 I had studied, it was a function of other things that I had studied that made me want to study American history, so I minored in American history. And I majored in economics, by the way. And I cared a lot about the whole civics process, you know, and look around and we had civics in high school. Everybody took required courses in college, and they took a course in Queen's College called Contemporary Civilization, CC-1, CC-2, CC-3, and it was about the formation of the modern world, about the formation of government and power and leadership and all the philosophies that went into those processes. And if you're wondering who we are, by the way, just to let you in on what's going on here, that's Marianne Sasaki. I'm Jay Fiedel, we're doing life in the law today, and if you want you can listen to what we have to say. So what I'm saying is that since that generation, in the 60s, 50s and 60s when I went to school, high school and college, somewhere along the line, not only in Hawaii but elsewhere, the schools gave up civics, they gave up contemporary civilization, they gave up American history. And I'm not sure what the kids are studying now, but I don't think they're studying those things. Well, let me say a slightly incendiary thing, which is I think that people don't study CC anymore, contemporary civilization or what, it was called something like that in Colombia anyway, because that was largely a history of the Western world and how the Western world governed its... As it was. And I think... We're European oriented. European oriented, right. And I think that as other influences have come into academia, into the canon, that is the less revered, it's less understood and less studied. I agree with you, but that's relatively recent. The emergence of Asia as a force, that was way after Vietnam, which was 20 years after the period we're talking about. By the way, this is life in the law and the connection here is we're talking about whether we are in a constitutional crisis. And if we are, when did it start and how serious is it? What does it mean for the future? Why did it happen? I'm very afraid. What is a constitutional crisis anyway? Constitutional crisis is something that threatens the republic to undermine the republic. I was thinking about that because I was thinking about that's how I came to start reading James Madison, who is the drafter of the Constitution. And what did he consider a constitutional crisis? And we're in a phase of history right now where I think the republic is threatened. I mean, what's going to happen? There are people threatening to, well, first of all, let's say that the republicans spent many years trying to delegitimitize this president. So people want to delegitimitize the presidency and- Right. It's more than one person. It's the office. Yes. It's the whole notion of president. That's right. They're trying to delegitimize it. They won't accept it if a person they don't like is elected. Inherent in that is we don't follow the Constitution. Right. And likewise, I'm jumping a little here, but inherent in the notion of we're not going to vote on or have hearings on your nomination for a Supreme Court judge is a rejection of the whole process. Right. So we know we swore an oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States, but we're not going to do it. And- As a group. And Congress has done that, too. I mean, the House of Representatives has done that, too, consistently, as we discussed earlier with respect to the budget. And now the chickens are coming home to roost because the people have been so acting in such self-serving ways and not really for the greater good, which, let's face it, that's what civics is, right? It's a citizen reacting, understanding- I need to tell you about Ben Franklin. By the way, there is a fabulous exhibit about Ben Franklin right now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Oh, yeah. Fabulous. About all the paintings that were done at the time. He was very well respected, not only here, but in France. Yeah. And France was the sponsor of the revolution, you know. There was pretty serious support there. But Franklin was walking out of Liberty Hall where he and his buddies had been discussing the Constitution. And a woman was waiting outside. She wasn't the only one. They were waiting. You know, like waiting for the Pope to be nominated, the little, you know, the smoke and the chimney with them. So they were waiting. And this woman ran up to Ben Franklin. She said, well, Dr. Franklin, you know, what's going to happen? What kind of government are we going to have? And Franklin said, without hesitation, he said, a Republic, madam, if you can keep it. Right. Exactly. Exactly. That is 10 feet tall because what that tells you is you have to work at it. It doesn't come automatic. The notion, you know, of a democracy as established in this country in 1789 is a collaborative effort. And everyone has to participate. We have arrived at a place where people effectively reject the notion of participating in the government. It's us and it's them. That's not my problem. That's your problem. And I think, you know, it's even, now even the Republican Party is splintering, it's further splintering because, you know, if you set up this paradigm where it's okay to just care about your own agenda, your own constituency, and that's all you care about is your constituency and being reelected and not considering the greater good. It's bound to devolve and devolve into what it's devolved into now, you know. The greater good. That's the civics. The greater good. And the