Social Justice - A Conversation

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Charles Stanton 0:16
Good evening. My name is Charles Stanton. I'm on the faculty of the Boyd School of Law and the UNLV Honors College. My

Kira Kramer 0:23
name is Kira Kramer. I'm a fourth year honors college student, a public health major and a pre law student. And this

Charles Stanton 0:30
is social justice, a conversation, a conversation you

Well, good evening, everybody. Welcome back. Charles Stanton here with my co host, Kiera Kramer, it's so nice to be back with you. We're going to try to as much as we can within the next 30 minutes, deal with like 500 things that are going on in the country at the same time. But one of the I wanted to start the broadcast with just what's going on with the situation with the Ukraine, which I ran out you run out of words, deplorable, embarrassing, scandalous a few days ago, the group of seven, which is a group of nations that the United States usually collaborates with Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Great Britain wanted to put out a statement basically supporting the Ukraine their right to independence, and condemning the role of Russia in causing this catastrophe, and in the in that part of the world, the other six, the other six nations, did not, did not agree with the United States. The United States basically said that the Soviet Union was not the aggressor and that the war was caused by the incursion of the Ukraine, which, of course, is insane, because everybody knows exactly what happened there, and I did not. I did not really pick up too much on the significance of that statement, except for the fact that it was followed a few days later by the vote in the United Nations, where the United States aligned themselves with Russia and China and a number of other countries who were dictatorial. And they basically said that the cause for all the problems were the Ukraine. Russia was not the aggressor all that stuff. And of course, it leads me to the thought that what they were, what we are part of now, is a concentrated effort to repudiate democracy in our foreign policy and also in our domestic policy. And we have an effort to basically shut down the institutions in our country that are democratic. And as far as our world a world position is our world position has basically largely been eradicated in the month or so many days that this man has been the president. And I think, I don't think enough attention has been shown to this, because although you although the Ukraine, although the Ukraine is is not a part of the United States, we had been up to this point, supporting the Ukraine, along with members of the European Union and NATO to keep Russia from taking over. And with those aids, and with those helps, they have basically fought the Russians to a standstill, and Russia has lost another of an enormous amount of soldiers. But what Donald Trump wants to do through show through his policy to give to Russia diplomatically, what they have not been able to win on the battlefield. Proof of that is this, this idea that, basically, the Ukraine should be paying hundreds of billions of dollars in mineral rights to the United States and reward in reward for aid. The aid for the Ukraine was not based on a business decision. The aid for the Ukraine was based on a decision of trying to uphold democracy in a clear case where one country was the aggressor that was trying to take over, that their country's territory and his his affinity for dictators was brought out again in the UN vote, where you had Xi of China, you had Putin yet all you had all these different countries who Are all whose views were always inimicable to the United States, and now we're joining them, and the rest of the world who we supported and upheld would desert them and the Ukraine. It's

Kira Kramer 4:50
horrifically disgusting to see Trump's response and however, I don't think any of us are surprised by this he treats running the American government. Government like a business, and we see how that's turning out for the American people. However, it's interesting to see only now these talks and Trump's rhetoric towards Ukraine is creating rifts within the Republican Party, and the Republican Party has been historically, very anti Russia, and so especially those traditional Republicans in terms of national security against dictatorships, and they've taken a hard line. However, now that Trump is buddying up to Putin, I think there is a decent amount of House and Senate Republicans that are pretty shaken by Trump's rhetoric towards Ukraine, and we can hope that this rhetoric and the opinions of our representatives ultimately will influence politics on the hill.

