 Aloha, welcome. Thanks for joining us on Think Tech Hawaii. I hope all of you have had the opportunity to log on to contribute to help us keep doing this, and we truly, truly appreciate your support. Today we're going to dig into what's going on with the fear factor that is such an important one, such an influential one in choices, directions, and evolution of our society in whatever direction we might wind up going. Welcome, Think Tech co-host Jay Fidel, Tim Opsichella. Let's get right into it. Good morning, Chuck. So Jay, what's going on here? What is the fear and the roots of it that are playing such an influential role in what's happening in this country in all sectors? Think the fear isn't real. You call it fear, and we've called it fear on other shows too, and a number of economists have called it fear, but I'm not sure it's really fear. I don't think it's legitimate here. I think it's really anger. It's jealousy, and it is a desire to be on top, and fear is kind of a rationalization, a euphemism even. So what are people afraid of? Well, at one level they're afraid of being replaced, and on the other level they're afraid of their... It's not fear so much as a desire to put the other guy down. It's the hierarchy, the social hierarchy, and every society has it. I mean, as you look at any country, if you make an examination, the perfect example is India, where the untouchables are untouchable for reasons that escape us. And so I think we have that here too, but I think we also have to remember that it came out of slavery, was put the blacks down. It came out of the Civil War. Let's put anyone down who supports the blacks, and in general we want to maintain our position. We want to maintain the status quo. We want to make America great again like it was before the Civil War, replete with slavery. Does that sound familiar? Anyway, my point is I'm not sure that it's fear so much as an abiding desire to put the other guy down and be on top of the social and economic heat. And that's a good insight. And maybe two sides of the same coin, that that racial resentment, that zero sum, we've got to hold power and wealth. And the only way to do that is by keeping the others from getting any. Tim, what's your impression? My impression is that since the 70s, we have a lot of social changes, particularly with minority rights, women's rights on the last two decades, LGDQ rights. And it is a zero sum game. And I think a lot of times were those economically depressed white males that feel that they're being pushed out of the room, either through economic means or just good old fashioned being the breadwinner that we saw in the 50s and 60s. So there's a social, not replacement, but a casting out of you will or being shoved aside. And I think there's a resentment there. And I agree with Jay that, you know, between anger, jealousy and power, these all are part of the stew. I also think that, you know, there's, we've evolved since the 1930s and 40s. Our higher angels for this society has actually taken a better front stage. However, those, those issues still remain below the surface. And I think a big part of it is, is why people don't, again, this is from a show that we did yesterday about why people aren't speaking out against Trump for all the criminal indictments and the impeachments and the horrific things he says and does. People don't speak up because well, we talked about it a little bit was that the loss or fear of losing their employment. Or I think there's, is there something the mazal hierarchy of needs. And that is human beings need to feel to be part of a group. And if you speak out, you may feel that there's others that will judge you and no longer invite you to a social function or, or, you know, you may be ostracized. And I think that's a big part of it. The human beings need to, to belong. Talk about tribalism. Yeah. Let me, let me, can I add a thought truck? I'd like to add a thought. Please. You know, going back to Bosnia and Yugoslavia, back when when Tito was running things, his contribution was that if you want to hate the other guy, if you want to hate the Muslims, I'm not going to let you do that. We have to stay together on this. We are, we are a country. And of course, when he was gone, it, you know, it fragmented. And all of a sudden there wasn't Tito to say, no, you can't be racist. I'm not going to let you do that. And so I think it depends in large part on who the leader is, because this phenomenon in the human condition in the human species is always going to exist. It's kind of lord of the flies. Somebody has to be on top and that isn't always fair. And so you have to have a moral positive leader and to keep a lid on it. Okay. And in his own way, Tito, who was not, you know, terribly admirable was a positive leader, at least on that issue. So what I'm saying is that you can say that America was always destined to continue the civil war and racism. But you can also say that a positive leader would keep a lid on it. And Vietnam was actually a positive social event, the opposition to Vietnam mostly. And the civil rights movement in the 60s was a was a positive, you know, phenomenon event. But then you can have one negative leader and he can pull off all he can pull off the cover. And I think it proves that we didn't have to be a reemerging racist country. We didn't have to be that. We always have the potential, but we didn't have to have it. And you can say that Trump was only exacerbating something that was already there. I'm not sure I agree. Trump exacerbated something that would not have been exacerbated without him. And I think that he recreated the racism that we thought we passed. And so I guess my my conclusion is a bad leader can do this to you and the damage and destruction is profound. That's a great insight, Jay, because if you look at the studies and the research on failed or failing democracy, and there's a strong argument that at least at this stage, the United States