 And welcome to Think Tech Hawaii on Thursday, September 16th, 2021. You are watching America finding its way. I'm your host for this Think Tech show, Stephanie Stoll-Dalton. Our show topic today is to inquire whether recent calls for investigations of the termination of the Afghan War by a bipartisan Congress congressional committee can determine accountability for and assign accountability for what was correct and what was not. Given how septic the formation of the ongoing select committee on the January 6th capital attack, the way its current work progress is being reviled and derogated, such as exercising its right to subpoena senior level White House officials, can information from the recent books published revealing alarming presidential incapacity and possible senior level military overreach be rationally or reasonably or fairly apprised and understood? So the question is, in this political climate, is the Congress committee process functional for purposes of establishing truth and assigning accountability? And if it isn't or not good enough, what is? So to discuss this situation, we have assembled informed Think Tech guests to discuss the challenges to leadership for establishing ways to get the facts and get to the truth and provide accountability for the purpose of interfering with it ever, ever happening again. So welcome guest Jay Fidel and Tim Apicello and Winston Welsh. So welcome to the program today. As reported, Republicans dismiss the January 6th capital rioters as engaged in peaceful protestation, peaceful patriotism as a defense of freedom and also as normal tourist visitations. Extreme riotists claim the rioters as political prisoners and want to bust them out. Why, with 57% of Americans calling the event an unforgettable attack on democracy, is this whitewashing of the January 6th mob attack persisting? And is it possibly a setup for this coming January 18th demonstration for justice for? That's September 18th. What was that, Jay? Would you repeat again? Make that September 18th. Oh, thank you. September 18th, that's where we are right now. Yes, of course. September 18th demonstration justice for the January 6th. So, Jay, what about the situation we have with just a complete denial of any culpability on the January 6th one? And as we approach the September 18th renewal and revisiting and respecting the effort of those rioters at the Capitol, what is happening here to us? What is this about? Well, my guess is September 18th is going to be a nothing burger. I think the government has learned how to deal with them. The government has learned much more from January 6th about how to deal with a crowd like that. And the crowd has learned how to deal with the government. Both sides will be more efficient and try to be more effective. But I think at the end of the day, next Saturday, I think it'll be a nothing burger. But it goes beyond that. To answer your question in a sort of a comprehensive way, Stephanie, to me, the government can't investigate its shoelaces anymore. We have seen so many investigations starting from the Mueller investigation to go off the track. We have seen so many things that should have been investigated by the Department of Justice in the Trump administration and now after the Trump administration that haven't been investigated. I don't think we can investigate our shoelaces. This January 6th event took place, what, nine months ago? And we really haven't gotten to first base. Now you can say, well, we had some dramatic statements by the Capitol Police. That doesn't address at all how it happened. I mean, who organized it? What members of Congress were involved? What organizations put it together? Who paid for it? They don't know. So then we wait for months. And now more recently, we see that the committee has issued subpoenas. And there'll be a big fight about the subpoenas. The Republicans won't abide by them. They'll have to go to court. And then there are questions about these subpoenas. So we haven't seen anybody appear on the subpoenas just yet. And I don't think we will for a long time. Bottom line is we're not getting anywhere, investigating January 6th. It's humiliating, embarrassing to the country. We can't seem to do it. But it's part of a larger picture of divisiveness and madness. It all seems to be falling down around us. Half the country believing the big lie, honesty, dishonesty, pervading in the government. And it leaks out into the community in general. Government has become a blood sport game, but certainly not government managing the country. And it's mean. And voting rights have been doused. That's the reality. And Congress hasn't done anything about it. Dark money is still ruling the elections thanks to the Supreme Court and Citizens United. Infrastructure, nothing, nada. Immigration, nothing, nada. Gun control, nothing, nada. I could go on. And meanwhile, half the country is arming up. Now, you may see your weapons here on the 18th, except I think the government has a telltale saying, if you see anybody carrying a weapon called in, we'll see what happens on that. Of course, the thing is, will that actually be the case? I mean, there could be weapons. And not only is this a request from the police here, the capital, it's also the city doesn't want any of them in here. They don't want it, nobody wants it, but these guys are coming to town. And weapons are their mantra. Weapons distinguish them from all the other citizens. If you're standing there in the street and you don't have a weapon and they do, you're either gonna run and hide or