 Okay, we're back. We're live. I'm Jay Fidel. This is Think Tech Hawaii and its global connections with Carlos Juarez who joins us by Zoom from Austin, Texas these times. So tell us what's going on, especially Carlos, in terms of the international experience looking in at the United States over our protests. Well, no, thank you, Jay. I'm always delighted to join you here for us to reconnect and offer some global perspective. As we call this show, Global Connections, it's an opportunity for you and for our audience to reach out. Actually, let me clarify, I am connected to Texas and have been now for many years since I left Hawaii. I left Hawaii now five years ago, Jay, if you can imagine. I've been literally on like a long sabbatical, first to Austria, Mexico, most of the time, Texas here and there, India. But let me say this, I'm actually finishing up work in Mexico at the moment and reconnecting to Austin, although I have family there. So Mexico University of the Americas in Puebla, where I've been connected for the last two years with you. And I will continue there for the time being all always longstanding. My connection is with Hawaii Pacific University, where I am now actually Professor Emeritus, political science professor from HPU, many, many years there, and still connected, still doing some online teaching with all these institutions. But today, we come and boy, we've had such a tumultuous last week, 10 days, particularly now, all of the attention suddenly has shifted from the pandemic that's been with us for months to this massive protest, social movement about violence, well, it has been violent, but basically this dramatic protest of the death, the killing of the latest George Floyd, of course. And what I'd like to offer is some perspective and maybe I've scanned some of the environment of the international press and media because obviously, this is a domestic political crisis for the US, but it also reflects very much on the US as seen from the outside world. It doesn't do the image very good and it reinforces a lot of biases and a lot of assumptions and maybe a long history of US race relations of protests, even a country like China today that's been on the spotlight, right, with a, in fact, today, if we, as we speak, the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre now 31 years ago, right, and the US always critical of the treatment of minority Uyghurs of the, you know, otherwise the Hong Kong right now protest movement this past year. And today, the United States has more difficulty holding human rights and democracy, sort of as important principles when its own house is burning right now. And so Chinese can look to us and say, ah, you know, wait a minute before you criticize me for my domestic affairs, you know, take a look in the mirror. But beyond that, other parts of the world obviously are seeing it and, you know, like every place we all bring whatever understanding we have of the world. I think it's fair to say today, even in the United States, we have very different alternative realities. You know, for some people who, you know, it's a clear evident form of institutionalized racism that hasn't gone away. For others, it's like, well, no, we've gotten beyond that post-race and maybe now it's more about the legal, I don't know, issues, not the human rights. It is a complex issue, but certainly we can say it is not looking well for the United States. Moreover, it comes in the midst of, not at the end of, but we still have a pandemic that suddenly now we've got large clusters of people in the streets. And while it is, of course, again, a U.S. thing, we also have, this is worldwide, there have been European cities with protests joining in London and Zurich and Brussels and in Dublin, Ireland and elsewhere. So a lot of solidarity, but mixed in with this confusion because you have suddenly violence, right? And the police tactics in some places have backfired a bit. All this to say, it puts the U.S. in the spotlight and it shows, you know, a country that's both divided. Set aside from all that was happening, then here's an opportunity for a leader, a president of the United States, for example, who would typically have a certain response trying to, you know, heal the wounds, bring together. We don't see that happening with President Trump and, you know, he's sort of cursed whether he chooses to act, it's likely to go poorly, and then if he doesn't, he looks callous and cold. And the times that he has responded have been pretty frightening for some, you know, calling in the military and making reference to the dogs and, you know, shooting very, very scary, I think. And, you know, maybe sticking finally back to the perspective from outside, in some ways it's more of the same. It's a pattern in American history that hasn't been resolved and, you know, it kind of brings out the worst and the ugly, the American ugly side. Let me turn right there and maybe you will continue the dialogue here. Well, yeah, I'm reminded of that. You talked about a solidarity protest in Ireland. Well, there was an Irish writer who wrote for the Irish, who does write for the Irish times, and he stepped through the way the world, especially Europe, has seen the United States in its role in the liberal order, liberal world order, since the war. And it's gone from everyone admired us to now everyone, without going through all the steps, everyone pitied us and do pity us. That's the term he used. And there's something resonant about that. If you're in Europe and you see this happening, this is not positive leadership. It is not admirable in any way. It is not helpful in any way. It is a spiral down. And pity is the appropriate word. So, and I really, you know, wonder where we fit in the liberal world, I mean, to the world order, it isn't liberal anymore, especially now in the time of COVID. I find it remarkable, by the way, that the American press is largely complicit in this. What I mean is it's raw meat. There are fewer national media networks than there were before. People are watching the raw meat experience