Social Justice - A Conversation

Unknown Speaker 0:00
This is a k, u and v studios original program. The content of this program does not reflect the views or opinions of 91.5 Jazz and more the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, or the Board of Regents of the Nevada System of Higher Education.

Unknown Speaker 0:18
Hi, I'm Charles Stanton. I'm on the faculty of the Honors College of UNLV. And the Boyd School of Law.

Unknown Speaker 0:24
Hi, I'm Gabriella Tam. I'm a fourth year accounting student.

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And welcome to social justice, social justice, our conversation a

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conversation.

Unknown Speaker 0:36
Evening, everybody, welcome back to our social justice conversation show. As always joined by my partner Gabriella Tam, and we have so many things to talk about, I was going to actually start this program, talking about originally about a great sports event that happened in our city, which was the Super Bowl, and the enormous positive impact and seems to have made one our city on our economy. And of course, on the sports world, because it was probably one of the greatest Super Bowls ever. It had the biggest audience ever. But unfortunately, unfortunately, again, we can't make that the focus of our conversation regarding the super wall, what we have to make the focus of our conversation on today is another another mass shooting at the parade that they were going to have for the victorious Kansas City Chiefs. And once again, once again, again, the the the easy access to weaponry, the lack of effective laws, the disinterest in our and our elected leaders to do anything positive, to try to limit the amount of these weapons that people seem to be able to obtain without any trouble. Is is again, really, really disturbing. And I don't know, at this point, you know, what we need as a society to wake up and to finally say, you know, we are destroying ourselves, we are destroying our nation. We are we are endangering so many innocent people. What can we do to change that? And it does not seem that there's any kind of a concerted movement to regulate this.

Unknown Speaker 2:50
Yeah. It's, it's sad that like, the word that I kept hearing you say is like, again, and again, and again, you know, it's out what at what point are, like, officials, or like, even people in general just gonna be like, okay, like, I'm, I'm sick of having to worry about my life, wherever I go, I'm sick about having to have this worry in the back of my mind where I, when I go to something that I have to, like, I want to, like, celebrate, you know, like, it's just, you want to be filled with happiness that day, because, you know, your team just won. But now it's replaced with sadness, because some, I mean, I don't know what the motive is, but I'm sure they were angry. Like, some angry person just decided to take a gun and just like, shoot a bunch of people. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 3:39
Well, sure. I mean, I think what you say is exactly right. I think that whereas there was certain occasions where people wouldn't even think that could be anything violent. That would happen. Yeah. Well, that's been removed now, basically. And, you know, almost any social encounter you might have could bring the risk of death. Yeah, you know, you go like you go to the church that could be still was the, the shooting in Houston in the church of a woman who was mentally deranged, and she had been, she had been a judge. So somehow, this woman gets a hold of a gun. You have people who can clearly should not have that kind of weaponry. Yeah, the thing that the thing that I always find interesting about it, though, which to me is, to me is the biggest would be the biggest red flag as a, as a gun owner, a gun store owner. Let's say somebody who sells weapons is the fact that somebody comes in let's say they can buy an AR 15 Yeah, okay. And we've talked about that before. And, you know, obviously, you know, the limit, it's pretty limited in what you could use it for. But somebody comes in, and knowing all the limitations of work that you could use the gun, and somebody buys all this enormous amount of ammunition, one, some, like a waffle in your head, and you say, Why would this person be buying what was ammunition for, if basically, the gun has a very limited use. And what you have now basically, is you have what you should have, as you should have nationwide, nationwide federal background checks, feeding into one data source. And people basically having to give certain information that is going to be recorded, and you have an idea of who who has these weapons or who shouldn't have them. So you have that you have all these you have all these gun shows, you have stuff that you know, the the guns, apparently that you can make the ghost guns, where you can get that you can actually make your own gun somehow. Which is which is like insane, you know, but the society, the society we have, like, almost seems to have abandoned like, right and wrong principles. It's like, you know, whatever you do at whatever you you can do whatever you want to do, you can do if you want to, you know, shoot somebody, it's okay. I mean, it sounds facetious, but it really isn't like, because, you know, the gun, originally, you know, in the history of our country, alright, to people, you know, like, like, like settlers had, like, they had to hunt for food, okay. They're all doing the covered wagon or something like this. But you have like, a whole bunch of people who have no, have no need to have a gun, or reason to have a gun. And like society just doesn't care. Just doesn't care. You know, and then, you know, we go through this ritual every time the people get the people are shot or killed. And they have a memorial service, and the way to flowers, and then to it. Yeah. And then we're well, that's beyond that. Now. It's beyond, it's beyond, you know, there's an old saying that I think is very true. The saying is, God helps those who help themselves. Meaning, you know, it's good to pray. But at some point, prayer has to become action. Yeah, you just can't be like, say, Well, I said my prayers. It's beyond, like, hoping that people will do stuff. You have to as a as a country, have to take the bull by the horns. Yeah. You know, it's,