would be possibly within that category of failing democracy, certainly a challenge attempt at democracy. We're far short of what would be a democracy. How does that connect back to exactly what you alluded to to our history? What ties us to that racial division and resentment and antipathy? Lavery. Lavery made people, you know, pretty angry. And as time went by, and, you know, before the Civil War, the slave owners were becoming worse, and or at least relatively worse, you know, maybe they were becoming in some plantations, they were becoming kinder, but it didn't matter because people found that the North was more liberal, the North was kinder. And so they made the relative kind of analysis and relatively the South was getting worse. And then of course, in order to defend the South to Confederacy, there was a lot of bad acts on Blacks. And so that made it worse yet. And finally, I shouldn't say finally, because it's never final. After the South and the attempts at Reconstruction, you know, while we had Reconstruction coming from Washington, we had attempts at reconstructing the Confederacy coming from the South. It never ended. Then the Civil War was pretty brutal after the Civil War was extensively over at Appomattox. And so, you know, and the, you know, Lincoln's emancipation. But, you know, the problem is that it's built into us from the very beginning that allowed slavery in, even despite the declaration of independence and the lofty words there, it allowed slavery in the Constitution. And slavery went on and on in a funny way. It's still with us. And the Civil War was supposed to stop it. That was a war about slavery, but it continued. And then I want to add one of the things if I have a minute more, okay? And that is the development of this country, the Industrial Revolution during the Brown Decades, which Lewis Mumford wrote about in the late 19th century. You had Carnegie and you had the railroad guy, who was the railroad guy. There were a couple of barons, right? The robber barons, if you will. Railroads and steel and the like. And what these guys did is they operated from Wall Street. They achieved a lot of capital. They achieved the capital concentration in New York. And they took advantage of the hinterland. So what they did is they alienated. They took advantage of the farmers and the people who lived in the hinterland by charging outrageous prices on the railroad and for goods that were transmitted on the railroad. And the people in the hinterland got to dislike them a lot. And then you had the populist movement and tried to unseat them lots of luck because they had the money. And you had all those union battles where the people tried to unseat them. But the people, you know, were successful only over a long period of time and a lot of political strife. So what I'm saying is another element in this is that the people in hinterland, maybe not so successful whites, who were bigger and more powerful during the period before the Civil War, found themselves being undermined by the robber barons out of New York. And they began to dislike the coasts because that was where the money was. And so although a lot of them left for the West Coast, you know, manifest destiny and all that, a lot of them stayed and just grumbled. And so we have a kind of cultural mindset in the hinterland of this country that is really angry about the people from the coasts and especially the East Coast. And this is another factor. And that's a really important point to recognize because accompanying that was the outright overt destruction of the lives, the culture, the lands of the indigenous peoples west of the Mississippi, as had happened in a more incremental way east of the Mississippi, but in a much more violent, more more sudden and destructive way west of the Mississippi. So that heritage of white zero sum dominance at the expense of people of color, their rights to life, their rights to property, their rights to education, their rights to housing, all of those things has continued to be a major part of our history. And our government has continued to be a major part of that. Heather McGee's book, The Sum of Us, does a wonderful job of documenting the connection between that white versus others racism and racial resentment and racial antagonism and the injustices and inequalities in virtually all sectors of our society. So, Tim, where are we headed? Well, if Donald Trump gets elected, President of the United States for a second term, we're headed down the toilet. But, you know, I haven't read The Sum of Us or the other book cast, not as yet, I haven't read it. But it's for me, it always seems there's a correlation to the height of increased racism, when there's economic disparity. When times are good, these issues seem to dissipate, not diminish, but dissipate. And I see a correlation between the economy, and then a leader like Donald Trump to, like all good dictators is point of finger at someone that your economic hardship is not due to your situation or what you have done or haven't done for yourself or your family. It's somebody else's fault. And didn't Donald Trump do that the second he was coming down the escalator with Mexicans? And then he tried to, you know, on the Muslim ban as soon as he was President of the United States. Let's blame somebody else. And again, any good dictator will, the first page out of their book is, let's cast doubt, suspicion, and hatred towards the immigrant. Because they're the ones that will be the cause of your economic woes. And that's the playbook. And Donald Trump has followed it perfectly. And then let's, let's, you know, grab the narrative from the media, and we go from there. Let's hollow out the Department of Justice. We go from there. So I, I, I know racism is alive and well in this country, but I think it boils down to economic or prosperity concerns and paranoia. And people are worried. An exception to that, I guess, would be the white flight from the cities in