obligation of supporting the, you know, the basic notion, the basic principles, the tenets of our government. And I think people have given that up. Now winning, that's really important, not only winning your office but winning on the point that you come in with. And so you would violate every other obligation just to win that point. And you would violate any duty to do the common good. And now I'll say something really incendiary. I think both candidates have a little bit of that problem. I know Donald Trump. I think Hillary Clinton too, because I think, you know, all the questions about Hillary Clinton's background, questions about her emails, and she's, can be intentionally vague when she answers- She's been stonewalling. Yeah. That's when it's intentionally vague, right? You see, it's smart stonewall, but it's stonewall nonetheless. Right, exactly. So, I mean, I don't see how that's not the same as wanting, just wanting to win and not caring about the fabric of the society. She's rent the fabric of society to some extent in service to her own goals. I think you have a point there. And it worries me, you know. I'm looking at the New York Times polls this morning, and I make a poll every day, I think. And it's basically that she's ahead of Trump by five percent. She'll win. She'll win. Five percent. I know, but she's going- We still have a month to go. And you know, anything could happen. She could get sick. He could get sick. Some violent thing could happen. Some violent thing elsewhere in the world could happen, and their reactions would, you know, dictate maybe a new result on the poll. But I just think it's terrible that we can say about both of the candidates for president that we don't believe that either of them has the nation's good is not their primary focus. I think that's so sad. It's such a horrible thing to say. But it's visible. I know. It's visible. It's about me. It's about me winning. Right. And doing what I want to do. And selling is if I'm a huckster selling you my, you know, my special elixir. Right. It's not about me and you working together. I know she will say that. She does say that. Right. He won't even say that. It's about him and his ego. I don't think he understands. I think there's a lot, you know, you said you took American history when you were in college. I don't think Donald Trump has ever taken a course in American history because his understanding of how the government works is so poor. I mean, he just really doesn't even know what the government, he could do or couldn't do as president what the government is capable of doing, what geopolitics requires. A couple of things working there. One is he wasn't educated about it. No. He's not a lawyer. But he's going through the law school of hard knocks, which is you buy the lawyers to win on any position you want. Just win for me. I don't care what the right is or the wrong is. Just make it happen for me. And that's cynical beyond, you know, any interpretation of the word. But he's a businessman foremost. He's not a statesman. He's not even a politician. He's never served the public in any capacity. And you know, I think it has to be a very rare individual that can have no elected public office and then have the highest elected public office. I mean, I think you need a little experience there. You know, I just think. I don't know. Has anybody ever been elected without any? Well, I don't know. But if so, it's a great minority. It's unique. So, you know, how do we get here? How do we get to a place where Donald Trump can be so popular? Well, there's many factors. But let me throw some at you. Okay. You can throw some at me. Okay. Number one is this is all entertainment, right? This is like a bad documentary that makes it, it makes itself seem real, but it really isn't real. Right. The, you know, you, I mean, they're making this up. This is all like fiction made to look like fact. This isn't really a presidential campaign. This is, this is entertainment. Yes. It's like a plot, a plot of, you know, a driven story, right? Yeah. A plot thickens between two people. Okay. And the press seems to be accepting of that, although I have to, you know, compliment the New York Times. You know, you can't always compliment them, but on this occasion they've been consistent. They say, what is going on here? And they call him on everything they could call him on. And that's right. And that's good. But, but I think people in general, and lots of other newspapers, if you could call those thin rags that you see sometimes, newspapers, and nobody reads it. Why would you read a newspaper if you can get the news the day before? Why would you pay a dollar today when you could get it free yesterday? I know. So, you know, you read, you know, in small soundbites on your phone or on the web, and that's the way you get the news and you get it in small soundbites, not in any depth. No, no, it's not a well-considered contextual, although there is, I think, a well-considered contextual piece coming out on Hillary Clinton in Sunday's New York Times. But no, this certainly not the money for that now, and people don't absorb information that way. Or by, you know how I find out stuff all the time, like all the time? Somebody on my Facebook posts it, if there's like a, well, this was very striking to me. There was a small earthquake in New York and I was here, and somebody just said, oh, I just felt an earthquake, and like well before any newspaper, you know, had it, you know. So over time, over years and decades, you come away with, you know, the impression I do, maybe you too, that