all over the country every night now for nine going on 10 nights, I think. And what they see, you know, is raw meat. And the regrettable thing about that is that they're not paying attention to probably the most significant threat of our time, which is COVID. And COVID is still killing people at even at an increasing rate. Largely because of the protests, people are, you know, they're having social non-distancing. They're catching it again. The numbers are going up. There was a piece in The Hill, which I get, which is an online newspaper, I think, out of Washington, pointing out that there were temporary test sites in a lot of the cities now that are troubled. And the authority took them all down. So that the whole testing thing is like stopped. And our effort at dealing with the virus has largely stopped. I think we're very complacent because, you know, the curve was being flattened at least in some places, not in others. But now, A, it's going up again. And B, nobody seems to really care that much. We're all concerned about the protests. And I feel that a person looking at this, and by the way, everybody looks at the same TV around the world. It's no surprise to find that our correspondent in Varanasi, India is looking at the same television, raw meat, you know, content that we get here. Why? So everybody is reacting to that. And they're probably, I mean, at least the people who are familiar with the science are saying, what about COVID? Didn't we have COVID? Did COVID go away? Was it solved? Remember, Trump said something like, we're back. You know, as you have to say, we have vanquished. I think he used the term, we've prevailed. But we haven't prevailed. And the federal government had done little, if nothing, to actually prevail. And I think one of the really interesting things of the past week is Anthony Fauci got up and said, we're going to have tens of millions, maybe more, of doses of some kind of vaccine by the end of this calendar year. Which let me do the math on that six months away. Where did that come from? And I'm not sure that's really true. He, by the way, he's been forced out of the task force, if there is a task force. So what's happening is we have turned out back. The fickle finger has moved to other things. Media has moved to other things. Trump has moved to other things. Whatever part of the government should have been addressing this, they've moved to other things. Except we still have COVID. Yeah. It's astonishing. And on one hand, it's a short attention span, but also the sense that there was like so much pent up frustration that once this social movement and this protest movement came, it took on a bigger life. But it was also for many and for these crowds, like the first time you're out interacting with other people. And almost, I can tell you, I had this weird feeling like it was a sense of a carnival atmosphere, almost like, you know, excitement and euphoria. But wait a minute, you know, at the same time, you're all basically putting more and more of us in danger and risk. It's a public health crisis that we're still in. So it's very much a mixture of frustration, uncertainty, anger, you know, empathy, understanding, but also like, wait a minute, let's, you know, let's, let's rethink this. And then for others, no, you have to seize the opportunity now and make sure. And moreover, maybe related to this, this pandemic is changing. It's a game changer in many ways, right? The before and after, it's a watershed, the way we work and once we come out of this. So for some, it's envisioning a better future. Let's build it. Let's not go back to the old normal. Let's make the future normal, better. And maybe some even looking at this crisis right now over police brutality and racism, somehow is if you, you know, I mean, try to, what can you do? You know, what can you, what can you do to reform? And, you know, again, it's a, there's no simple, easy answer, but I really go back to this. I think there's been a lot of pent up, I don't know, anxiety, frustration. And of course, on this issue, let me take the opportunity to offer us some, maybe some, some perspectives from international newspapers. A great article a couple of days ago from the Guardian in the UK refers to, well, it gives a little excerpt said, and let me read a few of them. Let me just read off a few of these, for example, the Sydney Morning News in Australia, columnist writes, the mayhem follows a depressing pattern in American history. A record of state failures to protect blacks and others against police brutality is all too full. Ditto ditto. In France, Le Monde newspaper has a similar picture of structural racism and police brutality. And it indicates, you know, George Floyd and Eric Garner are not isolated victims. The list is too long to give here of black Americans of all ages, who are often victims of encounters with police that turn out badly, of the trigger happy in a country where firearms are routinely carried as an accessory, not, or just plain racism. El periódico en Barcelona, in Spain. The truth is what happened in Minneapolis, recorded on video, and viewed worldwide through social networks, is just the latest proof that the racism epidemic is far from being controlled, and that two Barack Obama administrations did nothing to cauterize any wounds. The Times of London, in its leader on Monday, has a similar 2020 comes with its own complications. And one of them is in the White House. On Friday, after first having called Floyd's death shocking, President Trump took to Twitter to threaten the military response against the thugs, and so on. You know, we've heard a lot of the criticism of that. And finally, in South Africa, the male and guardian, it basically notes it. They get a quote here from a Somali immigrant who basically is fearing for her black son back in the US. Black mothers have much to fear when it comes to their children. American soil is saturated with the blood of black people, slavery, Jim Crow, mass incarceration, the war on drugs, police brutality. All of these have ensured that black