 Good afternoon. Thanks for joining us. Welcome to think tech Hawaii and another difficult conversation to make good trouble. Hey, with the. This is to cliche that the lovely and talented team of Patterson mediator arbitrator and master of many trades and tolerant enough to deal with both have been Davis and me at the same time that's an accomplishment in and of itself and professor emeritus also known as duty meritus Ben Davis. Hey, University of Toledo School of Law. Again recently published author of many articles actually. So, Ben you were starting to tell us about is something that just came to your attention. So yeah today I watched a presentation by an author who basically is talking about. Who's basically talking about con artists con artists. So I was like, she's written a whole book about the con and the way people con people she wrote. So one of the things that was being asked was, well, you know, how do you get people out of a con. All right, and because the way that basically what the con artist does is they play on either your hopes or your fears two sides of the coin. And they say to you what you want to hear. And it doesn't matter how sophisticated you are or anything like that. You're really good at tapping your emotions right. There's this whole wonderful analysis about it. And what ultimately, but she was saying was pretty pessimistic, which is that once people are in on the con and they're, they are so in that you know there's you can throw anything at them any logic rational data. So, but they're like, they just feed it into there. You don't understand the con machine, you know, you don't understand the reality. And so those machines like QAnon and all those kinds of things that we see right. The people who are into that, they're like impervious to that being pulled out of that. And the question was, well, how do you get them out. And the only thing that person said was, you have to have these people who are like, they she called infiltrators like cult infiltrators, who become part of the thing. And then what they do is they speak the language of the true believers and introduce doubt into that. That's, and you might be lucky to get somebody to come out of that. So, you know, with regards to the all this election stuff going on right now, you know, Biden made that speech right that magnificent speech, but in the people who are in on the big lie. It's totally impervious to them. They're totally impervious to it, because it's, you know, it doesn't fit into the big lie con. And really the, you know, then the people who change it are the Republicans, who are, so to speak, in the con, who would challenge the con raise issues about it you know those guys like Kinzinger and Cheney, the way that they're challenging it, then makes them to be excluded so that I don't know it's like somebody else has to, to, you know, to kind of talk these people down like ordinary local, I would say ordinary local leaders and local you know city towns and all that. At the same time the con is so voracious is voracious that you see that if somebody does say that, then they get the legislature to pass a lot of take their power away from them right, so that they you know it's a fascinating thing. It's fascinating to think that you know this is how screwed up we are. And we're not getting any help from the Supreme Court, you know, I read Alito's thing, and I've been concentrating over Alito's Bernovich versus Democratic National Party. And you know I was reading there are these sites to some cases where the court said that you know did you have a chance to participate in the democratic process. And that was part of why they would leave things alone. And I was like, well of course, you know, people get to vote, and the people they, but you know, it's always majority minority right you know, the idea was that supposed to protect the Supreme Court trying to protect the rights of those who are not in the majority in a given place. But he was like kind of like saying, if you lose in the political setting too bad so sad, you know, as if that's pretty limited view of your of your role Mr. Mr. Justice Alito, you know, so I don't know what the answer is but I remain optimistic and I know I'm not on that con. And then the other con is the critical race theory one right that's going on right now. And I was thinking you know what's going on is that there was another con it's been going on for a long time, which was the sort of bleached history that we all had back in school right that was a con that we were all bought into and we believe is reality. And now you're trying to tell us that's not the reality that was really the reality. There's so much resistance from all these parents because literally the bleached history that they learn is, they're finding out, it's not really that true. But you see how hard it is to get people to, to, to accept that, you know, I don't know what the answer is, but they're, you know, just a couple thoughts that struck me in this wonderful time we live in. Christina, am I crazy? Oh, absolutely not. You're not crazy. We're in the midst of change. And this is literally we live in a quick gratification society. We expect things to happen quickly, and in a blink of an eye, but we are and we are in the midst of social change. And it's happening gradually. It's, I think, more or less like the Industrial Revolution. You know, there were people who pushed back who couldn't believe it, who weren't informed, but it's happening. We will either be part of the change or we will be, we will become obsolete and obsolete can mean you have thinking that no longer aligns with, I'll say the greater collective, because I think there will always be that person who's the outlier or the contrarian. But what this back and forth right now and I'll talk about the, the election specifically because I think this is where we see a lot of the pushback and we see a lot of this resistance. And part of it is like you said it's the con it's the, I'm going to feed into your fear I'm going to feed into that that that kernel of desperation or discomfort, and I'm going to exploit it. It's not, it's not happenstance that we have a former president who is more vigorous now and some of the rhetoric that he's spouting, and that we have our national legislative body, literally going back and forth over voting right something that we've put most of us thought was probably addressed in the 1960s, and the fact that we, we literally are seeing this deconstructed yet again. And we've talked about it you have I have Chuck has it's just