you're getting secondhand news from the newspaper, and you're not getting it in depth, because they can't afford investigative reporters. And if you get an investigative reporter, you know, of any value, that's an aberration. That's not the rigor. Well, let me say that the quandary or the problem that the press is finding itself in now, that's also a constitutional crisis, because the Constitution guarantees the freedom of the press. And we, as a society, are creating an environment where the press really can't flourish. They can't flourish, because there are all these, there's all this gossip and innuendo and individuals and people writing all kinds of stories. And the press has been weakened. And I posit that that's a constitutional crisis as well. But you know, I don't reach out to the press and say too bad for you guys. I empathize and sympathize with you. I don't, because they're owned by too few people and because their standards of journalism are not what they were in the good old days. And because if, you know, you get on... But don't you think that's not what the forefathers contemplated? No, they had a whole new view, a whole other view of it. Right. And then, you know, and then you just look, just sort of clean your mind out and look for a minute, for an hour at CNN or Worst Fox. And what you will see is they have a soundbite of five words and they throw that across the screen over and over again. And when they're done, they'll do it again and again all day long. So you get, for example, the Donald Trump show all day long. And it's their interpretation. It's those five words coming at you. There's no depth there. There's no real interpretation there. And it becomes, again, a docudrama, but not the reality. And this is what people get. Not only today and tomorrow and next week, but all their lives. So they're not trained in American history or civics. So they, you know, they don't read real, in-depth materials. And what they are getting is this kind of really thin veneer stuff. Twitter, they're getting news from Twitter. It defines them. This source of information defines them. Not only does it define them, but it defines everyone, you know, or most people in the country. So what you have is a wild horse kind of electorate that is uninformed and probably confused. Now that's a constitutional crisis, I agree with you. Right, right, right. They're uninformed, confused, and angry. Right, about often the wrong things. So, you know, what's happening is the rules of, the rules that Ben Franklin was talking about are going slack. That's right. And the government can't work without, you know, a press doing its job. The government can't work if people are not going to perform their duty. We have a, like, 42% voting rate here in this state. Other states are also in bad shape. They're not doing their duty. I came back from Portugal. And I said to them, you know, I was really, you know, curious. They follow this election very closely. Well, because we're a model for the world. Well, we're going to affect them. What happens to this election will affect them and they know it. And we can talk about that. But, you know, what they said, what they said was, if I don't vote here in Portugal, I get fined. And I have to pay the fine. That's terrific. Yeah, it's terrific. Yeah. You know, I mean, back in the old days it was, it was a great honor to vote. Right, yeah. In fact, you had your own property and there were all these limitations where you could not vote if you didn't have this and that. Now it's just the other way. Self disenfranchisement. People are woefully disenfranchising themselves. They don't understand how important it is. No. Well, I think they think nothing will ever change. My voice can't change things. But the thing is if they understood themselves as part of a larger group, maybe they would understand that you can change things not alone, but as part of a larger group. I agree with you. And I think this calls for a discussion of a Christmas future. Okay. A Christmas future, you know, an understanding of a Christmas future will help us perform our duties now. We're gonna take a short break. We're gonna come back and you'll see us continue this conversation right into the shocking aspect of Christmas future. Hi, I'm Tyler Cevota. And I was actually a guest host on Carl Campana's Think Tech Hawaii show Movers, Shakers and Reformers. And I think you should tune in every Wednesday to find out more about what it is. That's all. Take care. Aloha, everyone. I hope you've been watching Think Tech Hawaii. But I'm here to invite you to watch me on Viva Hawaii every Monday at 3 p.m. I'm waiting for you. Mahalo. Hi, I'm Stacey Hayashi and you can catch me on Mondays at 11 on Think Tech Hawaii. Stacey to the rescue. See you then. Aloha, my name is Richard Emory and I host Kondo Insider. We talk about issues facing the Kondo Association throughout Hawaii and talk about solutions. When you think about it, about one third of our population lives in some form of common interest real estate. We broadcast every Thursday at 3 p.m. Please tune in. Tune in and thank you, aloha. Okay, okay, okay, enough of that. Let's get back to the real deal here. First thing is, we're not just talking about the millennials. We gotta clarify that. No, we're not talking about the millennials. We're talking about everything. I went door to door for a candidate a few years ago and I found an extraordinary number of people didn't want to talk to me. And not because they didn't like me, not because they didn't like one candidate or the other, that what