done. If we make this body in operative, there's only one way things will get done and that's executive order. So this is kind of an indirect way to kind of maybe get the result we want. Let's kind of sabotage Congress by making sure we don't produce anything that's going to be helpful. It's just going to stagnate, pursue some some impeachments and things that are really not that any evidence-based and we can achieve this kind of stronger executive another way. Ben, you mentioned the unemployment. In terms of the path forward, making sure that people understand this information and information, what the difference is, that low unemployment rate, that all happened in a world where there wasn't almost a single economist who was ready to protect that we were going to be able to emerge from COVID without a recession. Recession typically means massive unemployment. It didn't happen. That's pretty miraculous that we did not have that happen. I don't think people really appreciate how tremendous that was that we were able to maintain that low unemployment and preserve people's jobs and income. We haven't got that message out. So in terms of path forward, I think highlighting some of the realities of the past few years, some of the productive legislation that was passed, some of the accomplishments of the current administration is a path forward. I don't think we've done a very good job of making people understand that. I think they've failed in that regard, and they've got to do a better job. I think that there is something to be said that we were all suffering some kind of post-chromatic stress from the pandemic. It's like a hangover psychologically that's affecting all of us. Getting us out of or getting us bit by bit out of that funk of what that did to us is still, I think it's a work in progress here in this country. The other thing is that about the dysfunctional Congress vision, basically it's what the chaos vision. It's like let's create chaos because chaos is to the advantage of somebody to exploit that if Congress doesn't do anything, then you don't get any rules changes, you don't get anything addressing the issues. For example, regulating tech companies, okay, nothing gets through so they just can still keep making all their money. I'm not against tech, but I'm just pointing it out is that you can't get legislation through that might actually be needed. The one area that I find interesting to watch right now is the judiciary. The nature of how judicial decisions are being made in different parts of this country. I just saw something that to avoid what they call judge shopping, there's been a rule that's been put in place by the judicial conference that appointments are supposed to be random. The chief judge for the northern district of Texas says he's not going to abide by the new rule. I was like, that's pretty interesting to have the chief judge for a district court in the United States to be given a rule and to say I'm not going to abide by the rule. You've got to think about that for a second. What does that say about that? What does that say about something going on in the judiciary, right? Yeah, it's really disturbing. It's really just so we talk about the rule of law in respect to the rule of law and we've got a former president who has no regard for the rule of law. But it's really, as Ben's mentioning, really distressing if people within judiciary start disrespecting the rule of law. That's not only unsettling, that's frightening. Yeah, and one of the things that I do worry a lot about, I must admit it's just maybe more recently, at one point is somewhat considered to be in violation of their bail conditions and they get remanded back to be in jail free trial, right? Obviously, I'm speaking about these different gag orders being done with regards to the way that a former president Trump is acting about his cases. I'm just imagining if there was some kind of ordinary citizen acting like that that was out on bail, that the judge would cancel their bail and they'd have in New York, it'd be Rikers Island. They'd be in Rikers Island, right? Now, even if the person is a candidate, yeah, they're a candidate. Well, a lot of people have jobs, too. But it's like, at what point, and I understand the idea of like, well, we don't want to make a martyr, you know, all that kind of stuff. I understand all that, but I'm just sort of looking at it from sort of that rule of law perspective and respect for the judicial process vision that, you know, is there a point where, I mean, for example, I saw that there's this one state court judge, okay, he's just increased his gag order to say you can't talk about anybody, but you can talk about me, right? Okay, the judge, you can talk about the judge all you want, right? And I'm thinking like, well, wait, you know, the judge is a person, yeah, but the judge is also this organ of the state, right? That is dispensing justice. And as a consequence, you don't just get to say anything about that organ of the state. You can say anything about you, me, you or me, okay? But at some point, the organ in the state should be able to say, hey, excuse me, you don't talk about me like that. You're going, you're remanded because you're not showing the proper deference to the judicial process that is that every other defendant I've ever seen or in civil or criminal cases has typically shown, except, you know, I get these once in a while, somebody jumps over a thing and tries to beat up the judge and they get arrested and they get charged with another crime, right? You know, but generally, you know, there's a lot of deference in that courtroom, right? And when you think about it on another level with these cases of disbarment of lawyers that are going on right now, which is like lawyers losing licenses over the kind of stuff that they allowed themselves to do. Remember, lawyers were supposed to be officers of the court, David, right? You remember that? You know, there was like, there's a client and then you're the lawyer, right? And you're, you know, you're the kind of reasonable mind, no matter what the client is saying, right? And we see these lawyers like going off the deep end. I'm going to jump in on one of the, one of the path forward as in we're closing seconds. I think increasing voter rights is a path forward. And, you know, in Michigan, we've expanded access to voting. We expanded nine days of early voting are now possible. It's easier to vote by mail in Michigan, more access to drop boxes, an expansive list of accepted notifications. New York requires high schools to provide voter registration forms to students. Nevada makes it easier to vote on reservations and incarcerated individuals vote from jail. So I think that's a path forward. In contrast, you look down the Mississippi, Mississippi passed SB 2358 that says anyone who's not an election official, postal worker, family member, household member or caregiver and assists a voter with turning in their ballot will receive criminal penalties. It's like, oh my God, it's could anything be more undemocratic. So if we want to path forward, I think it's it's expanding voter eligibility and the and the process for voting and not doing things like Mississippi has done. So where does this leave us? And we can all kind of take all of these thoughts and so many more that you've alluded to. And every single voter is going to have to go into that voting booth all by themselves. And hopefully, some little Gemini cricket of conscience and character and courage will come to them in that moment. And they will see and make a responsible choice. If not for themselves, for the people they care about for their children, for the grandchildren, for the community, if we understand the choices. So what I'm hoping is in the next six months, the Democratic Party makes those choices crystal clear. By showing us what they are in the terms of ordinary people, the stories of ordinary people's daily lives, how they're impacted by those choices for health care, for education, for governance, for voting rights, across the board, employment, all of those things, those choices are clear. But we need to understand that get the rhetoric, get the polemic, get the propaganda out of the way. See the choices in human terms, ordinary people terms and make those choices. Thanks for joining us on Think Tech. Ben, David, thanks for your thoughtful, insightful perspectives. We hope people will take them into account and take them into those voting booths with them and listen to the Gemini crickets that we all need to hear. Think Tech Hawaii, join us again next week. We want to announce that Think Tech Hawaii is moving into a new phase and will not be producing regular talk shows after April 30th. We will retain our website and YouTube channel and will accept new content on an ad hoc basis. We are also developing a legacy archive program to provide continuing public access to our content. If you can help us cover the costs of the transition and the development of our legacy archive program, please make a donation on thinktechawai.com. Thanks so much. Aloha.