you're gonna exceed to their demands. I mean, we're talking about the militia. We're talking about people who rule extra legally by force. And that's behind a lot of what the Republican movement is these days. So we have lawlessness, we have conflict, we have a problem about the COVID. It's incredible, it's madness. People killing each other for what? For cult, for Trump. And this of course is affecting the economy and the supply lines. Education is stuck, the kids in school, big controversy. Everything is a big controversy. Congress says it will never vote for a democratic bill or judge. They're gaming the system. I guess they're trying to show that Biden can't do anything. And that's all with respect to the next election, midterm and presidential elections. Supreme Court is completely out of touch. That case over Roe v. Wade was really terrible. And Joe Biden as good intentioned as he is can't get anything done. It's not getting better, it's getting worse. We here at St. Tech charge ourselves with connecting the dots. And as optimistic as we and especially Winston would like to be, there's not a whole lot to be optimistic about. In fact, I would say that if you're optimistic these days, you're living in a self-imposed alternative truce. And fool yourself. Fact is the country is going down. Rebuttal? Very good direct statement, declarative of our condition. And several remarkable books have been published recently and that reveal even more than the chaos in the White House on the occasion of the Capitol attack in January nine months ago and at other times. But for Evan Osmos, Osnos in his book, Wildlands, he says the former president's reluctance to call even slow down or let's talk, much less stop shows how the notion of the public good has been rejected. And that is critical in a democracy. It means that perhaps squarely in the, we are in squarely a state of political and social disorder. So Tim, do you agree or disagree that we are approaching the that status, political and social disorder? Yes. Is it past a tipping point? No, but are we there? Yes. Where yes means no. And the truth, damn the truth, damn the facts because it's all about one try versus another try. And data doesn't matter, facts don't matter. It's when at all costs and what are the two main claims? The big lie, the election was stolen. And what's the other one? Vaccines don't work and the Delta virus once again as a hoax. You know, these are the things that we combat and they defy all lines of logic and reasoning and medical science. And yet they persist. Why? Because the standard bearer of that party named Donald Trump has deemed it so. And they have followed and will follow the standard bearer until the standard bearer doesn't isn't significant any longer, any further. We just had a recall election where Larry Elder did the exact same thing as Donald Trump attempted to tarnish an election before the first vote was counted. Why? These are the things that they do when you are following a line of propaganda from day one and you're now been sucked in and you are now in the tribe. Even if they know what they're saying is a lie or not true they can't be seen or perceived to be outside that border of the tribe. Cause that's a lonely place to be with family, friends and neighbors. And so they persist and they stick to it. That's why we're in the problem we're in right now. So it sounds like you're pointing out that in the midst of this chaos there is an affiliation. People are still affiliating but they're doing so with those who do not respect the social order. And when you have that happen with the mob approach like that you have something that is called anarchism. And that is tantamount to terrorism and nihilism. And these are the kinds of things that were rampant towards the end of the 19th century. But- Can I just say one thing? Sure. You know, this book by Bob Woodward and Acosta is coming out shortly. And like the other books that have come out about the last day of Trump's administration you have those who have been appointed by Donald Trump those that were serving in the military General Millie that comes to mind. The Department of Justice. They all know that Donald Trump wasn't right in the head. And that, you know, behind the scenes they're working to preserve to some degree the Republic. Yet on paper and on video and on camera they are their loyal lackeys. So there's a disconnect. I guess it's the Emperor Kloh syndrome. They're not saying anything publicly that would displease the fearless leader being Donald Trump, but behind the scenes you're doing everything in your power to try him to prevent him from pulling off a coup d'etat. So this is the issue here. And specifically in terms of the congressional committees and that kind of oversight and examination. But what are we supposed to do about what are those people supposed to do in those situations? Where are they to go? I mean, with the Vinman discussion of the problem with General Millie. Yes, he did do things but didn't do them all right and that there is a process and a procedure and that supposedly that was supposed to be okay. But here we've got a situation where we can't get these congressional committees to produce as Jay accused them. And we have these people in the White House running around tearing their hair out and still smiling and doing whatever Trump wanted. So Winston, what is this situation we are in and what can we do? Well, you know, even though it's been claimed like the Chinese character for chaos, a crisis, an opportunity, and it's not true. I think right now what we're seeing is a, my seventh grade teacher, eighth grade teacher, she was 11th grade teacher says it's we have thesis then antithesis and then synthesis. So we are certainly now in the antithesis portion of whatever we used to know and out of this will come a new synthesis. And what that looks like is in large measure dependent exactly on us. As I've said, many times we are in a moral, spiritual, financial, political crisis of the first order in this nation where everything is coming off, the varnish is gone. We're seeing where we're weak. We're seeing and thanks to Donald Trump but it's not Donald Trump alone. He's a product of this as much as he is the instigator. We've had 40 years of hollowing out of our institutions of our educational institutions, specific, it's not to nothing about teachers but if you want to learn anything, if you want to know anything, we all know you've got to look for it yourself. You've got to try and find the facts. You've got to be able to read a magazine article like in the New York or something or the Atlantic that's deeper than one page. You have to be able to have some critical thinking skills and you have to be willing to look at what other points of view there are beyond the binary points of view to things that we may not even be considering. So what's happened is that we don't really have solid critical thinking skills anymore that allow us to approach things rationally. And Tim was saying the two big lies of the election was stolen and COVID and use ivermectin and it's a fake vaccine or control whatever that lie and all of that mess is this is just the newest, right? This is the newest thing that's just come down the pipe. That didn't exist a few years ago. Now did Donald Trump exacerbate that and flame that? Of course, all of his acolytes, yes, but there's a lot more coming from that and it's rooted in this decay that's happened but out of the decay, we... Well, I will be optimistic, Jay. I think that we can out of the decay watch the show on fungus and it was interesting how it changes, it takes what's dead and dying and makes something new and beautiful out of it and redistributes the organism. Would you say that we've gotten to the point of absence and suspension of government and that perhaps this is what the aim was because as we have an absence of governmental rules and arrangements and oversight, we move towards total absence of all of that which is then taking us into chaos and anarchy completely. Yeah, the answer is yes. We're moving to an autocracy. If you think it's a coincidence, just happening by some natural process, no. There are people out there that want this, the Republican Party wants this because they feel that it will benefit them. They feel that autocracy will benefit them and Trump feels that way. Bottom line is as soon as Trump got in, he started terminating people or letting their offices go empty. And we had one official from Hawaii went out to Congress rather to the State Department and noticed there was nobody home. The offices were empty. The place had been decimated and I suggest that happened through a lot of other agencies. And if you think that Joe Biden can correct that, reverse that, fill those offices again, it's not so easy. Even now, there are people in the government that he has not removed, including that U.S. Attorney from the state of Connecticut who's running the silly thing with Murk Talk. You guys saw that on the news yesterday. We have a lot of people in the government who should not be in the government but the executive has not seen fit to replace them yet or can replace them. Good point, Jay, but that is massive. The executive branch is massive, okay? 80,000, 100,000 people. And one of the signs of that quarry now is that is why there were so few passports or what are they visas delivered to the Afghans because Trump reamed out that section of state that put together that kind of a visa, which is like probably not even a day's work. I agree with Winston about the notion that it is decaying. It has decayed. It has been decaying a long time and Trump exacerbated the decay. No question about any of that. But what I disagree with Winston is this notion that it'll all come together in some sort of natural, bacteriological, bacterial colony process. It will all knit back together against some magical, natural law. But let me finish that for you. You may not like it though. That's- Exactly, that's what I'm telling you. It's not gonna be beautiful Winston. You said beautiful. It's not gonna be beautiful. It's gonna be different. And you won't like it. None of us here will like it. None of our friends will like it. And I think it's happening. It's just like the 19th century. We're gonna be living in a dictatorship. We're gonna be living in a place where there is no government. There is no rule of law. There is no constitution. And there's a lot of religion. The kind of religion, by the way, that allows you to get a written exemption to the vaccine requirement, okay? As long as you go to a church you've never been to before. Never walked in the door, have no connection with it. And you pay money and the minister, the pastor, then gives you a written exemption. That's the kind of religion that's gonna govern our new world, our new post-decay world. Well, my question is, and let's go to Tim, was this the aim of Trump? I mean, with this display and his lack of capacity in so many ways, here we are at this point, and then we can see the trail that's led up to it. So was this something he planned to do? What do you think, Tim? Well, his ex-wife in a book stated that on his, now, we didn't think Donald Trump read a whole lot of books, but she stated that on his nightstand was the book, Mind Comef. So if you look at what he's done, not just before he was elected president, he has followed all the rules of proper propaganda, like a minstrel, like an orchestra, a band leader. He has done so well to implement propaganda. And we did a show on this about two years ago. And yes, this was all overt, planned, concentrated effort to dismantle the institutions of our government, our democracy, weaken them, and then insert the big lie. Oh, I mean, everything he's done in four years matches up perfectly to the tenets of propaganda. And if we don't recognize that, we ought to. So I was thinking, that's very interesting, Tim, and explanatory to a certain extent, but what was coming into my mind as Jay was talking about this disintegration or dis-establishmentarianism, right? On the good side and going to establish another authoritarianism on the other side, i.e. totalitarianism, I was thinking of the French Revolution. So Winston, what do you think? Do you see any parallels like Jay and Tim have pointed out with the French Revolution or other sorts of disintegration? When I'm looking at the disintegration and the reintegration, the new synthesis, it's not towards the past that I'm looking. It's more, if I'm looking at the scary version, it's what China's got, and how everyone is monitored everywhere all the time. And maybe, you can look at the movie, the oath that came out in 2018 where Americans were supposed to swear an oath of allegiance to get their job. It was a dramedy in the end. I think what we're looking at is that. So that's the depressing version is that we got a lot of science fiction models about the future of what we might end up looking like. But an optimistic frame, because I will throw in a little optimism, is that we have this show. We have our mental capacities to reach other people, to help them understand that they need to educate themselves that we indeed have the power to shape our world as much as we can with each other. Now, are we gonna accomplish it? No, there's no certainty about anything. Is what Jay said happening? Absolutely, all around us. We're seeing this moves towards theocracy, autocracy, lack of democracy, and just people that I don't even think they know who the president, half the nation probably doesn't know who the president is or care. They're worried about how many followers they have on TikTok. And so we've got a really, the problem is so immense and how we approach it. I don't have any easy answers for you, except to say again, we've got it, like with this whole plague that we have going on right now. It's up to, while we do have collective responsibility, at the end of the day, we have an individual responsibility to educate ourselves, to protect ourselves, and to advance that understanding. And then join with other like-minded people. And it's the same, I think, could be said of our community, of our city, of our state, and of our nation. Part of it, don't you think Winston is speaking out? You know, you have to keep your head clear. You have to do critical thinking, you have to educate yourself, and you have to find your own way of dealing with it and keeping clear. But you also have to speak out and we speak out. This program speaks out. We are a living example of the First Amendment. And there are other examples too. But I wanna add this, and it's sort of very troubling. We have examples of media that tell lies, and they exist, and nobody stops them. And the people who might criticize them, don't criticize them nearly enough. Right now, we still have the First Amendment. But you know what's out of Shakespeare, maybe a turn on Shakespeare. The first thing to go is the media. And Trump attacked the media. The GOP attacks the media all the time. And when we get further into this, when we connect the dots on into this decayed deterioration, talking about the First Amendment is going to be undermined soon enough. You'll see what I mean. So these disaster fantasies, which they still are because we're not there yet, are helping us, or driving us to look to examples and see how it all went. And Winston, yours reflects the book I read by Ann Randa, We the Living. It was just that sort of thing. People individually and relating, and the speaking out was pretty dangerous, Jay. So we do have to get our bravery up and probably our guns out to go speak out because we're going to be definitely in jeopardy. But why don't we turn constructive here for the last few minutes? No. No. No. No. No. Lesses. Speaking out is the first constructive thing actually that we've done aside from the disaster fantasies, okay? So now we're talking about speaking out and how we're supposed to do that. And you must be referring to how about how we'd like to represent our dads. Speaking out, the ones that will have integrity and tell the truth. So how about some examples, Taylor? All right. Well, I'm going to take, you try to be constructive here, but it's going to be hard. To Jay's point about the media, to Winston's point about political fungus, there's media fungus. And when I think of fungus, I think of mushrooms. And what do you do when you have a mushroom? What does the media do when they are nothing but a media fungus? You keep the people in the dark and you feed them manure. And that's the bottom line. And we've been fed manure for far too long. And the FCC has fallen on its face to prevent bad medical advice about ivervectin and hydrochloroquine. And it's caused the lives of hundreds of thousands of deaths to misinformation. And I say, where is the FCC? They're way past the First Amendment boundaries as far as I'm concerned. And if you want to be constructive, let's get the FCC to attack the first problem. That is the information bubble of media fungus. All right, let's go with one round of last statements, okay? And they can be constructive and then encourage constructivism or other, if you please. So Winston, what would you say for your last round, Connie? I'm gonna leave us optimistic. So what's the show on fungus? It's interesting, it's on Netflix. But it's also about an interesting guy who is a stutterer, now he's like a world expert on this stuff. So he educated himself. He is respected by the establishment. They go to him for answers. He's come up with novel solutions. That's what we're doing here. That's what we need to do as a people. We have Joe Biden as our president. He's the president of the United States. We had Gavin Newsom soundly defeating a recall against him yesterday. There is a lot of good and right and positive things happening in this nation. We don't see it because it's not the noise that's capturing the thing on the surface, but it's happening all around us. And it's people that woke up and they're saying, no, no more. We need alternative solutions and they're creating those. And I think we need to look for those and focus on those. There's no guarantees. But you know, and you're right. Joe Rogan was talking about how CNN, he's gonna sue him for saying that he shouldn't take Givermectin or whatever he got sick. He has millions and millions of followers. Well, you know what? We're in a day and an age where every person can have her or his or their own media channel to disseminate news. And so we need to teach critical thinking skills. And that's something that each of us has to learn how to do and it's how we learn how to do it together because it hasn't been taught before. And in the olden days, we were spoon fed by three networks. And now we're, it's the wild, wild west. So, you know, individual responsibility here, folks. Wildlands, the book by Evan Osnos relating to your comments. Okay, Jay, how about you? Last comment. Yeah. The governor of California, what's his name? Newsome. Evan. Newsome. He is a piece of optimism. California, at least in that election, was a piece of optimism. Thank you. And I think that helps us somehow to feel that, yes, we can have some control over this. And more than that, it offers us a presidential candidate. Because I don't think that Joe Biden's gonna run again. I don't think Kamala Harris is gonna run for vice president or could run. I think it's Newsome and it's Amy Klobuchar. That's a winning team as far as I'm concerned. We need that. And Newsome has the strength, I think. He's been through the fire and he has the strength. So that's good news. But I think it's contending factions, it's contending directions here. And the bad news seems to be, you know, greater and greater when we connected dots on this show. Tim will agree with me that back when we had the same tension of optimism and pessimism. And every time we looked, it was more pessimism. Every time we looked, our pessimistic projections were coming true. And now they're rampantly coming true. The country is in terrible shape. And half the people in the country are in this kind of madness. And the country hasn't figured out a way to deal with it. I don't have a good feeling about the future. So, you know, buy a lot of water and make sure you have a place to go when it really gets rough in your neighborhood. Get lentils. And I think, you know, Jay and Winston have brought up the Gavin Newsome win. And it seems to be a trouncing of Trump, a real trouncing of Trump. It's the beginning. That's my sense of it. And that's what I'm hearing coming through a lot of the presentation. So Jay, excuse me, Tim, you're the last word here on our last round. That's a scary thing to bestow upon me. You know, the President of the United States has great immeasurable powers, great powers. The president started a nuclear war, if they wish, of what we're finding out. Here's the deal. The president needs to exercise those agencies that he has at his beck and call to stop the tearing of the fabric of our democracy. And again, Jay said it perfectly, the media needs to be addressed. I also think that representatives of the government, be the legislative government, need to examine their oath to office. And that is the preservation of democracy, the rule of law and the Constitution. Those two things alone, if Joe Biden seriously addresses this and says, look, this is where we're falling down, we can start back on the path to getting ourselves back together again, but it's up to old Joe to do that. And back in the day, it was called Sleepy Joe. Wake up, President Biden, wake up, get the FCC involved in love this misreporting and fabrication of lies. And that's all it is. And so he needs to get this thing going and could be so timid about the exercising of his powers. Well, it's Aloha time and we'll have to wrap it up after the scintillating discussion. So thanks to our guests, Jay Fidel, Tim Apachella and Winston Welch and for their informative and interesting conversation. I'm your host, Stephanie Stoll Dalton, and for Think Tech's show, America Finding Its Way. We'll see you next week, same day, same time, same exciting topics. So join us again and mahalo everyone for tuning in today.