they said to me in my face, they said, I don't care about any of that. I don't vote anymore. I'm not involved. There's no belief in the system. Leave me alone. There's no belief in the system. Yeah, I'll take the benefits. I'll take the security. You know, I'll take the social security, but I'm not gonna do anything for it. Just leave me alone. It says over my head or I have shoved off. Okay, and so the point should be made that it's not just the 20 year olds who are backing out of the deal. Oh no, not at all. It's all kinds of demographic groups who are backing out of the deal. You know, if I were to lay the blame, I'd lay the blame almost at the baby boomers because they were the me first generation. They were the me generation. And I think they did a lot to dismantle the institutions, codes, rituals, whatever you want to say, of the United States. And they, with tearing some of those things down, you know, they tore some of the bad things down, civil rights and sexism, but they tore some of the good stuff apart too. I mean, you know, they did. So, you know, I don't think it's the millennials. I think the millennials are just frustrated. I think we have to also, you know, examine the technology and what I'm gonna call it the organizational development that has gone into helping a candidate run for office. In a word, the PR function. Right. You know, PR is everything. There's a movie with Sandra Bullock about how she goes to Chile. I saw that movie. And she consults, you know, for one of the candidates against the others. Right. She does all these magic tricks and it's all unfair. It's not democratic at all. And at the end of the day, the guy is a bum. And it's shocking what happens. After campaigning on, you know, all these lofty principles, immediately after elected, you know, he does something bizarre. Sort of the way Donald Trump threatened. Yeah. If I'm elected, I'm gonna throw Hillary in jail. Yeah, that's wonderful. That's not a bridge too far. That's out of power away. But you know, speaking of Sandra Bullock, I just want to say, you know, out of this whole miasma, Kelly Ann Conway, Clinton's advisor, has been, she's done an unbelievable job. I disagree with everything she says, but she has been absolutely unbelievable with respect to trying to remediate his actions and his behavior. I just wanted to say that I'm a big fan of hers. I think, you know, although I disagree, she's totally Republican. I disagree with her entire positions. But she's the person in the Trump campaign that's the Sandra Bullock character. She's crafting the message. I saw her. I saw her. And I, you know, this is like he said, she said, I saw her and I felt her. Then I looked deeply into the television set to see what she was like. And I concluded she was a liar on everything she was saying. She was the same thing as he is. Oh, I, I, I, I. She would never admit to the truth on anything. No, she, no, she, she's very deft. She's very, very deft. And, but it's just that to watch somebody do their job in the way that she does it, I just find. She's a perfect example of what I'm talking about. You know, so we have a profession out there that, you know, perverts the truth in favor of winning the candidate. Oh, absolutely. And that's what's happened. I mean, it's really sad. And this is an American institution. We have invented this one. Okay, but let's talk about Christmas Future. Yes, let's talk about the future. And the reference to Christmas Future, by the way, is Charles Dickens. Okay, and it's a Christmas Carol. Christmas, a Christmas story, I think with the name of that. And it's, you know, Scrooge and Bob Cratchit. And, you know, in order to make Scrooge fully understand, they take him, the book, Dickens takes him for a walk into the future. And he gets a chance to see what's gonna happen if he continues his bad acts in the future. And it scares him so much that he changes his ways. Well, I think people in this country should go for a walk into the future. They should see what's gonna happen if this continues. And if it, you know, if it's not a full blown constitutional crisis now, as I believe it is, it will be. So what is it like? This is a hard question, Marianne. It is. What is it like? Take me forward five years. And if this kind of thing continues, I mean, all you gotta do is look and see if Trump gets elected. What's gonna happen? You know, I don't, you know, what comes to mind is 1984 and Big Brother, I mean, there's gonna be, it's all TV, it's gonna be all talking heads on TV, no real people, tremendous, you have to have a buy-in into the message, a message, no discussion. It'll be, I mean, there'll be no genuine intellectual, public intellectual discourse. I think people don't realize the power of the president. You know, if he wants to do something radically unconstitutional, radically in violation of all the laws and the principles of the country, he can, it's up to someone else to stop it. Right, other people have to stop it. So who's gonna stop him? Like a Saturday Night Massacre. His own attorney general is not going to stop him. It'll have to be, you know, Pitchforks, I mean, how do you stop him? The courts will have to, you know, act. People will have to go and seek relief in court. I talked to one guy, and I won't mention his name, but he's in the State Department. And, you know, he was asked in a public discussion what would happen if Donald Trump were elected. And he said, oh, you're all worried about that. Don't be worried about that. Why not? Why not? Well, if Donald Trump is elected two weeks later, he'll be