people no pain and lost intimately. And here I would also go back to this comment about, I think, again, in any place you go, you have different clusters of people who tend to keep to themselves. And in the United States, for example, people who live in big complex urban centers or even a multi-ethnic, multi-racial society like Hawaii are more likely to be tolerant and open-minded as they meet other people. But I attest to you, Jay, that a very large percentage of Americans in different parts, especially in the black and white South, often don't have any interactions or social connections with people of other races. There's not a lot of that. It happens in some institutions, sometimes in the education or in the military as a good example, where you have sort of a forced integration. But too often in many parts of American society, maybe a black who will rarely have interactions with a white, maybe a white who doesn't know or have a friend who's black. And to me, that goes a long way to kind of reinforcing these fears and misunderstandings that people have about other people. Yeah. Well, it reminds me of this kind of two or more worlds. This alternative universe is going on. For example, in between all those shots of all these people protesting, you have television ads. And the television ads are du regur, multiracial. You have multiracial couples, all kinds of races. They're all mixed up. They're always there together. And you say to yourself, wait a minute, does this happen in the South? Is this really the way America lives? Or is this the way Madison Avenue lives? Is this supposed to encourage people to get together and have a polyglot kind of life? Is it real? Does it be any relation to the reality in America? And I think the answer is well, only a minimal relation, as you say, in the cities and the places that are already diverse. But in most of America, it doesn't work. And I think there are a lot of people who are openly racist. And they are in the Black or White South and other rural areas. And they're going to stay that way because nothing has ever exposed them to the other race. And this takes me back to the draft, to the draft. One of the things that made America great was the military with the conscription, where everybody was brought in and they were in an experience which they were told and believed that they represented the country. They were fighting for the right cause, World War II. And that brought Black and White together, brought everybody together. And you had to be shoulder to shoulder. You couldn't not be shoulder to shoulder. That's the way it worked. Although there were racist divisions within the military we find out in those days. But in large part, it was a kind of diversification process, diversity process. But then in the 70s, it went away. Under Gerald Ford, it went away and then there was no draft and there was no national service. And there is no national service to speak of now. And so you can go through your whole life and never really engage with someone of another race. In fact, you never engage with the country, aside from paying taxes and not committing federal felonies. And that's a real problem, because we have all gone into our silos and the country is not together. We are not working together. And if they tell me one more time we're in this together, I'm going to say something. Bottom line is we have fissures. We have flaws in our society. And you imply that it's hard to fix this. And I certainly agree. It's very hard to fix this. And what it requires, simple, what it has always required in humanity is a leader. We follow leaders. Leadership, absolutely. And let me follow that. I mean, I hear what you're saying because ultimately, with proper leadership, you could today take opportunity, take this window of opportunity of the pandemic and say, look, what we really need is to engage with our community, citizenship, and a service. We need contact tracers. We need people to handle this pandemic, spread the load, distribute the burden. But more than that, we need people to get out of their comfort zone in their own little community and go to a different state, a different part of our country, and offer a year or two of service. The AmeriCorps, it was the Peace Corps that kind of be sent around the world. And unfortunately, that's not going to happen without leadership that steps up and says, hey, let's mobilize. Let's do this. It's important. And that is the kind of thing that over time has a profound impact. When people meet and interact and have positive experiences with people who are different from them, it will change their view, the sort of people-to-people exchange, if you will. But again, you need that leadership. It's not there at the moment. We'll have to see how that plays out. But it is an opportunity. Moreover, even think about the school situation now. It's going to be hard. I think especially those going from high school to colleges. There will be some debating whether this might be the time for a leap year, for example. Take a break. And frankly, what if you had opportunities to connect people to help rebuild, reopen? Now, again, hard to say. We could go back to this, the international news itself has obviously, just like here domestically, we've gone from being focused overwhelmingly on the pandemic and everything it entails and wherever the hotspots are. This last week now, this suddenly shift, not just for the US, but even for the world to suddenly have in the headlines, race riots in the US. It's again like Los Angeles in the early 90s and the late 60s, the civil rights movement. And the world out there, the world community does look to US social policy and sort of human rights issues, both as a source of inspiration that inspired Nelson Mandela and Mahatma Gandhi and others, but also as a source of, wait a minute, look at yourself in the mirror and maybe the black eye that it represents, the challenge that it represents. Even the idea that in the more recent, let's say Obama period, we had this notion briefly that we were in a now post-racial