 Thank you, good morning, good afternoon, depending on where you are and what time zone you're in. Welcome to think tech Hawaii rule of law and the new abnormal. Please remember. This is a time of year where think tech asked for those of you who appreciate what think tech offers to help think tech continue to do that by contributing go to the think tech Hawaii calm website. You can donate button and whatever your move to share and contribute is tremendously appreciated so thanks all very much. So this morning, in no particular order, we have Professor vanilla Randall emeritus from the University of Dayton School of Law, one of the leading scholars on race racism and the law, which has become a pretty hot topic with school boards and others. At this point in time, David Larson, a highly experienced, respected professional professor at Mitchell Hamlin School of Law in St. Paul, a chair of the American bar associations section of alternative dispute resolution and a pioneer of the New York courts online case resolution project, which is expanding access to justice in ways that no one had imagined more than a year and a half ago. Jeff Fortnoy, one of our leading not only legal commentators and constitutional commentators and a senior partner at cage study, but also a sports commentator kind of always next step up from john Madden. Tina Patterson in Germantown, Maryland. No, not New Jersey. I will not get that wrong again. Tina has a wide variety of experience in business on entrepreneurship coaching mediation arbitration domestically locally nationally internationally. Thanks all of you for joining us. Hey, and we've always been kind of playing these topics with a lot of improvisation. And we were just talking about jazz before the show came on. Is there some connection between jazz and what's happening in our society and how we get through this from discord to harmony. Your thoughts. Jeff, you want to start us off. I guess it depends on what era of jazz you want to talk about. There was an era of jazz where all the musicians were in key and all playing together and it sounded like one piece with various elements. There was a period of jazz where the musicians all played what they wanted and hope that somehow it all came together. And many times it didn't, and many times it was in the years of the beholder and I would suggest to this very prominent group that unfortunately we're in the latter period of jazz where everybody is playing their own tune and rarely does it all come together. Is that profound or why. I think the ears of the beholder is a good point to make because I think the instead of if we think about jazz from the, I'm not a jazz connoisseur I, I like smooth jazz and my kids say that's not jazz. And the issue becomes, it seems to me that people play what they want, but people also like what they want, and that there is no amount of kind my kids can't get me to like the onus month is I just don't like it. And another you can say no arguments you can make that will get me to like it and I think maybe that's part of what we need to come to the realization is that we can't talk people into different value systems and liking different things and I don't know how we deal with that. But when, when, when people have these set likes and dislikes set values that they think are being challenged. You know, for me that kind of the jazz metaphor falls apart a little bit, because even during periods of time when jazz musicians were playing in ways that were discordant. And at least we're under under the oppression of play together even if music didn't blend together. And right now we're in a period where we're not playing together. And part of that is because of technology, and we all have avenues of communication that aren't connected. So we have people playing whatever they want to play and they're only reaching their own constituents, and we're not coming together in any way. And that's what's frightening. I want to follow this through and I should have said this. People are hearing what they want. We can all sit down in the room and listen to the same piece. And it's not likely that we're all going to have the same impression of what we heard. And I think in the light of these days and social media. People are hearing what they want to hear. And it is many times, not what they should be hearing or not what their neighbor is hearing. Tina I hear their wheels turning. He's going to put on a record right. Yes, you do. I'm going to go back to what Jeff said earlier. I think that's underscores every, every genre of music and jazz in particular, which is what is, what is pleasing to the listener, whether it's the base or whether it's the piano and recognizing that the sum of those parts is what made the music. Yeah, we can talk about Miles Davis and his solo work and we can talk about West Montgomery and his solo work, but we can also think about the trios and the quartets that have performed. And it was cooperation, which is one of the things that I think David is alluding to and I would completely agree. It's the cooperation that is lacking right now that is both disheartening, but I think could also literally see just separation and and not working toward. I'm trying to think of the word. It's not even agreement but just a recognition that I have, I have a right to be here. I have a right to play my guitar. And whether it's acoustic or electric, I'm supposed to be here. I'm keep trying to keep it musical. Yeah, no, I, you know, I think many of us believe that our national politics have gotten to a level where it can't go any lower. And I think I was wrong because this last week I have a Republican Congress person put out a video trying to kill a Democratic Congresswoman in an avatar like sequence is bad enough, and then not to have a single Republican in Congress criticize what he did. He and his office to kind of just laugh it off. I don't know how much lower we can go in national politics. I'm not sure I keep thinking we fit the bottom but I'm wrong. Well, the house, you know, part of the problem we have is that people just do verbal criticisms. I mean, is has the house and I don't know. I haven't actually been following this particular prop case I know of it but I haven't been following closely has the house actually put up issues a censure him. I don't know the answer I don't think so Chuck, you may have more knowledge about this than I did. And not publicly disclosed or known at any rate. And what we're hearing is that, you know, if you got a trio or a quartet together. They do songs, and a song is a collective product, but it's a collective effort. And there has to be some underlying respect and understanding for that communication to come together as a song, rather than just individual conflict and maybe individual conflict, maybe the theme of that song, it still has to be a collective product. And there's no respect for that that we're seeing in our leadership and at our societal levels. But I think that if we using the