Charles Stanton 5:55
Yeah, and it's interesting, you know, one of the interesting things that's also going on is his support of these dictators like Maduro and Venezuela. They had actually given because of what Maduro had done in Venezuela, just to just to let everybody know Maduro, Maduro had been defeated in the popular vote by millions of votes, but because he has the support of the army in Venezuela. He basically took over the country. As a result, there were at least between 250 or 300,000 Venezuelans in our country who are being protected by the United States. It was they had temporary protection orders. Well anyway, they want to get rid of the protection orders, because they said basically that that I don't know whether, whether it was that Maduro wasn't a dictator, or the situation in Venezuela had improved, which is absolutely not true. But this was stuff that was being powered, powered by Christy nome, who's the Homeland Security Director, who has about as much business as being the Homeland Security Director as I do of playing basketball with the Lakers. In fact, I might have a better chance of playing with the Lakers. So this is what we're seeing. We're seeing the enabling. We're seeing the enabling of dictatorship, and we're seeing the legitimatizing of dictatorship. And what he's really trying to do is he's trying to legitimatize the things that he's doing, and then things that he things that he intends to do, which basically is creating a kingly role for himself with all the other branches of the government being subordinate. And we're seeing that, of course, in what's happening with what he's doing with Doge, where a lot of the decisions of the federal district court judges are not being followed. And of course, this whole experience brings out the fact that there are gaps in our Constitution and there are gaps in our democracy as to enforcement. How actually do you enforce a lot of these decrees when basically this man has control of the military, the FBI and the Justice Department, it

Kira Kramer 8:02
definitely is highlighting, as you said, our gaps in the checks and balance system. Ultimately, I honestly have no answers as to how to make anyone cooperate, other than the our rep direct, directly voted in representatives bring impeachment articles and impeach everyone. And until that happens, I don't really know that there's a way out of this if they're not following federal court orders or anything of the sort. Ultimately, I think the American people have to wake up and Demand Impeachment. You

Charles Stanton 8:39
know what's interesting as to what you said, it's interesting how, since the immunity decision, it's unleashed him. You know, people have said, well, you know, what's unleashed him is the fact that, you know, whereas in the first time he had served off, served in office, you know, he wasn't able to get the people that he wanted in these positions, he had to get people who were basically connected to the Republican Party. And now the second and now the second term he's in, he's been able to get pretty much whoever he wanted to be in the cabinet that would be approved by the by the Congress. But I think, I think it's more than that. I really believe, I really believe that he believes he can do anything he wants at this point, and there's nothing, there's nothing that can be done about it. And it's also, what's also very interesting to me, is how he's going out of his way to alienate all of our friends in the world, not just in Europe, but in but particularly in Canada, where he's talking, you know, he's talking about the tariffs, all right, that's a that's a business, that's a business decision that he's making. But then he starts talking about Canada as the 51st state. Canada is an independent nation, and he's created, he's created, in a relatively short time, an enormous amount of ill will between the Canadian. People and the American people, which was never the case. And a perfect example of that which gets into the field of sports is what happened when they had the championship game between the Canada and the United States. Now, at one time, I played hockey, and was probably the only sport that I played well, but I played it and, you know, fighting and all the rest of it stuff were, you know, sometimes part of the game. But I Never in all my time in the years and years of watching hockey games, both professional in the United States and Canada, and international fights going on before the game even started, among players, among players who had never had any animosity toward the players they were fighting, but it was almost like they were fighting for their nationhood. And I'm saying to myself, This is insane. This is insane. These people are friends and, and, and he seems to want to instigate

Kira Kramer 11:00
hatred violence, and he is brewing chaos in this country. I think we can see it in everyday facets of our lives. Just driving on the road, everyone is so angry like and it's like this unnerving. I think everyone feels it. There is this like sense in the back of everyone's lives that like things are falling apart, and it, I think, is setting everyone on edge and it's horrible, yeah,

Charles Stanton 11:32
yeah, yes. I think I think that's absolutely I think that's absolutely right. I think that, I think that he is, he is, he is the real AOC. He is the real AOC. He's the agent of chaos. His his power. His power is dysfunctionality. His power is uncertainty. His power is instability. So that you have a society basically that is being run by a man who even the people who voted from don't trust what he's doing, and so that every day you wake up there's some new there's some new catastrophe, there's some new crisis. And this is how he this is how he governs, because he governs in such a way that he goes from crisis to crisis and there's no there's no stability. There's no stability in the government, no,