society, a post-racial America. Quite clearly we're not and we have a divided, we have a lot of sort of racism that is embedded in there and it exists. And now again, it's come out all the other ways and it's come out for different reasons. Certainly, arguably Trump has helped to enable it and brought out, maybe making it now more easy for people to hate and to build on that. The net effect, looking at it from overseas, the net effect is that where people were really, at first I think people thought, well, the country will survive Trump. Either he'll come around or the country will deal with him, you get rid of him, ignore him, do the right thing anyway. I think that's over. I think people realize everywhere, but especially overseas, that Trump is the United States. Whether he was properly elected or not properly elected, he's been in there for almost four years, he represents the country, he controls the country in so many ways, because people listen to his bully pulpit and all, that they measure us by him and he is disgusting. So what happens is we are disgusting. I think people are losing confidence in us all the time. On top of that, you have this failure of the reopening, which is a failure that is also a pandemic. And then on top of that, you have the social trouble we have now, which is, as you say, it's not new, it's baked into the American history and culture. So what are the guys thinking about us? They're thinking, well, they pity us. We're a country that in the process of failure, we're almost laughable right now. And the query, do they trust us? Do they have confidence in us? Do they have any belief in us? Or are we simply missing in action? We have abdicated our roles as a global leader. And this, if you weren't sure up till now, now you're sure. We can't even handle our social problems. We can't deal with a crisis. We can't deal with a bad president. Our democracy is not flexible. It's not nimble. It's not capable. We can't sell that to anyone. And I think this has implications. I think this is probably the way people feel in many places. It's a dynamic. It's changed over the past four years. But it's a dynamic that is changing public opinion about us everywhere in the world. And the implications, the what follows, the consequences of that are the most interesting thing of all. Our influence is declining. Our ability to do business, to have a measure of participation in international projects, organizations, decision making is declining. When he put off the what do you call it, the World Health Organization? World Health Organization, the United Nations, the seven group, and then to do and then to bring in Putin, who they didn't want there in the first place, is so insulting, is so off base that all those people, if we have any leadership left, it's hard to find. And this is going to have consequences. Do you have any thoughts about what those consequences might be? Well, look, as you've noted, we've seen a trend that has been accelerated under Trump of the U.S. becoming relatively less powerful, less influential, and advocating its leadership. Now, by Trump, it's by choice in some ways. I think before him, it was because we were having relative decline with the rise of China, the rise of the EU, the rise of other emerging powers, but the U.S. not quite coming to terms of that. Now, with Trump from the very beginning, it's been a policy of rejection of multilateralism, of internationalism, and blaming our traditional allies, fighting wars all around conflicts with everybody. But curiously, you know, and so today, yeah, the international community does not trust or believe the U.S. And even as the election is now five months away, there are many, I think, who believe it could go any way, but there's a very real possibility Trump could pull it off. The electoral college system that even most Americans don't quite remember is an indirect election. That's the name of the game and how you get that magic number, it means that the race is always bought in five or six or seven states only. Well, maybe the cynicism as well, maybe skepticism and criticism of the U.S., they almost see Trump as reflecting that ugly American syndrome. And, you know, so don't be surprised if he's re-elected, it's just going to be a continued reflection of some of the worst of the U.S. But let me say, let me shift for a moment about that. And, you know, curiously, we're in this current new crisis now, the protest movement that we're obviously well, dealing with. And it comes in many ways after now, three plus years, three and a half years of relative peace and prosperity before the pandemic, let's say before 2020. You know, despite all the chaos in the first few years of the Trump administration, relative peace, we didn't have wars that were flaring up against and relative prosperity. And now we have a crisis in some ways of his own making that he has helped make because the previous ones, you know, basically, oh no, let me rephrase that. Whatever crises we had before were of his own making. Right now we're facing an economic and decline because of this pandemic that came out of nowhere. Now we have the racial unrest added to that. And the public remains, in all of this, uncertain and afraid and increasingly angry and angry at everything, at the failure of dealing with the pandemic, at, you know, the unemployment saga of the economy, and no clarity, no focus, no strategy. There's a lot of frustration. And then you add to it this little powder keg of suddenly one more racial, you know, police brutality violence captured on video. And boy, it's just created a firestorm. And as you said, the media suddenly salivating over this and the nature of the media in the United States, especially driven by sort of private corporations that need to have ratings and marketing, they sensationalize it and turn it into more drama. And so here we go, you know, suddenly all the attention shifts, it takes on a different life. It is important, it's significant, but it becomes even more because the story becomes, you know, part of it. So I