 Good morning. It's January the 5th, 2022, the new year. Welcome everyone, and I hope everyone has a safe, healthy and prosperous new year. Today's title is, well, if I can find it, U.S. democracy can vanish. You can stop that. I'm Tim Apachele, your host. And I'd just like to start with this title because our democracy seems to be in jeopardy, and it seems to be vanishing before our very eyes very slowly at a very slow pace. Back in 1787, when Ben Franklin walked out a constitutional hall, he was asked a question. He said, the question was, doctor, have we got a republic or a monarchy? And Ben Franklin said, a republic, if you can keep it? Well, the question is, can we keep our republic? Can we keep our democracy? And, you know, those who think with American exceptionalism that our democracy is bold and bright has served as a beacon for hundreds of years for the rest of the world to admire and behold. American exceptionalism is just that. It's rather arrogant for us to continue to believe that because right now, we've been taking off the list of the most democratic nation in the country. We have been taking off that list, as of recently. And if those who are arrogant about our democracy and think nothing can tamper with it, well, let me remind you of a fact that happened back in the 1940s. The snap of a finger or in this case, the ink of a pen for 120,000 Americans, their democracy was usurped, taken away from them in a moment. The executive order 9066 on February the 19th, 1942, President Franklin signed that order and 120,000 Americans lost their democracy they lost their rights for their freedom, their property, and they are incarcerated for three years. So let's not be too, too arrogant to cocky about the fact that democracy can go away in a blink of an eye. And so to talk about this discussion about our democracy, I'd like to introduce my guests. Jay Fidel Winston Welch and Cynthia Lee Sinclair. Happy New Year, everyone. Good morning. New year. Jay to you. We just throw a little curveball here we just heard Merrick Garland or United States Attorney General, basically make a distinction between our, the First Amendment rights to freedom of speech, versus the threat of violence or actual violence to prevent our democracy from flourishing. What was your impression of Merrick Garland's discussion this morning, and his commitment to keep democracy alive in the United States. Merrick Garland's photo and the link to that discussion on tomorrow's daily or think tech daily. But I only saw a part of it and I have three reactions I would mention. Number one is, it's about time. Sorry. We've been talking about it we've been clenching about it here on America once what now for months. And he's been Attorney General for a year. And this is the first time he approached, you know, making, I guess, his view of stirring, stirring speech. That's the first reaction. It's a little late, actually. The second reaction is that he must have been under tremendous pressure by the Biden administration, I can just, I can hear the discussion in the Opal Office now. Then when something like Merrick you got to get out there man. Everybody's talking about you. They're all saying you're a wimp. What about getting out there and showing, you know, showing a little, a little metal. So that happened. And the third thing I again is that for Merrick who is not a stirring speaker. I'll go on record with that. Merrick Merrick said around halfway through the speech he said this. He said, quote, we're all Americans. And we've got to protect each other. And quote. Merrick Garland that is stirring I was stirred by that I was turned with some of the other things he said to, we have waited a long time for him to speak. We have waited a long time for some high public official to say that. And to hear it said was stirring and I got email from people this morning, including some hosts of other shows on sync tech, saying she was this is memorable. So it's a good thing on balance. You wish he had more fire in him. And you wish he had done it earlier. And you hope he'll do it some more in the future. But the Department of Justice has huge power use prospect in terms of dealing with the insurrectionists including Trump. And it's not at all clear that it's doing that. You know, before we started the show, you know, I said I didn't hear him say anything about Trump. And Tim you responded by saying well, they didn't say anything directly about about Trump but he said he would follow the facts wherever they go. He would prosecute, you know, whatever, whatever came out of this. And I'll hold them to that I wish he'd been more specific about it but he did say that he did say that he's going to hold accountable at any and all levels, and then follow the facts wherever they lead so that was encouraging. So but you know, I mean it's really a serendipitous that you should pick the title you picked for today's show. And then is US democracy vanishing. And then the first part, the second part is can we stop that I got a few thoughts about that too. Bottom line, this is the issue of the day. And although climate change is important and the various elements of Biden's legislative package they're important but right now. It's, it's a matter of addressing our democracy and whether we can preserve it at how fast it is sliding down the hill. No question. No question that it is sliding down the hill. But how fast. You