settle it's it's discomforting it's unsettling, but until the larger group of us says no. One, get I'm voting you out of office to we will do whatever we need to do so that you can exercise your right to vote. All these additional quizzes poll taxes, whatever you want to call it, it literally gets is addressing that that fear, I don't want the other voting, and I'm not going to say it's Republican Democrat, it's the other, I don't want the other voting, I see you smiling Chuck, so I'll pause there see what you have to say on this. No, and and then you were talking about the voting rights case and Tina you're talking about voting repression voting suppression measures. Besides that there's gerrymandering and all these things. And then you're right right in Alito's opinion. He attempts to justify the voting restrictive measures as legitimate fraud prevention measures. Well, not only is there no evidence of fraud in this election. In fact, it's the most closely supervised monitored reevaluated election in our history. And it's clean over 60 lawsuits with no evidence. Exactly. To the level now, where there are actually judges who are sanctioning lawyers who brought those losses. Yeah, because there's no evidence to support them. Yeah. And where we're not seeing people step up is within the ranks of that Republican Party, where one or two people, the Cheney Murkowski, maybe one or two others. But you've got hundreds of Congress people Republican Congress people. Close to half of whom voted against certifying the election results that their own minority leader has now acknowledged resulted in the legitimate election of the Biden Harris ticket. One of the things and I hope this is not a digression. I'm remembering back to when I was a kid. And the family in the house next door to ours. The father in the family was the leader of the Republican Party in Wisconsin, and a close friend and kind of Calabash uncle was a man who was governor twice he was a legislator in Wisconsin. He died in the world Republicans, but I never remember having anyone engage in the kind of dehumanizing angry antagonistic name calling of abuse of language that we're seeing now. If you take a position to support the rebuilding of this country and the restoration of the economic base of the decimated middle and lower middle class. You're called a socialist. And you're called that in a very dehumanizing way as if you are less than a person you're not entitled to respect, you're not entitled to consideration, because you take this position. And so I think that, you know, will it take to get us back to where people look at each other, treat each other and talk to each other as human beings. I don't know what it will take, quite honestly, except, you know, we get tired, we get tired of it you know at some point like this like an existential exhaustion and the kind of everyone with it. And then what will happen is you typically have some new actors so new ambitious folks who, you know, and donors who are willing to finance it you know, because that's what the one of the things also I get I get very curious about with all this that's going on is this stuff to make it keep going like this, and who is providing the money to keep this thing going because I mean if you look at it that the 33,000 foot level or the billionaire level. This is great, because nothing done means I keep all I got. And that's exactly what I want so let's have more chaos and I will finance chaos to make sure that nothing literally gets done until the Republicans are in and then I can get them to give me even more, you know, it's just like. And they've got the funds to pull that off I mean I just saw that Jeff Bezos just you know, drop the dime on the Smithsonian $200 million, which is the largest gift to the Smithsonian in its history. And that's not even a rounding error on his 195 billion dollars you know I mean, I mean it's a level that. I don't know and obviously there could be small, small donors to, but there's got to be a lot of money in this in this con to be made from doing this con and plus the people do the calm that was the other thing I learned in this presentation, what they're into is the power. The power to shape people's thinking to change people's thinking to have you know to pull the strings the pocket bastard. That's that that's the, that's the thrill and you can see. Certainly with Trump, how he loves that I mean that's really would really he gets off with like the serial companies that created lousy stuff but you know Trump University Trump states you know it's like everything was a magical. A way to make a little money off some people and play him for jumps quite honestly, you know, but anyway, it's not just Trump, it's you know there's a lot of people making money off of this I think. And in America, you know, making money is a big thing right. No question. Yeah, go ahead. I'll wait please continue. I was just going to thank Ben for drawing a close connection between the economic power and inequality, the political power and inequality, the educational power and inequality to try and dictate what kids can learn and talk about in school. There are threats of criminal penalties for talking about racial inequality in school for opposing voting suppression in a state legislature. Texas Governor Abbott threatened to dock their pay that didn't do it. They left and they were smart enough to get out of the state so he doesn't have jurisdiction over him. So now he's threatening, if you come back, we're going to criminally penalize you for walking out on our voting suppression exercise. Right. That's like, if I could say that's the one trick pony that you see in the authoritarian space which is essentially what criminal state violence right the criminalizing it it's always state violence levels of state violence always always always and some version of it right. That's what they do. That's their one trick that's a one trick pony every time you're like amazing one more time that's all you got is that we're going to threaten you with being arrested on and charged with you know, and then that was kind of the brilliance of Martin Luther King's nonviolent movement and go ahead and arrest us. Go ahead and put us all in jail. You won't have a war on that either. Because we're all in jail. So Tina, you were about to say, I wanted to pull the thread a little bit further on power, because that's underlying. But then I think you brought up a good point. It underlies the discussion regarding voting. It underlies the discussion regarding the Alito analysis and also underlies