Kira Kramer 12:22
but he doesn't see them as crises. Yeah, he sees them as his own game. I don't even know how he sees it, but I'm sure he doesn't see the human beings on the other side that are being affected by his policies. But I also want to stress that I don't think it. I think it's perceived power. I think he is only going as far as he thinks people will let him go. And I think that's what we really need to realize, is that we as a collective country will always outnumber the very few that govern us, and that is a power that we need to realize and mobilize and capitalize on

Charles Stanton 13:01
my thought on this has been, and I've said this before, I think there needs to be a much more aggressive pursuit by the Democratic Party. I have no personal animosity toward Hakeem Jeffries, but I don't see Hakeem Jeffries as the voice of what we need to have. I think we need to have the voice of AOC in the House of Representatives. I think we need to see the voice of Bernie Sanders and Senator Warren in the Senate, along with Chris Murphy, but more than that, but more than that. And this is something that you know you had brought up in one of the earlier broadcasts we need as a country to start having conversations with those people who may have voted for this man but have been deleteriously affected by some of his some of his decisions.

Kira Kramer 13:54
Absolutely, and I just want to second that I think we are beginning to see that town halls are being held across the country, in red states, and people are demanding change. People are calling our voted and elected representatives out for their votes and for their behavior, Democrats and Republicans alike. And I think we need to keep that momentum going. There have been protests and marches across the country for all types of causes, from women's rights to Ukraine as well as Doge and his government efficiency office, and there have been riots outside of all of Elon's companies. And we need to keep this momentum going. We need to make sure that we are showing up and making their jobs difficult every single step of the way. Yeah.

Charles Stanton 14:44
And you know what's interesting? I think that what's happened now is the veneer is the veneer is off the paint when he got rid of, when he got rid of the first woman who was on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, whoever. Very distinguished career when he got rid of the woman who was the Admiral of the Coast Guard and had served, had served with, with great adherence to being a servant of our country, when he got rid of of the black man who was the chief of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, there's no doubt in my mind that this is racially and gender and gender motivated. And the fact that it was the funniest thing that I read, though the funniest thing that I read was The when they why these people were let go. The excuse was, well, we need to be prepared. To be need to be prepared to fight wars and everything and all the rest of this stuff. Well, the best way to fight a war is not to have to fight a war, because you're prepared. So the other side knows that they wouldn't win a war against you. And these three people, the general and the admiral and the other woman who was head of the on the board of the Joint Chiefs of Staff were all people who had enormously long records of distinguished service. Now, how does a man, how does a man make that judgment to fire them when he's the same man who avoided service in the military. He got numerous deferments. He doesn't remember why he got the deferments or what was wrong with him to get an excuse from serving in the military. This is a guy that's this is a guy that's sitting on judgment on online officers in these different different parts of the military, and it's really disgraceful. It's really disgraceful how the Republican Party, which has always been talking about defense and military protection and all the rest of the stuff, just goes with it, you know. And then, and then, to make it even worse, though, to then make it even worse, then the decision to remove these people was maybe the Secretary of Defense, who's totally, first of all, totally unfit by character to even be the secretary of defense, or by or by experience. And this is a guy that's making decisions about people who have careers that make his look pathetic, basically. So, so, so that's another part of it. That's another part of it. But I think, I think that people, more and more, as you were saying, is starting to wake up, and I'm also seeing that. I'm also seeing that in a lot of the editorials in the newspapers, the Wall Street Journal has had a number of

Kira Kramer 17:35
that I find to be really interesting, flattering, yes, for a conservative newspaper to be publishing that, such as The Wall Street Journal, especially during his election campaign, was very supportive of him. Yeah, I find that pretty shocking. Well,

Charles Stanton 17:49
I think, I think in the case of the thing with the Ukraine, I don't think they really had a choice. I mean, it was just so our it was, it was just so outrageous the way, the way it was done and, and basically, you know, basically trying to extort the Ukraine to give them money. And then basically, you know, when he met with Macron, basically completely distorting the fact pattern, which Macron, I'm glad to say, corrected him when he was in the Oval Office. And, but as I say, He's not a man that can be corrected. No, he's just, it's, you're just, you know, as my mother used to say, it's like beating a dead horse. You're not going to get anything, you're not going to get anything out of it. The other thing that he's done, though, the other thing that he's done, which he was doing, he was doing in the first term that he was president. He's, he's operating the White House as a business, absolutely, you know, in other words, if you can, if you can do something for me, I'll do something for you. And one of the things that was, I found very, very interesting, was that he put, you know, he put, basically a person who has no qualifications for the job, you know, Elon Musk, in charge of government efficiency. But one of the very fascinating things about Elon Musk was that one of the one of the parts of the government that he was very adamant of about, you know, reducing, reducing, what he called lack of efficiency, was the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, and just coincidentally, of course, was it everything is a coincidence with Donald Trump is that they had numerous. They had numerous, have numerous active investigations of Elon, Musk company, Tesla as to the safety of their cars, particularly the self driving cars, but other other parts of his company as well. And as as someone who said, who was on, I guess, one of the financial programs one night, the bulk of Elon Musk's wealth is in Tesla, and Tesla sales have been way down absolutely so, you know, if, if he's you have that. And then there's all these questions about how safe the cars are. Wouldn't it be in his interest to try to remove the enforcement mechanisms that are in the government just as just as it was when they when Trump was working to fire the inspectors general. The inspectors general, in my memory, anyway, are basically people who are independent. They're not really tied into one any one particular party. They're there to be placed in the government to investigate situations where there's where there's questions about whether it's Cabinet members or people who are serving, you know, in the government and in some capacity, who might have ethical might have ethical problems and ethical questions as to whether they did something that may have violated the law or practice vis a vis their position. And right away, that was one of the first things that he did. It's almost in a sense, like that he doesn't believe that anything that he does should be open to examination. He just, whatever he does is okay, because he's the king. Yes, he's the king, and and, and he has, he has elevated himself to the to the throne, so to speak. The question is going to be, though, the question is going to be that when it comes to the situation where the Supreme Court has to make decisions on very profound issues, particularly the birthright citizenship. Is the Supreme Court going to act as the third branch of government, as the check on and check and balance on the other two branches of government? Are they going to adhere to the law? This is, to me, the seminal question of our time, because if they do not adhere to those principles, our democracy will be on life support. And clearly, in the decisions that the court has made, the lower courts have made, they've almost been unanimously negative for the President, but they've been negative for the president because the law is so clear. The question is, will the Court, the Supreme Court, you know, support support our court system, basically, support our our system of justice? I

Kira Kramer 22:19
think there is some evidence that suggests that they will, but at the end of the day, I don't think that we can trust them, and I think our congress people need to prepare for that reality, including pushing forward like winning the midterms, and beginning to push for and like in a landslide, and beginning To push forward Supreme Court reform, among other like much needed checks and balances to restore equity and justice to our system. Yeah.

Charles Stanton 22:46
Well, I think, I think the other problem too, is that if you believe that one of the branches is running amorally, the problem becomes, though, that who makes that judgment? In other words, who make In other words, what I'm saying is we have a system of checks and balances. So the checks and balances are either the Congress or or the court. But the problem that you have is the duty to make those decisions is tied into the belief of the people who make the decisions. They have those beliefs and they they state them, but the court does not have an ethics code. The court does not have anything in its in its bylaws, or, however you want to put it, that mandates ethical behavior.