music thing as an example the problem is, is exclusion is essential to playing certain music. I mean the thing is, is that you do you don't come together to play a song. And if you bring, if you have different forms of music, different people are excluded when their musical style doesn't fit. And that's what people think. And the struggle we have is over the Democrats and Republicans arguing over which musical style is going to control. And who gets to sit at the table and if you're not in, and in the problem, and maybe this as an outsider, it seems to me that that is not new. Even now they have excluded socialists, they have excluded communists, they have, they have, they have developed rules where you end up, it's very hard for an independent even on a local level to run because the rules require so much to be able to even get on the ballot and stuff. And so up to now, I think they've been able to harmonize. And we can work together, Republicans and Democrats and exclude all these other people, but that process that they've developed is now being turned on themselves. We're the one thing, and to expand this a little bit. The one area of our culture that has always been inclusive is music. My father was a trumpet player played in bands with black and white musicians. You go back and look at old videos of big bands in the 50s 60s 70s. You see black and white musicians, small groups black and white musicians, it seems to me that if you look at culture in any form. There's one area that has been inclusive, and has combined the two races at the time them to predominant two races. It's music. And you don't see that in very many other areas of of our culture, or a politics, for that matter. But Jeff, I, I guess I take the exception. I think that I wasn't talking about racial. I know, I know, I'm just pointing out what I'm saying, but my view is even when you think about music for race. Basically what happened is white people stole black music. It wasn't so much inclusive except as opposed to stealing and playing and co opting. And yeah, there was, there would be an occasional black person in a white orchestra or occasional white person in a black band. I don't know that I think that music was an area to put up for racial for identifying racial harmony. It's true about rock and roll and know a little bit about that and you're right about white music producers stealing black music in the 50s, and, and turning those songs into white artists and etc and keeping black performers back then from getting their royalties I hear you, but I watch a lot of old black and white videos of bands in the 30s and 40s, and even moving forward but you're right about the rock and roll situation and that's clearly been documented by, by so many people and only recently have, I hate to use the word reparations been talked about in changing the structure and repaying people for the royalties that they never received but anyway, kind of getting back to this idea I was talking about before that you weren't coming together and Tina also alluded to it. We're not coming together and playing together. You know, I think we're in a period of isolation that's maybe unprecedented. When you combine the pandemic, when you combine the potential and the ability of technology to let us have this kind of screen time which is a virtual gathering but it's not a physical gathering, not quite the same. And, you know, we have our phones that are very sophisticated. And I don't know if you do but I spent a lot of time looking at the screen my phone which is, which is really quite isolating. I think millions of people are doing that they're spending a lot of phone time looking at the screen. So part of the problem in our kind of jazz analogy is that through on the pandemic through on technology through on isolation, and we really are playing a part. Where are the disconnects coming from that you see underlying communication and cooperation. So part of it is algorithms. You know, algorithms, we're getting tracked continually. This whole idea of privacy is no what doesn't even exist anymore. So profiles have been built for all of us. And to the degree that we that we receive targeted information now. We're all attentive to the streaming information. You know, and it's, it's targeted to us, and we're not getting a lot of diverse voices. We're getting voices that are consistent with what we've approved of and search for before. And, and that kind of drives us further into our positions and probably less, less open thinking. I'm here with David and I would take it one step further that I'm not going to say it's all technology, but I think technology plays an in our isolated state at this point, really has opened the door for discreet messaging. Based on where your sites you visit, the information you read, and other demographic information that is called from our visits. And how that messaging is repeated over and over and over again, whether it's the ads that appear as we're looking at a site or it's the links to a related article, and literally stepping back and saying, okay, is this is this real. I was listening to a presentation the other day and the gentleman shared how two groups, not even based in the United States had run back and forth on social media, and had told people to show up at a certain site, either pro or against this particular subject. And as it turns out, one, both of these groups were not based in the US, but people actually showed up, never thinking about the legitimacy of the organization or the messaging that was being put forth. They went because it struck a chord with something that they either believed intrinsically or something that they had learned to accept as a truth for them. I think that's one, I think that's an excellent point that what has happened is we have, we are a nation of cults right now because people get their ideas reinforced. And no matter how marginalized their idea may be, they can find 100 people, 1000 people on the internet that believe the exact same thing and then they get it reinforced because it, you know, they get these messages, and they say education, you can't educate people out of Polish values. And so no matter when you try to say disinformation, they, you become the sort of the source of disinformation, because you're saying something that is inconsistent with their value system inconsistent with what they want to believe. So we've always had, this might be a little bit extreme but I've always had cults, religion is cults. There's no question about it. I think the difference now is that because of social media, there are an exponential number of little mini-cults and they often conflict. So, you know, when we used to have the branch Davidians which were, you know, 150 or 200 people that just happened to physically hook up. Now all you got to do is push a button and you'll find a small group of people who believe in the most extreme views that you want to believe in. You know, I'm not a sociologist and I know people write about this every day and will probably for decades to come but, you know, the ability of people to, as you just alluded to find similar people is just a push of a button. It wasn't like that 20 years ago. So what has moved us from any kind of common identity, shared identity to conflicting identities that are directly hostile, destructively hostile to each other? I think the two-party system. I think it's a political, I think that we have two parties that are cults and we force people to identify with one or the other. And it's become all about election, all about the two parties are all about getting re-elected and funding. And so I think that if we, I actually truly believe that if we had more parties, politically, we'd have more positive actions because people would have to work together to come to a decision. They couldn't take a winner takes all view of things. Thoughts on that? Does that move us toward a win-lose rather than a? No, I'm not sure. I'm not sure. And I know that that's something that Professor Randall feels strongly about and we've been on many shows where she has espoused that view and I appreciate it, but look at Europe. They're no better. And they're multi-parties. They're six, eight, 10, 12 parties. Their governments can't last for six months. They have the same, you know, problems based upon their own politics and culture that we do. But I appreciate, you know, the fact that right now we just literally have two parties. The question really is, do we have two parties? How many parties do we really have under two names? I mean, just taking the demo. We have one party. We have a capitalist party. Yeah, well, that's true. But I mean, just, you know, just take the Democrats. There are clearly two parties within the Democratic name and the Republicans, they still had 10 or 12 people. Although I gather they're going to be censored by the way for voting for the infrastructure bills. Did you see that? The 12 Republicans who voted for infrastructure are potentially going to be censored. I mean, have we ever had, you know, I throw it out to all of the professors who have had much more academic background than I do. And you know, I know we've had discord in politics, but have we ever had such extreme discord among the major two political parties? I can't recall any either from the history books or my lifetime. Well, you know, it's disturbing that kind of iron fist leadership that, you know, if you, if you vary just a little bit, you know, good luck up in Alaska, because we're going to do everything we can to get you, make sure you're not reelected. You know, and that's particularly frightening when the leadership says that kind of authoritarian position that you have to follow our platform, our message, or we're going to throw you out. Then that pretty much publicly started with the Obama, with the Republicans in the Obama administration. Where they pretty much, I mean, they said our goal is to make sure that he doesn't have a successful presidency. And we're going, we're not going to focus on what is the best bill for our country. We're going to focus on how this will be, how this can be used by Obama in his, in terms of reelection, how people, and so they took a stance, they took a stance on bills. They took a stance on judges. They took, which was all, and they had discipline of anyone who wanted to do anything different. And so the Republicans have been going down this road of party loyalty, first and foremost, so that using that loyalty to vote against things that would be good for the country for a long time. They may have even done it. I don't remember. I'm trying to think whether they were that way with Clinton or not, but I'm just real familiar with how they so publicly said it was their goal to make sure that Obama had an unsuccessful presidency. But are they, and this comes up to the president, I think it's a huge question which deserves the whole show in itself. Are they reflecting the views of the constituents, or are they leading their constituents and I think that's been a major change. Politicians just to lead now clearly in the Republican Party. They're just following and that's the scary part that the majority of voters in their district, like what they're doing, encourage them to do what they're doing. And that's the scary thing. I don't find an individual representative to be a problem, although there are some really people with serious mental disease in Congress. The real problem is the 51% that elected them and continue to reinforce their views. I reelected. Authoritarian leaders have been democratically elected. They have not all been coups. So could that never happen here? It could happen here, sure it could. It could happen here, didn't it? Did I miss something? Yeah. And there's levels. You know, it's, you know, it could get worse. I'll put it that way. And in our last minute or so, that whole question of whether we even really have democratic offerings or elections, and what it would take to get there. At least another show in and of itself. Just quick straw poll. Would you say our elections are more democratic or less than democratic? How many say our elections tend to be more democratic than not? You mean like in 2022 or 2020? I'll vote for democratic in 2020. I'm voting for not democratic in 2022. I'm voting for never democratic. We've never had a democratic system in voting in this country. We've also, we've always had the facade of democracy. Well, if you look at what's happened to state legislators and if it's a comparative question, it's getting worse. I mean, I think there's no question. When you look at what's being done at the state level and Republican control legislatures, that it's getting less democratic. I would agree with David. I think the pendulum is swinging. And I've expressed this to you offline. Chuck, I'm concerned about the midterm elections. Just voting rights in and of itself is on the line in all 50 states and territories. So yeah, 2022, great concern. Yeah, I agree with Tina that if this Congress can accomplish one thing above everything else, it's the Voting Rights Act. If we can't protect that, if we can't protect democracy, we're going to lose everything. And so how well do you think the Democrats have been on protecting democracy? They put a bill for it, but they haven't been willing to go whatever mile it takes to get it passed. Now, what I'm saying is they, is we have to. I mean that that has to be our priority. So we're thinking, we're thinking will always keep us going wishful thinking David I look what's happened, where are they going to get that 51st vote or the 50th vote they don't have it. So we're out of time for today. But once again, we've come back to the point where there are bigger deeper questions that we're winding up with than we started with. Come back in two weeks, rejoin us. We're going to deep dive into more of those questions. Please support us and think Tech Hawaii. If you can. Thank you, Chuck. This has been great. Thank you.