said, you said in your opening remarks Tim you said at one point well it moves slowly, and then they also said that it moves fast. In the last category, I think that when it reaches a certain tipping point can happen virtually overnight, depending on the events involved. So I think we have a major problem. And Merrick Garland could be a solution. But we have a major problem we all want to be aware of it. And I want to go up on this is, you know, I've been listening to a lot of interviews in the last few days, particularly regarding the, the anniversary of January 6, and the experts who study autocracies around the world and, and the transformation from democracy into autocracies. And they know that the number one thing that is cited as to the beginning of the end for a democracy is apathy from the, the public, from the citizens of that country apathy that their democracy is not vanishing. And Merrick Garland actually made reference to that he said, you can't just rely on the Department of Justice for the maintenance of democracy, it is the responsibility and rights of every citizen. What are you referring to do you think when he made that statement was it, was it accountability to the elected officials that the public should give pressure to maintain pressure on the electric officials for not speaking out when democracy is challenged or is it something more than that Jay. Well this goes to the second part of your title you know what can we do about it. The answer is, you know we've heard so many times that the franchise the most important franchise for all of us is to vote, but voting has been undermined horribly by the Republican, you know, legislators and activists in so many states. It's clear that voting is what he's talking about. I think what he's talking about is, is stuff like this, like think tech like writing op ed pieces, like facing people and telling them they're, they're wrong about their views over failure of democracy of their actions to undermine democracy. It's like, I think he would say if you were with us now it's like everybody's obligation to take every opportunity possible, because if we don't do that we as a group of 330 million people if we don't do that we are turning our backs on it and we will seriously regret that. Let me add that the violence, the violence that he spoke of is very, very important because one of the indicia of the failure of democracy, or for that matter the transition to another form of government or anarchy, which is more likely in this case is violence. And I don't think people fully understand that if you want to transition to some other kind of form of government, because you're abandoning democracy, you will pay a horrendous price. One is you won't be able to find a dentist. This is very important. The other, the other is, you know, you may have trouble finding food and water, you may not have the internet you may be unable to talk to your, your community, so to speak, you may not find gas for your car you're going to be sitting at home, worrying in fear about what you do. That's the price of transition to chaos, or chaos itself. So I think I think what he was talking about is right now, the obligation to do something right now we, we can't be on the sideline, and that means everybody that you don't have to have a PhD to know to get out there and preserve our democracy. Unfortunately, for some people, this is harder than for other people. For us, I think we're in it and we have demonstrated an awareness and an interest in it. And what we are doing is really valuable if you measure it by what Merrick Garland was saying. Thank you, Jay. Winston, to hit on Jay's last point is you know the responsibility of our citizens to do something about it. The question that goes through the question is, do, do a majority of our citizens in this country even know what democracy is, and what it looks like and, and what shapes our democracy and what is the history of our democracy. Do we have an education void, if you will, or a puke of education that people aren't even sure what democracy means anymore. Jay laid out a pretty compelling case about what it looks like and you know, I, when you were saying about American exceptionalism. I, we, we have been the shining city on the hill for a long time, are we perfect have we been perfect. No, have we made serious missteps. Yes, are we continuing to make them and faster. Yes. But I don't think we should minimize the impact that this nation has had on the world and hopefully for the better I mean I believe that it has been and and it's time to get our own house back in order and the wonderful thing about this nation is that we can take the deep dive, looking inward and making sure that things are hopefully that we're we're following best practices as it were. Now are we know this subject of all of our shows in the last couple of years here and many shows on think tech and of course the media every second pouring something out and we have all types of people just flapping their jaws that are really damaging our institutions. Does the ordinary Joe on the streets. No. I don't know. I would think so but there's been a systematic hollowing out of education we don't have a few media sources where we have a consistent viewpoint as when we were kids we had three or two stations you know ABC CBS and NBC and pretty much the news was controlled. Everyone has his or her or their own news