Unknown Speaker 7:56
you can even apply it to like, not like a match. Like, there's people who are like, okay, like, I prayed so hard for this, why isn't that happening? Is because you're not doing anything. And if we apply that to the mass shootings, like, yeah, you give them your thoughts and prayers, but you're not actually helping them in any way. You're just sitting on your you're just sitting on your bone just being like, yeah, oh, yeah. Okay. Next bill. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 8:22
Well, I think a lot of it alive that has to do. Almost like there's an acceptance of it. Not that not that not when I say acceptance, I don't mean that people believe that what's going on is right. But there's a there's a feeling of futility, that there's nothing they can do about it. And that feeling of futility has to do with the failure, the absolute failure of our of our state and federal government. Yeah, on a on a profound level, in the Congress, particularly in the House of Representatives, and allow these state legislatures, Tennessee is just one example. There's many others, but you had all these people, when they had the school when they had the school shooting, going going into the, into the chamber of the legislature. And it's, it's like, they don't care. They really don't care. You know, do you have people testifying as to you know, people, children being killed relatives being killed, whatever it is. And it's, it's like, a complete disinterest. Yeah, because it's more important to them, that somebody have a gun, then somebody's life be saved, that having that gun has some kind of extraordinary power to them with some with some validation in some bizarre way that they can have the gun. And if they can't have the gun, they're not a whole person in some way. Some lunar lunar Moon it's

Unknown Speaker 9:59
so weird. Because it's like, you have these people who want to like they say, Oh, we want to protect the kids like we are going to ban abortions, but we're not going to ban guns, which is the number one reasons why all these kids are getting killed. Like, it's like, oh, you can I don't it's like, so it's so weird trying to piece together, what they like, actually believe in, you know, like, oh, I want I want these kids to be alive. But I don't care if they're shot dead by a gun.

Unknown Speaker 10:30
Well, I've my thought on it. My thought on it is this. And I've said this before. There are some people who sins who sincerely are against abortion. Yeah. And they believe that, you know, it's the taking of a life, etc, etc. Yeah, but there's a lot of people, a lot of people, maybe even the majority of people who are against abortion, because they don't want the woman to have the right to have the final say, in what she does with her body. I think that's what's at the root of all the of wallet stuff. Because if if it was so that they want to the life of the child was precious, then that would be a continuum. On to when the child grows up the society, the child lives in the care about the child trying to prevent children from being killed this way. But in our country, in our country with and I say nothing that you as my partner don't don't also understand that. You have massive teen suicide. Yeah, you have massive involvement of young people and using guns to be involved in mass shootings. Yeah, you have so many young people who are victims of abuse that seems to go to the whole country, not at not only in homes, but in organizations. You have, in many big cities, underage underage young women who are being trafficked. Yeah. And none of those programs and many of those problems seem to be addressed. But we're against abortion. Well, always other things are going on. And all these young people in various ways, have been victimized. And you're you're supposed to be as look lawgivers, bookkeepers, protectors of them. And they have failed completely. Yeah. What they want to do. We can segue on to this, while we what they want to do is have meaningless votes in the House of Representatives about trying to impeach the homeland security secretary. Yeah. Which is like totally ludicrous. Because as the stet, he's done nothing that violates any statute that will call for his removal. But let's let's waste our time trying to remove him. We can't, we can't we can't stop guns. We can't We can't give money to the Ukraine, who are in a desperate spot now because Russia has made all these advances. Yeah, well, let's let's forget about the Ukraine. Let's forget about the young people. Let's forget about all the people behind from guns. Let's let's let's have this, let's have this vote to remove the Homeland Secretary. And then And then, on top of that, when finally after years, or is it decades, or was it eons that they finally were able to get some kind of immigration reform and limitation on you know, no, at the border, limiting the number of people who could come in a bill that was joined in by a number of Republicans, and they had a they had a clear majority in the Senate, they cannot even get, they cannot even get that bill to the floor of the House to even be voted on. So you say to yourself, Well, it's obvious that their priorities are not the priorities of our country. Yeah. And the tragedy of it is that more people will come into the country. And a lot of those people will be exploited and and wind up as so many have as child labor, in factories and all over the country somehow that they wound up in these places that nobody knows how they got there. And when you want to have a program, which is going to limit that, and you have the opportunity to do it, and you have you have a consensus in the Senate at least, because the probe problem has gotten so bad, that it's that it's that's so necessary to do it, and you still don't want to do it. And then you have the audacity, you have the audacity to blame, to blame the president, because the President is the one who's behind is behind allowing all these people to come in here, when a bill was put together by basically by the President and the Democratic Party, and even a good part of the Republican Party to stop it. And you don't want to pass a law. I mean, what more what more could you say, though, I mean, the mind the mind boggling hypocrisy of these people. But what it comes down to what it comes down to, as being somebody who used to work in politics, is a lack of belief, a lack of belief, and by a lack of belief, I mean, that it is a lot of these people, although supposedly hold certain ideals, it is not. So the only ideal to them, is themselves is themselves and getting power and keeping power and accumulating more power. And having people having people who are have been in the Congress for literally decades, who have done nothing about any of these problems that they have, they've had four or five, six terms in the Senate, particularly that absolutely nothing done absolutely nothing. And they believe it's like a rite of passage, that they should be there for the rest of their lives. And that people should vote for them. Even though what they've done is basically zero. Yeah, you know, like,