the 1970s when busing was taking place. There was a massive white flight from cities into the suburbs as a result of racial integration. So that would be an exception to my, my first part here, talking about economic disparity and how that really is the root cause of many racist motifs in this country. I'd like to add something, Chuck. Sure. You know, racism has been with us really from the beginning. And it's still with us under the surface, like it was in Yugoslavia. And the question is, what is the bad leader going to do with that? It's a tool. It's a lever. It's a, it's a weapon. I hate using that term these days. It's a weapon. And what does it achieve for the bad leader? It achieves power. When through power, there is money, but first power. And I think that Trump is an example of that somehow. Well, I know he's an example of that. So he doesn't really have a personal credo on anything. He's into power and money. And so if he sees that racism is something to be used as a way to achieve power, then he takes advantage. So it's going back to Charlotte Snell, it's saying that, you know, there are good people on both sides, which is really a stroke on the racists. And he's trying to get them, you know, to give him their support based on what, based on racism. And his administration followed that throughout. He tried to exacerbate the racism and divide magic word, divide the country. And through that racism and division of all kinds, you, the autocrat, or the would be autocrat, becomes more powerful. That's, that's an absolute truth, I think, for the world as we know it. And it's certainly a truth for Trump. And so where in this picture might there be some glimmerings of light, hope, diverse solidarity, or other pathways that may help influence people to make better leadership choices and to resist bad leadership? What's it going to take for that to happen? What we talked about just to a limited degree yesterday, and Tim came up with the notion that we live in a diverse society. And that's, that is our identity now, like it or not. We have, you know, immigration has been happening, but well, since the turn of the 1920th century. And so we have a very diverse country. That is what Trump takes advantage of, but that is also our strengths. And so the short answer, which is incomplete, the short answer is you have to get the people who are on the diversity side of things to get together, to make a coalition. And my concern yesterday when we discussed this is that by definition, they're diverse. It's hard to get a diverse group of people to agree on things and to, for example, select the leader. But if they could, by one process, by one phenomenon or another, that would be a solution that you're asking for. And then I would say that Lincoln comes to mind. You know, what Lincoln's genius and his contribution to the country was, he made the diversity into the north, and he made the north into the diversity that could beat the south. He found a way to bring people together. Not in total, but in large part. And I think, you know, I think although in retrospect people criticize Kennedy for one thing or another, I think had Kennedy been able to stay the course, he would have been a president who brought people together. It's not, it's not only, you know, an agenda point. It's who you are. It's what kind of an individual you are, how you treat the world, what you say in your inaugural speech and all that. And I think he could have done it. But since then I'm really not sure that any president, sorry, has been the kind of president that could bring us together in that way. That is the short answer. That's what we need. Tim, your thoughts? My thoughts are Donald Trump exists because an example was made 50 years earlier. We're mammals, I'm sorry, but you know, we're a few steps up from the the apes, the chimpanzees, and what do they learn from? What do children learn from? What do we all learn from? We learn from example. And when you have President of the United States basically getting off scot-free for crimes that he would have been convicted for, most likely, you have a Vice President, Spiro Tiagnu, who got a sweetheart deal, a plea agreement, he should have gone to jail. That gives future presidents the idea that I can get away with it too. I'll never forget the interviewer, I think it was with our, boy, Frost, where he said, you know, when the president does something, it's not wrong, it's not illegal. And Donald Trump learned from Nixon. In fact, I think he befriended them. When Nixon was ostracized, he befriended them, and he learned a lot of things. And so there's something within us that we need to make sure that we set an example. And if that is called consequence, so be it. And if the consequence for future leaders to learn is that Donald Trump has convicted and there's a consequence to it, I think it's a good thing. If he's found guilty, he's presumed innocent at this point. You know, again, I'm going to go back to what I said earlier. I think people have that need to belong to a group. Tribalism, as Jay put it. What's a big part of tribalism? And that is, you know, you adhere by the rules to stay with the group. There is a factor that used to have, would be a strong deterrent for people not to do something or say something. And that was called shame. Donald Trump has no shame. We've lost shame in the public arena. And I think the erosion of shame and the fear of being ostracized and shamed is no longer with us, for the most part. And that's why Donald Trump gets away by being Donald Trump. Chuck, I'd like to add another point. You know, the problem, let's say we're going to make Tim Appichella president because we know he's got the moral structure to do that. I wouldn't go there. Well, we know you a long time and let's take a flying leap and say that, okay? We're going to say that. Big leap. Okay. The problem is the system has to make you president because if the system doesn't make you president