impeached. Really? Really? You know, impeachment is not so easy. No, it's not so easy. And I don't think of that as the solution. I mean, it's certainly not the solution to the problem. You know, I mean, if people don't have any faith in the government now, and I mean, it would just be so undermining to the authority of the government and the people's buy-in, what's the right word buy-in? Belief in the government. I just, you know. Confidence in the administration of justice. And, you know, once that begins to roll down the hill. Well, what's going to happen? It catches fire on everything. Can you see it going back? That's my problem. My problem is I'm not sure what's going to happen in the future, but I know I think it will be bad because I don't see anybody coming along that genuinely wants, maybe Bernie Sanders did to some extent, but that genuinely wants to- To the common good. Right, in a self-sacrificing way, stand up for what's right. I mean, all these Republicans that left Trump, they all stood up for what they thought was not right, but it was not in a self-sacrificing way. Somebody who, a hero, a hero, a government, you know, somebody, but do you see that? I don't see that. No, no, I agree with you. I see it getting worse before it gets better. Yes. And the possibility, the room, you know, the elbow room to get worse, it's huge. I mean, he could go, he could make an agenda. Well, he has made a kind of crazy agenda. The wall, he could actually try to do the wall. He could actually appoint a special prosecutor, go after her. He could actually push the button or get into a fight with any number of states that he does a lot. He could round up Muslims, innocent Muslims, and, you know, intern them as we did with the Japanese. Or make a tax break that favors the rich, you know? Well, he'll definitely do that. Effectively bankrupt the country. I mean, he will make people very unhappy and they will be in the streets. You can imagine all the things that he could do right out of the box that would destroy the fabric of our country and roll back all the gains we've made in terms of human rights over the past 200 and some odd years. It's just, it's amazing how quickly that could happen. And we would be victims, all of us. Right, and yeah, yeah. And I have to say something about the implicit sexism in this race. You know, it's so hard to believe that the first woman running for president has to face these kinds of, this kind of behavior on the other side. It's hard enough to run for president. It's hard enough to have a cogent farm policy, a cogent domestic policy, but this woman is, she's having to defend herself as a woman, I think, because I think she is. I do. I'm not so sure. You don't think so, why not? I think she could have done better on Sunday night. Well, she could have done better on Sunday night. He was really pulling or pushing her all over the lot and she didn't have an answer except to make a funny looking smile. But he, you know, I don't know how I would react with his little pre-debate conference and then these women that have been your adversaries for many, many years sitting in the audience and maybe she's only human and she, you know, really couldn't. Maybe so, but you know, I want somebody strong and the problem with that debate is if you're the kind of person who doesn't care about the issues intellectually and you're looking for a strong person, a macho person, some people are looking exactly for that. Right? You're gonna pick him. Well, he appeals to them. Ignore the substance of what he said and you're gonna pick the strength and you're not gonna see her as all that strong as he is. But you know, to get to the closing point on this, it's not Trump actually. It's all the factors and the people and the changes in our American society that have allowed Trump to get this far. I think that's right. I mean, I think there's a lot of people on the left who don't realize that big banks so that their actions help to disenfranchise this group of pitchfork wielding, you know, teabag, tea parties, Donald Trump supporters, you know, anti-government, destroy the government, the government's rigged. I mean, I think that, you know, the elite has a big part to play in it. Their behavior has, it's damaged the working man. Well, he's a demagogue. I mean, he's Yui Long demagogue and worse. Absolutely. And he's a phenomenon that should have gone out of our world, you know, 100 years ago in the development of this country, but he's back. Well, we've recreated the class structure that enables somebody to be a Yui Long and appeal to that person. So the system is really not perfect and the system had better find its key really quickly. The system had better cure itself of whatever ails it to allow him to have gotten this far. Well, you know, I think it goes back to what we were saying that people have to not do what bankers can't do, what's just the absolute best for bankers and without a care about the common good of America. People have to put a greater idea ahead of their own personal desire to agree. It's not so easy when you have a culture of greed going on in Wall Street as we saw in 2008, but I would not say to you, go out and vote. I would not say that. I would say, read the newspapers, read everything you can get your hands on, learn about this, have your kids learn about this, participate, connect with our civic society, be a real participant. So voting stupid is not helpful, ladies and gents. You gotta vote smart. Yeah, we have to be informed. Yes, absolutely. Thank you, Mary Ann. Oh, it's always terrific, always the best.