think your point about, you know, what will happen in November is a really important inflection point for not only the US, but for the world. It's kind of a worst case analysis if he wins, because we'll have more of the same, it'll be unfettered, there will be no accountability. The rest of government will be completely dysfunctional, marginalized, burned at the Reichstag, so to speak. And, you know, we'll have a terrible time for the next four years or longer. It'll be the worst thing that ever happened in American history. He is already the worst thing that has ever happened in American history. But the other factor, Carlos, is that it creates a vacuum. He has created a vacuum, and we have created a vacuum in our inability to solve these problems. And so at the same time, China understands this. China sees this as the century of opportunity. Now I think one way of looking at this is what what kind of opportunities can China move into? They're certainly aware of those opportunities. And what traction can they get in replacing us in the liberal world order? Replacing us in the economic order? Replacing us as the financial center of the world? And I think there's a fair chance they're already en route there. And it won't take too much or too long for them to realize that aspiration, don't you think? Well, look, I would share this, I think of what you said. I think the Chinese are kind happier to sit back and without rushing to take out a role as the responsible stakeholder. They would rather be low-key and cooperate and watch the United States as it fumbles and foibles and write it out, let's say. They've been handling, as you well, we've talked a lot about and seen these past months, the crisis in Hong Kong and that situation that remains, a work in progress that could go anyway still. But maybe in terms of global leadership, I guess, the sort of changing dynamics geopolitics, yes, the U.S. is in decline, has lost credibility influence, is no longer taken seriously. And even if there is a transition for Trump, you laid out a scenario where if he gets reelected, which could happen, it would just be continued disaster. There's also a scenario where he loses the election, but how likely is it he's going to go peacefully, easily in transition? It would probably be more like a little schoolyard tantrum and allegations of fraud and whipping up maybe violence. Who knows? It could be ugly. Let's assume this is my last question to you, Carlos. Let's assume that Trump does not win the election and that on January 20th, Biden is sworn in and Trump in large part has to go away. Let's assume that. And my question to you is, given the worldview of the United States, will Biden be capable of restoring our position in the world, in the eyes of the world? He will make an immediate change and work very quickly and tirelessly to reassure, particularly the traditional allies of Europe, even of Asia, Korea, Japan, and in general, try to improve it. But it won't be easy. It won't be overnight. And it can never be to restore the US to what it had been before. There's not going to be a return to the primacy, to the leadership role the US had. The best that we can hope for though, is that the US needs to seat at the table. It needs to be present and needs to interact and cooperate even with countries you don't agree with. That's the nature of the world. And we're going to continue to have these challenges. This current pandemic requires that. And right now, we have a president who's decided to abdicate cooperation with the World Hero Organization. Right now, what we need is a solution that's universal, that's cooperating along everybody. And the US not having a role in that is just a big mistake. So, yes, Biden will be, or really any change, but certainly as we see it now, if there is a Biden victory, it will move towards that and reaffirm and probably have a respectable, distinguished person as our Secretary of State, whoever that may be. And the world will appreciate it. But I think the damage done and maybe the US credibility won't be easy to restore overnight. It will be a long time. But certainly, even the damage done to our foreign service, the diplomatic community, we've lost a lot of best and brightest and those who are in it now have been in an awkward, difficult position. It takes time to replenish that and to get new attitudes. But surely, let's hope that that can happen in time. But in the end, I think the United States, something we have not done well, has to come to terms with a role as a powerful, important player, but not the top dog and having to work in a world in cooperation with others where we are one of the members, but not number one, despite being the biggest military, biggest economy. In terms of actual power, today, again, the Chinese, the Europeans, other mid-level powers have more capacity now to shape global politics, global economics, etc. Yeah, to me, I mean, it's very important that people in general should understand this. I mean, Trump did not achieve this nationalism without having some support from his base and maybe even beyond his base. People who want to be isolationists, who want to be nationalistic, who don't care what the world thinks, who don't see us as having a role in global affairs. They think we should just fold in on ourselves. And as you said, this is a huge big mistake. And if we want to climb out of it with Biden or anyone who succeeds Trump, we're going to have to have people in general come together in this country, come together and get conscious, become more conscious, maybe more than ever in our lifetimes, conscious of our role in world affairs. It's really important for us. It's important that you and I continue this conversation. Carlos, thank you so much. It's always great to talk to you. There's more to come. I guarantee there'll be more material by the time we get together again. Absolutely. Always a pleasure, Jay. And yes, let's keep the dialogue going and look forward to our next chat here on Global Connections. On Global Connections. Thank you, Carlos Mariz. Aloha.