Kira Kramer 23:33
No, but a congressional and or constitutional amendment would fix that, and that could be instituted by our Congress, especially if the American people are able to vote and vote differently, yeah? Like, if we were able to win significant majorities in the House and Senate, we could be pushing legislation like that

forward. Yeah? Well,

that's that. That's the that's the issue, and that is the rebuilding that this country needs to see. That's the That's the issue.

Charles Stanton 23:59
And, of course, the way, the the way the Constitution is oriented, you would need two thirds of the states. So that's, that's a problem. We still have not gotten the women's equality Amendment to the Constitution after all these years. And that's like, like, some that's like, obvious, right? Women are equal to men, right? That's should be obvious, right? Okay, but, but it's not obvious. And you have a lot of these states that won't, that won't agree to it. But I think the, I think the other thing though, I think the other thing though, is though, as we get, as we get ready to wind down the show, I think the other thing also is that there's an acceptance almost of what's going on, not not by people who are aware of how serious these things are, but by people who actually believe that, you know, this is somehow normal, right? And that and that as a country, this kind of the way. The office is being conducted is something that's the way it should be, and the way the country will progress when, when the opposite is actually the truth that it really can't run this way, and it will, and eventually it will, like a car without gasoline, comes, come to a stop, and we have to, I think, look at our ourselves. Our country has never been big on introspection. Our country has always been about, you know, everything is gung ho and everything, but we don't look at, we don't look at, you know, what we're doing. Nietzsche said that a society that does not examine itself, does not examine its beliefs, does not examine its you know, things that that are important to it is doomed. And Nietzsche, of course, although he was considered, you know, he he talked a lot about, you know, you know, God is dead, and Superman and all rest those things. But Nietzsche really, Nietzsche really prophesied Germany in many ways. And it's really interesting, you know, as we wrap up here, it's really interesting how Germany now has become very, very conservative, and that the party that got the second largest amount of votes actually is sympathetic to, I wouldn't call it Maga, actually, to, you know, stuff that the Nazis were propagating in the 30s. And you say to yourself, Oh, wow. How could that be? I mean, they went through this horrific experience. The country was destroyed. Millions were sent to the gas chamber. Europe was destroyed. But it's they. They the people who are behind them. Know those appeals are powerful, the immigrants, the outsiders, the foreigners, us against them, always seems to resonate with people. But the ultimate answer, of course, is that people need to work together. Absolutely, that's the only hope,

Kira Kramer 26:52
and I want to echo before we go, the words of Leah Greenberg and Ezra Levin as they wrote in their op ed for the nation. They say these are frightening times, and frightening times call for active, courageous leadership. Musk and Trump are really seeking to annex the operations of the state to pet their vanity projects, bigotries and conspiracy theories. But our enemy is not one or two men. Our enemy is apathy, cynicism and fatalism, the pernicious authoritarian, friendly belief that we are merely victims of world events rather than active participants in a global struggle for freedom and justice. Every time one of us, a family member, a community organizer, a representative, a senator, takes a step forward in this fight, 1000 pair of eyes watch and learn, because courageous is contagious and or part of me courage is contagious.

Charles Stanton 27:47
Well, I'm just going to close on this note that we sometimes in America set ourselves apart and think that the things that happen in other countries can't happen here, I would, I would recommend to everybody, if you get a chance to watch it, you can watch it on you can watch it on prime, or it's available. A movie called Judgment at Nuremberg really shows what happened in Germany. Could also happen here, but I want to thank everybody for listening to our program. We look forward to speaking to you next week, and on those words, I would like to say, good night, good night.

Kira Kramer 28:24
Thank you for listening.

Thank you for listening to this broadcast. And if you have any questions or ideas for future discussion topics, please contact myself. At K, R, A, M, E, K, two@unlv.nevada.edu. Or Professor Charles Stanton at C, H, A, R, L, E, S, dot, S, T, A N, T, O n@unlv.edu, see you next time

Charles Stanton 29:02
we look forward to it. You.