channel and and decides what they're where they're going to get their news whether it's tick tock or, or nothing at all because it's so overwhelming because they're worried about getting cove it or having a double shift or, you know, stepping over people in the street or they just see a general degradation of life all around them. And when they think about who the President is, you know, it's probably not factoring really high on their list given their, their daily concerns. I would hope that I'm wrong, I'm wrong about that but for a lot of people just the daily grind and survival is enough to occupy most of their time and a lot of other people simply just don't have the interest or bandwidth to to be actively involved in it. That said, what Jay mentioned about every citizen stepping up to the plate is correct. We need to do so in a respectful sane manner, not where people are going at school boards and neighborhood boards and and screaming and threatening people we need to go there respectfully and say, Madam Chair, I would respectfully disagree with your comments instead of purling out some epitaphs and so are the way that we approach each other and deal with each other has been really reprehensible a lot of times and we see that but what we don't see and the huge majority of things that we don't see is that our system is working it is functioning. We do have most people that say Madam Chair, I would like to make a point I would like to comment I would like to submit some testimony in opposition to what the previous speaker has been saying. We do have this and it just needs shoring up from the lowest levels to the highest levels we need to get back to a sense of decorum and that we are all Americans like Merritt Garland said we have an obligation to protect each other and and step up to the plate and I think we have every opportunity to do that this year when we really take a look with inside but different media sources I'm not sure that it's going to happen the way that we would like it to. Okay, let me let me ask you, what do you think is the most glaring example either since January the 6 of last year, or in the last five years of the Trump administration. In your opinion, what is the most glaring example where our democracy has been undermined. I know there's a lot of them, but you know, pick your pick your favorite. My mind just popped. You know, I think what it was is maybe the since we're one year out from January 6 and you had so few Republicans willing to stand up and say this was an egregious assault on our democracies where their very lives were threatened and they couldn't come out and say, there's been someone who's fomenting this and there's and we need to get to the bottom of it with a bipartisan American commission to find out what the facts were that probably encapsulated the previous five years of how cowed and subservient so much of our of our leadership has become the slow drip that's that happened that that made us not immune but shocked on an hourly basis took its toll to get to that point. I can't choose. Okay, well, let me let me interject something here. You know this Cheney yesterday, use the phrase dereliction of duty. And when it comes to public officials the question is, has there been a dereliction of duties of a public officials, not the father oath of office which is to defend and defend the Constitution. And when we see egregious acts that are opposed to our, our rule of law and and the principles of our democracy and Constitution. Is there a sense of dereliction of duty from their lack of of citing extreme examples of how things have been breached. I mean that's it's obvious to us that the answer is yes. You know and what was also interesting is when you have right after the attack you have people like Lindsey Graham or this Kevin McCarthy or even Mitch McConnell saying this was an assault on our democracy and assault on our very basis of how we live how we how we what art what being an American is, and then very quickly they snapped around. So what happened in those in those intervening days. They took a poll number and said, hey, I don't have the support that this guy does and I if I want to keep my job and my my pension or whatever it is I got to line up behind him. It's, it was a sad indictment of the reality on the ground. Well, let me jump in and refer to Ann Applebaum's article in the Atlantic. Not quite a year ago, where she examines the reasons that you can have autocracy autocracies in Eastern Europe. And the leading reason why people continue to serve in governments in Eastern Europe was fear. If you're asking, you know what happened between the initial comments those guys made after the insurrection, and just a couple weeks later, when all of a sudden they didn't want to know any more about it. You know where they didn't feel it was so bad all the negative statements they made. He got to them. He somehow spread fear among them. That's how autocracies go. That's how that's one of those elements that take us to chaos. Sure he did, but those people that signed up to be representatives and to lead their nation didn't sign up to get death threats. And that's, and that that makes a difference when someone sends you a letter saying you know that they know where your your kid goes to school or whatever and all the insanity that's happened so. They didn't sign up for that, Jay, but beyond that they still had an obligation to speak out and hopefully the investigations that we're having are going to reveal a lot more than in the upcoming months. Okay, thank you, Cynthia. Mayor Garland in his, his address of you as a speech made reference that any, any threats of violence or violence itself against public officials was not going to be tolerated by the Justice Department. Did that give you any confidence that moving forward, be it as a school board or a public official or in Congress may have the Department of Justice follow up with direct threats. And second part of the question is the same I asked Winston is what point of democracy being undermined do you feel is the most egregious. So two part question here. That second part is going to be a hard one to answer. Yeah, I know that's why I put it at second. Yeah, first one while I tell you that the only time I actually barked back at the television while I was listening to his address was when he didn't claim he was and it was about their whole threats against sitting, you know public officials and how egregious it is, and how it has, originally increased over this last few years. And he didn't. Not only did he not point to the Republicans being, or this you know extremist bent being the main, you know, people behind it. He actually said on both sides and I thought, what, you know, he was referring to media, I think I think he was referring to media. No, no, at this point, he was referring specifically to these egregious threats and attacks, and how they're not, they're not, you know, just limited to one particular party. He was but he wasn't saying, even even the skinheads are nice people it wasn't saying that he was merely saying that he was going to investigate and prosecute without regard to ideology, because this violence was often without regard to ideology. See, that's where I disagree. It is in regard to ideology. These crazy people that are threatening everybody. It's an, it's a crazy extremist ideology that they have. And, and so that's why I mean, I guess he had to say, in order to stay, you know, and I, I thought that afterwards to I thought well I guess he has to say that, because he can't look like he's partisan, he can't look the true one side over the other. So I get that I really do. Let's see the biggest is the biggest egregious thing that is attacking our democracy is the, the, the absolute. Implosion of the fabric of truth, truth is no longer truth. We don't know the difference between truth and opinion and lies anymore. And, and that was something that has happened progressively over these last four years, that have just really, I think made all the difference. And, and then trying to turn back the clock is the other thing to try to revert back to those days of Jim Crow and, you know, people have been saying that Trump administration was, you know, like into the Jim Crow era and all those policies and, and going backwards, I think is the biggest destruction of democracy. And I have a quote to back up my thoughts on that from Theodore Roosevelt, a very prophetic quote. He says a great democracy must be progressive, or it will soon cease to be a great democracy. All right. I like it. You know, we identify the problems we identify examples of how the democracy is being diminished. And you hit on a few points early on in the show of what we can do about it. Let's go back to that. Let's go back to more concrete examples of what the average citizen can actually do. I'm with Cynthia, I mean, we can't distinguish the truth from opinion anymore, or facts from opinion and, and you know I've gone around the mulberry bush 100 times about media's role in this in fact at three o'clock this afternoon we're going to talk about that very what's media's role in on machine mashing, confusing news from opinion or commentary. I think that's why we're in the stew we're in, because over the years opinion has become fact. In fact, it's been diminished into opinion, because there's no firewall between the news desk and commentary desk, but that's just me. What can the average citizen really think about and do other than right to their Congress person and say, please support democracy. Yeah, I was touching on that before. I want to make it clear that I personally do not feel that there is any solution to this I'm sorry, we are in a transitional moment. In my view we will reach a tipping point and then you'll have a lot of trouble finding finding a dentist or food or power or water or gas for your car, and so forth. I want to say now that it's been nice knowing you guys all of you. I've enjoyed this time we've had together. Theoretically, you know what can we do, we want to be mad as hell and say we can't take it anymore. This is an outrage. The lies are an outrage the insurrection was an outrage. What the Republicans have done and I use that name and quotes because I don't really see them as Republicans. What the Republicans have done and in all these various state legislators as an outrage. And, you know, part of it Tim goes to your point about about the media, the media should have been outraged call it opinion if you want. Somebody should have said something. This is crazy. But we haven't said that and we haven't heard that either from the White House. We want to all be outraged and we want to express ourselves. The other thing is, we got to have got to have leaders and I don't know if we have them now who can speak to