the struggle that we're seeing regarding critical race theory, the power who has the power so I guess my question for the two of you is if this is really about having power holding on power holding on to power. What does it mean when that power is unraveled both for in the, in the context of voting, whether that's legislation voter suppression voter oppression. And, and, and what we teach our children or what we teach what we teach each other and regarding race and interacting with one another so that's my question for you. Yes, I'm taking on the role of a talk show host now. Yeah. Well, I'll take a stab at Chuck. With regard to what we teach our children. I think there's a guy in West Virginia made a great comment is this. And it's a it's a little off color but I'll say this is just because you want to be a dumb ass doesn't mean my kids have to be a dumb ass. And so as a parent, you want to make sure your kids get the quality education with the breadth of knowledge that's there. And so you have to, you know, as many black parents have done certainly for probably centuries at least, you know, it's like this fight in the school to get your kid the stuff that they need. And I would say, actually for black and white and all kinds of parents who want to have a, you know, an accurate vision of the subjects matters. That's the battle they have to fight is to keep the school being accurate and not having fantasy. You know, I like to call dumbing down of their kids in a in a worldwide competitive space where kids, their kids around the world who are moving marching ahead while we're playing these mind game. And for your kids, you know, that that's, that's a thing in terms of how we talk to each other. You know, it always, I mean, you know, that there are screamers. Sure, but, you know, we're all human, right. And I think that there's a certain level of, if we don't recognize humanity in each other. Then that's our problem, because to the extent that you don't recognize humanity in somebody. Then you're othering them. Now that somebody else doesn't recognize your humanity. Why have we seen that, you know, I mean really, you know, I used to talk to people in Paris and say the difference between living in Paris and living in the United States was in Paris, I knew I wasn't French so I therefore I wasn't civilized, right, because young people are civilized are the French, but I knew I was human and French always competed me as a human, you know, but in the state sometimes I wondered if people were considering me human actually, you know, with all the history. And I think that if we recognize the humanity of the others, no matter how obnoxious they are or something like that. That's like the base level thing because if we don't recognize humanity and that other person. In a sense, we are, you know, I mean we have to fight with them, but we can't disallow them from. We can't fall into that that twisted space where we deny the humanity and the other because once you start to deny the man and the other you go down a whole path of battles of disenfranchisement and all that stuff. That would be the second the third thing I would just say is that it is a period of transition, the con book I read or the person who did the con things that this is particularly kinds of periods when people are in transition in their lives, where they're vulnerable to the this is like a really good time, and the social media thing is like a con on steroids machine right so if you if you have sort of that kind of outlook which I found really helpful from this person that were vulnerable, the cons are possible, and then you know trying to remain lucid I like to say to people, you know you could you can be innocent but don't be naive, that's all. You know, you have grounded in some things, you know grounded in and how you were raised with regards to your, your faith or. There was a little thing like there was a lady who wanted to get three slurpees and only had a money for two and this young black guy behind me, put the money up right away to cover for the third one. So she could go out with the three footed kids in the car right, and I looked at him and said you were raised well. You know, you were raised well that you were just going to help out a little bit it's not a big thing, but you were raised well by your parents about being neighborly, you know that kind of thing. And then I paid for his thing you know and so you know we got this little thing going, which was just just recognizing human decency, you know. That's, I think is a huge thing if we could just get to that point although the political types try to you know, get us all not recognizing the basic human decency that we should each have towards each other. But, you know, I think, as we go into our last couple of minutes. I think what you're hitting and Tina what your question brought out. Kind of draws my thought to what happened in the 2020 presidential elections. Overcame all of that divisive dehumanizing stuff and made choices for people that are decent human beings, and that are trying their best to restore that as the tone and spirit of this country. Can that happen again what's it going to take. Last remarks. Thank you folks so much. You know you want to take it on. I will. I am trying to think of the right words or sentence but it's that it's that spirit of endurance. It's the tenacity, it's the, it's the desire to be acknowledged and to to exercise one's opinion, and, and hope that those who either have power or actually have power will listen and act upon what they're being told. That's what I saw in 2020. Yes, there are people who are believing something else but there's a greater. There was a greater number of people who said, I can't live like this, I refuse to live like this, and I'm going to do whatever it takes. I'm going to quote Malcolm X by my by any means necessary. And again, I'm taking that quote out of context but people did what they needed to do, whether that was driving others to the polls, standing in line in the rain, you know, waiting hours for food and people bringing food to them, because, because of that that basic desire to be recognized and seen and respected. And what a great place to wrap this one up that maybe what really happened is exactly what you're saying. Is it enough people said enough already. We're going to let our vote show who we really are. Yes. We hope that can happen again. Thank you all. Thank you. Another great session. Come back. Thank you for listening to us in two weeks. And send us your questions. Thanks so much. Take care.