Unknown Speaker 17:01
it's just, it's annoying, because I'm sure there are people out there who, you know, do want to make a change, but people tend to stay with like, the familiar and what they know and stuff. Yeah. It is sad, like because people do have a fear of the unknown. So they don't know how this person may vote or whatever. But at least they'll do something. Yeah, it's better to do something than just sit and do nothing. Yeah. Well, it's

Unknown Speaker 17:33
interesting, like you see, you see some, like, you know, you see some of these people. And, you know, you can disagree with some of the political stance that they take, but you gotta go like, I take Bernie Sanders as one example. And Bernie Sanders is a progressive, and I can't say that I agree with everything that Bernie Sanders says, a Bernie Sanders has courage. Yeah, Bernie says, we'll go up there and say, like, you know, there's certain things that are really, really wrong, we, we need to do something about it, we need to turn our attention to it. He has like some fire in them some, some desire to try to make things better. And the rest of these people like they don't care. I mean, they go, like, you know, their schedule is such basically though, like, you know, they're off from for weeks during the summer, they adjourn, it has nothing to do see, that's the problem that people don't understand. People think they elect these people like, Oh, this guy or gals, they're gonna represent me in a Congress, the vast majority, I'm not representing anybody, but then Yeah, and what and they're, they're what they think is progression up to up the ladder up the tree, or however you want to call it to, to getting even more power. They had a very interesting article. It was in the New York Times about Mark Meadows. And Mark Meadows is a very, very smart guy. He was he was involved with the Freedom Caucus. I mean, his his politics, and not my politics, but the guy was an expert politician, but he became the Chief of Staff for the President. And the article basically said, like, well, you know, do a lot of things that, as a member of Congress, she had been a member of Congress, and he had been involved in government. He said, It's all the Express, like, there's certain things you can't do. Yeah, you know, you know, and he completely, he completely misconstrued what the job was about. The Chief of Staff of the President is not supposed to be telling the President yes to everything he wants to do. Chief of Staff supposedly is supposed to tell the president the things that he he may be able to do, the things that he should be able to do, and then the things he cannot do.

Unknown Speaker 19:46
He's like, that check and balance kind of and the sense yeah,

Unknown Speaker 19:51
I mean, and you look at the really good, and you look at the really good people who were Chief of Staff James Baker was one of them. Leon Panetta was another one once Democrat once Republican, but they had they had an overview of things. It wasn't just like, you know, you want to do one thing, because you know, you don't like certain things. It's not how the government should run. Yeah. And what's interesting, you know, and the the administration before Biden is, you know, all these people that work there. And, you know, people who worked in our security apparatus, and, you know, knew that things were new that things were not going the way it was supposed to be going. Yeah. And they then they, they went, went along with it, and then went along, and then maybe they were left or maybe they left and maybe they were fired. But then, but then after all that stuff. You know, they tell everything in a book, they write this book, but it's too late. It's too late with the book. Yeah. It's what was going on, when these things were happening, that you have to speak on that about, Oh, he did this. And uh, yeah, well, yeah. But if you knew he was doing it, why didn't you say something? Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 21:12
Because now the past is the past, and you can't do anything to change. Unless you build a time machine or something. But