then you're an autocrat or monarch, some old model of leadership, which doesn't necessarily go to a good place. So let's assume that the system at least ideally has to make you president if you're going to be president and be a good president. But the system itself is worn down, I must say. You have the media which likes raw meat and would put Trump on the air, which helps Trump. The media that did that Trump town meeting with him a few weeks ago, which was so damaging to the country. The people in government who don't know about government, who never learned civics in school, who don't mind treating a whole thing as a ball game in which there are no fouls. As you can do anything you want in order to win, win, win. And people don't have the same kind of appreciation of what was that movie, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, where the moral fabric of the community was untouchable and that we all knew and believed that you've got to stand up for the better America. I don't think we have that anymore. I could go on about indications of the deterioration of the institutions that we need to have. But we don't have the guardrails that would prevent other less noble individuals from bringing you down as a candidate, Tim. So the answer is you wouldn't get to be president. And a lot of really good people wouldn't get to be president because it's a money and power game and not a morality game, not a good leadership game. And so I am not optimistic that you're going to be president or anybody like you. And therefore, I'm not sure that we can recover by getting a good leader, which we need. Secretary of State? Maybe. If you're nice to me. Yeah, watch your emails. But you raise a really important point now that we're down into our last couple of minutes, which is who we are and we will increasingly be a diverse nation. Maybe not a unified nation, maybe a divided nation, but a diverse nation. By 2050, the United States will not be a white majority country anymore. It will be a people of color majority. We have to learn to make that work for us. We have had examples in our society where we have made that work for us in unionization in other areas. What are some of the examples in our last minute or so that stand out to you from where we have made diversity and the solidarity of diversity work for us? Tim, give us one minute for that. You could probably give us 10 seconds for that. Go ahead, Jay. You got 10 seconds. Well, we have a great economy. However, capitalism has worked in this country. We've found ways to collaborate into a great economy. We have a great educational system, especially higher education, although right now it seems to be failing economically, that has educated generation after generation of leaders. I think we have some people in government and also in the nonprofit sector who care passionately about helping people. There are many individuals in this country who are right-minded and we have created them. And finally, the last thing is we have seen ourselves as the beacon for the world, especially after World War II, and to some extent after World War I, maybe less, where we go out. We do out. We have gone out. We have done outreach. Unfortunately, since my friend Kennedy died, the Peace Corps and organizations like that have declined, and our outreach has declined. But at least we know how to do that. We know the message, and there's a whole generation of people who served in the Peace Corps and who understood outreach to the world. I want to add one other thought, which is not directly responsive, but it's this. You talk about the decline of the country because of these racism factors and divisive factors. It's one more thing. If we have racism and if we have divisiveness, we cannot have a good economy. We cannot have a national security, social security, security where people can feel safe on the street and all that. But more than that, we can't have our position in the world. We will lose the American dollar as reserve currency. We will lose influence everywhere. And we will allow China and to the extent it continues to exist, our Russia, to take advantage of us. We will no longer be the beacon on the hill. And that will have a resounding echo effect, won't it? And we don't know exactly what that echo effect will create, but it won't be good. So we will lose a lot of the when you call it global influence and global power that we have now if we don't take care of these domestic issues. Tim, your final thoughts? You know, I think of that red hat on Donald Trump's hat or head, make America great again. Well, first off, America is still great. We have problems and our exceptionalism should not cloud our view that we do have problems. But America has been great and it is great. And what makes America great is our differences, our commonality, the commonality despite your politics, despite your religion, despite your sex or your race, the commonality that we had a shared dream to make this country a great place to live. Guess what? We've done that. We did that. Not great for everyone, but it's improving. It's getting better. So rather than Donald Trump's ability to make us focus on our differences, how about we find a leader that focuses on our commonality, our shared goals, and to say the phrase to make America great again? I told you, Chuck, you should be president. Yeah, no, what a great way to wrap this up, because if there's anything that has in the past and may in the future help diversity work best for us, it is exactly that solidarity in commonalities, our common interests in decent housing, in productive education, in available and effective health care, in a livable environment, in all the rest of the areas that we share and are going to need to learn to share together. The question is, how can we make it work better for more of us? Thank you, Tim, Jay. Another wonderful think tech session. Thank you, folks, for joining us. Aloha, and take care. kawaii.com. Mahalo.