this because the world as we know it today is about leaders. I'm sorry to say strong leaders, not autocratic leaders but strong leaders who will fire us up, who will speak to our hearts, who will bring us together. And that's why the one comment that Merrick Garland gave that I thought was touching was, was that it. It touched me because he was saying we got to get together on this inside of Ben Franklin, you know, we hang separately or we hang together, another Ben Franklin comment. My mind is, I don't think anything is going to work but if theoretically you wanted to make a plan, and everybody at least everybody on the right side of things, or shall I say the left side of things, you know, would get together on that plan. It would be something about calling people out when they separate themselves when they depart from the norms. And we haven't done a good job at that. We can still do it, hopefully. Thank you Jay Winston to you. Same question. What can the average citizen do and on by the way when it comes to media. I did go on the FCC's website this morning, and it says you know they are strictly prohibited by law not to interfere with the First Amendment, but certainly have the jurisdiction that the broadcasters cannot intentionally distort the news, and that complains must be documented for they can follow up and follow up on evidence to take a broadcast or a broadcaster to to issue with it. And then the FCC to step in and say, Hey, you guys are distorting the news be it COVID-19 fact information or the election denial that Joe Biden won the election and and distorting the news and facts that the election was not legitimately gained for President Biden. Where are we, what are we missing as far as government government intervention, specifically specifically the FCC. There's no reaction on that and if you pulled Fox somehow, there would be outright rebellion because it's half that it's the most popular news program, so called news. And it would move to it would move to the internet and then what are you going to do start shutting down things here and there and then you've got what you didn't want. Maybe somehow I think Jay left me hopeful just a little bit at the very end there that it's not too late to stop this that that when Marjorie Taylor green says something that outrageous that their leadership of her party comes out and says, this is reprehensible we censure her, we reject this. Maybe Joe Biden needs to go on Fox News and say folks, we're precariously balancing here in the nation we may have difference of opinions on what our policies might be. But we need to really get it right right now and and and apply the baking soda and I don't know if they would go along with that or not frankly I, I don't have any hopes for that but the media. I don't know at this point, like Cynthia says you have, you know, what's what's true anymore and how do you, how do you find out stuff and if you really find want to find a story, and you think you've gotten it right and it's all right that someone else says oh wait a minute you didn't see these websites which is the real truth. How does the average citizen discerning me of this. I do remain hopeful, maybe it's going to take something that's a bit more terrible than what happened on January 6 for us to then have to rally around a Joe Biden who just says, folks, go back, calm down, wake up, start treating with each other, each other with some aloha and some respect for your fellow Americans and let's get this nation back on path together as best as we can in agreement with with what we can basically all agree on which is a lot more than we imagine. Okay, thank you. Hey Cynthia we're almost out of time in fact we are out of time but I want to make sure I get to you and pose that question is, what can the average citizen do to try to preserve our democracy. Are they left to be the feeling of helplessness or apathy. What can they do. So, at this moment Republicans are flooding all of local government. I mean just pouring in. So, get involved on the local level, and I've been talking about this sort of all along here that we've got to get involved in the local level, because that's the only place we can make changes. I want to close with a couple of quotes, go ahead, people that are much greater than me. And have spoken to all of these issues that we're dealing with right now. First one is George Washington. Okay, says guard against the imposters of pretended patriotism. Okay, then I've got one from John F Kennedy. Let us not seek the Republican answer, or the Democratic answer, but the right answer. Let us not seek to fix the blame for the past. Let us accept our own responsibility for the future. And then the last one is from Barack Obama. So, recognize that we have responsibilities, as well as rights that our destinies are bound together that a freedom which only asked what's in it for me, a freedom without a commitment to others, a freedom without love or charity or duty or patriotism is unworthy of our founding ideals and those who died in their defense. All right, well Cynthia, well spoken. You get the last word we've run out of time. I want to thank our guests for their thoughtful and engaging opinions and comments. I want to thank Jay Fidel, Winston Welch, and Cynthia Lee Sinclair. Please join us next Wednesday at 11 o'clock for what now America. I'm Tim Apachele your host, and we hope to see you then. Aloha.