Unknown Speaker 21:18
yeah, yeah. But it's what's interesting to me, though, again, I say this, that, why do people go into government? That's the question I always ask. Because if is it something really where it's about to serve the people? And to be the servant of the people? Or is it just that you have you have a connection to power? Yeah, you can do certain and you can do certain things for yourself. And, you know, there's a great movie called City Hall, with Al Pacino. And it has to do with a guy who's a mayor. And he supposedly is like a guy who has, he's for the people. He's, you know, he cares, he cares about everybody. But but in reality, it's about him. It's about him prepping himself to run for president. And in the movie, of course, the young man who works for them, who idolizes him, as, you know, this guy who's, you know, forward thinking and aggressive, starts to understand that the guy, the guy is not like that. And in the conclusion of the movie, he confronts the guy. And he says, you know, he says, I've done so much for people. He uses the word Medicaid, Medicaid means, you know, like, when you throw, I guess, throw seed on the ground that people are going to be helped. And the young man correct, somebody says, he says, yeah, he says, you've you've done, give done some good. There's been some Enschede, he says, but all my good was incidental or accidental. It wasn't your main priority to too good. Yeah, it was, it was, you know, just by the luck of the draw at some people got house, it was it was the perfect example of that was was, you know, how, when he's talking about ideals or beliefs, the Republican Party were, the biggest thing was national security. And, you know, a balanced budget and all those things, which have now been completely abandoned. You know, and, you know, when when the ex president said, I mean, you know, said actually, in a speech, that if they were that of countries were behind them their dues or something to NATO, that it would be okay for Russia to, to invade them. So I'm saying to myself, Okay, he said that, but where was the where was the rest of the Republican Party, though? Yeah. When he said that didn't bother them or wasn't? Didn't they take exception to that fact? It was the same thing with the tax cut, you know, because the tax cut really blew a hole in the idea of balancing the budget. Yeah. So you figured, well, they would they would be against the tax cut, because, you know, they were always against tax cuts. But now all of a sudden, everything switched around. Yeah, now they're all for it. They're all for it. Because the people that would benefit were the 1/10 of 1%. And those are, that's the donor class. That's the people who have given him the money. So they can be they can return for term after term after term. And then finally, when they can't return anymore, they get jobs as lobbyists on K Street. And they're making 1234 $5 million. And, and that same system, the same system has to do with the Supreme Court, basically, where the Supreme Court basically, you know, it's not like they pick these judges, like, you know, like, I'm not gonna pick on Clarence Thomas. He's been he's been picked On enough, but but just take any at this take any conservative judge? Yeah. It's not like, oh, wow, that's a conservative judge, that might be a good fit on the court. These are attorneys a lot of the times who've worked for certain law firms that it's hired into the federal society and all these conservative organizations, and they know for sure how this person is going to vote, because they've been indoctrinated inculcated, and in a sense, almost like, bribed, in a sense, yes, to to have certain views. And then all of a sudden, an opening occurs. It was like when when the ex president was running for office, and he was talking about Supreme Court Justice, he was going to appoint the conservative. Oh, look, I can't get into somebody's head. But I would very much doubt that the ex President knew any of these people. Yeah, who he who he picked, but he was given he was given a list. They gave him a list. And they said, You got to pick one of these 20 on one of these 30, whatever it is, because we've screened them. But it's not for them to be screening them. It's for the government to be screening, FBI and the Justice Department to be screened. And to see at least that they're honest. And of course, in the case of in the case of Brett Kavanaugh, where these always accusations came out about Dr. Blasi Ford testified and everything like that. They hadn't invested they were supposed to have an investigation during the hearing. But the investigation was going to be limited to one week. So I'm saying to myself, when have you ever heard of the FBI agreeing just to testify to investigate somebody just for one week? They would test they would they would investigate? Until they found either they found something or they didn't. But it was it was a completely. It was a completely a bogus investigation. And then and then the other part of it was basically, that they had to send all the information to the White House as to what they were doing. That's completely improper. It's not something that the White House is not supposed to have anything to do with it. Yeah, the FBI is supposed to be independent, like the Justice Department. Yeah, be independent. But that wasn't that wasn't the case. That wasn't the case, obviously. So you know, these are these are things we bring up. But I mean, I think that people need to start looking at this more people, we will start to really need to need to look at who the people in power are and how they got there. Yeah. Because that's what's really at the root of our problem. Yeah, look at their connection, because their connections, but you know, obviously, obviously, they're not representing us. No, I mean, that's and I'm not just saying they're not just representing progressive people that are representing five Republicans, either. They're just basically they're just basically representing themselves. Yeah. Well, on that note, I guess, there's no more to be said for for tonight. But we hope that at least some of these ideas, you know, hit home with you because I think it's a it's a problem that we as a country have to address. But we thank you for listening and we hope you tune in next week.

Unknown Speaker 28:33
Thanks for listening tonight. Thank you for listening to our show. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us at tangi one that is t a M G one at UNLV thought nevada.edu. Or to contact Professor Charles satin at charles.stanton@unlv.edu See you next time.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai