Social Justice - A Conversation

Charles Stanton 0:01
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 0:07
name is Kira Kramer. I'm a fourth year honors college student, a public health major and a pre law student.

Charles Stanton 0:13
And this is social justice a conversation, a

Kira Kramer 0:17
conversation you

Charles Stanton 0:26
Well, good evening, everybody. Welcome back to social justice a conversation. I'm here with my partner, Kiera Kramer, and we have so many things to talk about tonight that we could be doing this show to midnight and beyond, but due to certain restrictions of the radio station we're working with where we're just going to do our regular program, I just wanted to begin the program, which is really kind of interesting, talking about an article that was in the New York Times a few days ago about how through, particularly in the Congress, but not just in the Congress, the atmosphere of fear that's really grown up in Washington among people who are in the House of Representatives and in the Senate, about the fact that people are really afraid to really speak their mind and talk about the issues in an honest way. And we know, of course, that there has been retribution in the past against people who didn't tow the party line. You know, I mentioned and Kira, I think, mentioned it too a couple of sessions ago where people basically were going to be primaried because they didn't agree with the President, and he was going to, he was going to put up a candidate to try to replace them. But what we're seeing now, basically, what we're seeing now, basically is something, I think, beyond that, which is, which is even more disturbing, which is basically people who are physically afraid of something happening to them or their family, and there is a situation with a number of people that I know of who actually have hired security, who work in the Congress, which really, truly should not Be The other problem that you're having is that because of his super close connection to the guy who's the head of the FBI, who apparently speaks to him on a regular basis, people are really worried that they could be brought up on criminal charges for not obeying his edicts. And it's very, very unusual in my knowledge, that you would be in touch with the head of the FBI on a regular basis or the head of the Justice Department, unless it was something of a very serious nature. It reminded me a little bit. It reminded me a little bit of J Edgar Hoover going back a number of years. But of course, in that case, J Edgar Hoover had blackmail files basically on all the presidents. So when he, when he called you, you better answer, because he had a whole bunch. He had a whole bunch of stuff. But, and that's one aspect of and of course, Stephen Miller, he apparently, is in touch with the Attorney General on a regular basis. So you know, that's the way we start off our program here.

Kira Kramer 3:22
I think what is really important for us to think about when thinking about, like, his connections to the FBI, as well as possible retaliation for speaking out, and this kind of harkens back to the president's address to Congress. I believe that was last week. I was really disappointed to see how complacent the Democrats were. And I think what really should have happened is we should have seen a massive action. Only one senator stood up and decided that we weren't going to defile Congress like this, and we weren't going to turn Congress into a maga Trump rally. So, and I think it would have been much more advantageous of the Democrats to all to be forcefully removed. Forcefully removed, every single one of them like can you imagine the headlines everyone in Congress kicked out for free speech. Yeah. Like, that's a headline that needs to circulate, that should have been challenged and like that. I think would take a middle, perhaps a middle, slash average voter, to perhaps open their eyes. But instead, they sat complacent, which is disappointing and embarrassing at the same time, because you're just gonna sit and take it. You're gonna sit and hold your signs while there's a literal Trump rally in Congress. That's ridiculous. They should have been dragged out against their own will, one by one, and I don't know what their excuse is. Well.

Charles Stanton 4:59
Just a few things there. You know, from having been to England and seeing the how England works and when the they have the questioning hour, where the Prime Minister has to come before the both parties, there's a lack of leadership. Okay, you have, you have basically Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders and AOC going around the country, which is which is great, but the rest of the party seems comatose. So you have all these different people who, I don't know, they just don't seem to be involved. I mean, you're seeing on, say, MSNBC, you're seeing people who are also speaking out, who were in Congress, like Claire McCaskill, a senator from Missouri and people like that, but there doesn't seem to be any kind of real leadership,

Kira Kramer 5:45
no, and I think that's because many of them benefit from the system that exists currently. And not only that, I like it's my understanding that when the cameras turn on, we hate Republicans, we hate Democrats, etc, but as soon as the cameras are off, they're making deals that benefit each other behind closed doors when the cameras are off, because otherwise, how would the sausage get made? It wouldn't. So they have to make the deals to make anything go around and so and like, we know this. We know this from the fact that Democratic senators and representatives have called out Republicans for, like, actively not supporting Trump's behavior with Zelensky and Putin, and then as soon as the cameras turn on, they are all in favor of everything he's doing, yet in their private quarters and in their private lives, they denounce it. And so there's a great hypocrisy, but the Democrats know that they benefit from these politics as much as the Republicans do, yeah,

Charles Stanton 6:47
well, particularly in the Senate, because the Senate is a club, you know, everybody knows everybody, and that's a lot of the problem, though. You see, it's a problem when you have, out of 100 senators, you have, you know, one one Elizabeth Warren and one Bernie Sanders, but everybody else is doing their own thing. I think a lot of it has to do too with the fact that the Democratic Party doesn't seem to have a message. You know, they're just like a drift, you know? They they go from crisis to crisis that he creates, but they don't have an actual plan of what needs to be done to oppose him, which, of course, is what you need, because that's the whole basis of politics or or, you know, trying to combat his his malevolence. I think the other problem too that we're seeing also, and why it's going to become an even bigger problem down the road is the fact that the people who he is hiring have to take a loyalty oath. So you have all these people going to work for him, and basically they're asked, Are you loyal to this man? And it reminds me, it reminds me of the guy who was the head of the FBI, who was who was eventually fired by Trump, where he said to Trump, he said, Well, I'm loyal to the Constitution, but he didn't even like that as the answer. You know, it's, it's, it's very, it's very much like a monarchy. It's very much like a monarchy. It's very much like, it's very much like the preparation for a different kind of government in our country. And by not opposing it, as you say, and not being more forceful, it's spreading over the land that this is normal, yeah? And you know, yes, that, you know, all these things are going on. And, well, you know that's okay because it's Donald Trump, but it's not okay.

Kira Kramer 8:33
And like, we had the, we had the public's attention at that address last week, yeah. And I just, I feel extremely let down, like by the party, and it's unfortunate that we only have two parties that represent us, when, in all reality, neither one are doing that, and they have their own interests that they represent. And so it's just, it's really frustrating to see that we have these democrats demanding action and all of these things against Trump. And it's like, but what are you actually doing? Yeah, what are you actually doing? Our senators in Nevada aren't holding town halls. There was Stephen Horsford had a town hall, like, right after the address, and it was basically like a pre planned speech where he didn't listen to his constituents, and it was like, he's just gonna throw a bunch of like, idealistic phrases at us and and the meeting, yeah? Like, what is that? That is a cop out, yeah.

Charles Stanton 9:25
Well, you see, you see, the thing is that what I think Sam Rayburn said, the old speaker of the house when Lyndon Johnson was in charge, he said, he said, to get along. Go along. That's what, basically politics in this country is with a few exceptions. I mean, even even if you look at even when we had COVID, even when we had COVID, and they had this, this secret meeting of all these senators and Congress people, when they were told how serious COVID was and how many of them the next day or the next few days. COVID, went out and shorted their stock, and they made all kinds of financial arrangements because they knew how COVID was going to affect the economy. So it wasn't just Trump there, then it was a whole bunch of people who were in positions of influence who had an opportunity to do something. But you're dealing with a very ingrained system. It's a system of privilege. It's not a system where it's not a system where the people who get in those offices, with a few exceptions, believe or understand that they're the servants of the people they don't think that way. And what we're turning into, of course, is we're going to be the servants of the government, that's going to be our lot, unless we, you know, come to our senses and start to realize that, you know, that's not the way it's supposed to be. But I don't know, but the society we live in is very apathetic, though. I mean, it really is. I mean, finally, people are waking up, and really, you got to give credit to Trump for that, and all the budget cuts he's making, firing everybody, all the rest of stuff. Finally, some people like waking up saying, Oh, wow, you know, I lost my job. I can't get health benefits, I can't get any of the rest of the stuff. A lot of the people voted for him. A lot of people voted Well, that was who was

Kira Kramer 11:13
going to be hurt the most in the first place? Yeah? And like, the majority, like the low socioeconomic class, which many of them voted for him, yeah, especially in the south, yeah, that those were the very people that were going to be hit the hardest by his cuts to social welfare.

Charles Stanton 11:27
Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course, yeah. Well, they had a very interesting and a very interesting article about the veterans Veterans Department, and he's cutting, you know, he's cutting a lot of people in the Veterans Department. A lot of the people he's cutting are actually veterans themselves, so obviously that is very wrong. But what he's also doing, he's doing some like insane stuff. He's trying to get rid of all the radiologists in the VA. So I'm thinking myself, well, people need operations. People need all the rest of these things. Why would you get rid of the radiologists? It's an essential job. But on top of that he wants to get rid of. Now this is even beyond, even beyond I just said he wants to get rid of the people who who clean and sterilize the operating equipment, for the people who are doing surgery. And I'm saying to myself, is there a message? There? Is there a message? I think there is a message.

Kira Kramer 12:18
It's, I don't care if you live or die, and I'd actually prefer if you die, yeah, I

Charles Stanton 12:22
mean and, and you could see that. You could see that. So with the layoffs, where just willy nilly get rid of all these people, there's no question about their expertise, their judgment, their experience, any of that stuff, just fire as many people as you can. And instead of, instead of having the courage to do it himself, he brings somebody in to do it, who's not even an official of the government. He's a crony of his who gave him a ton of money, and he has free free range to go wherever he wants to go, fire anybody who wants to fire. Apparently, apparently, last week, actually, they had people who were armed, who came into some of these offices to demand that they could see records and everything. He's answerable to no one. He sits in on the cabinet meetings, and all the people who are in the cabinet are basically lackeys of his. You know, Marco Rubio was one of the many, but he's supposed to be the secretary of state. He's supposed to set some form of policy. Has no say. He's just a lackey, just stooge, whatever you would call him, you know. So, so, so that's, so, that's, you know, one of the things we're going to talk about today. And, and the other thing, which is, which is kind of scary, actually, is he's, he's cutting a lot of people from the out of the FAA, which is obviously bad, because, especially if you fly. But he's also, you know, getting rid of people from the from the National Weather Service, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, so basically, so basically, by doing that, and you know, in those areas, he's making flying a lot more dicey, because you're not going to get accurate, in many cases, accurate weather forecasts. And then we already had a huge lack of controllers in the FAA, so he wants, he's getting rid of more of the controllers. And, you know, I mean, it's really, it's really like, it's really like trying. It's almost like he's trying to, he's destroyed a country. He's trying to destroy the country,

Kira Kramer 14:18
yeah, and, I mean, he is, there's, there's really no answer for buts about that anymore, and I hearken but I'm conducting research on hurricanes at the moment, and government issued executive orders in response to hurricanes. And so it just makes me think about when these hurricanes hit these states, because climate change is making it so that the hurricanes not only occur more frequently, but they have increased severity. And so I just wonder how that's going to play out in during the next four years, when the United States will probably continue to see its worst hurricanes in its history in the coming years. So that's interesting. And furthermore, a little bit closer to home, recently, all Nevada GSA employees were fired by. The Trump administration, as Musk continues to slash federal workers. And you might be wondering what the GSA is. So the GSA is the General Services Administration in Nevada. And these people, essentially, they are responsible for the supportive operations of our federal government buildings, and they manage five specific federal government buildings in Nevada. It's the Carson City federal building, the Las Vegas Foley Federal Building, and US courthouse, the Lloyd George us courthouse, Reno's young Federal Building, and US courthouse, and Bruce R Thompson, US courthouse and federal building. And the thing is, is that if you want to be able to protest at these buildings, or make sure that your voice is heard at these buildings, you just can't these buildings will just close, because now there is no one to manage these buildings, right, right,

Charles Stanton 15:53
right? Yeah, well, it's a concentrated effort to limit dissent. And it's a better, it's a better you mentioned before about the town hall meetings. It's abetted by a lot of the Republican members of Congress, where they don't want to even have a meeting. They don't even want to be questioned by their constituent constituents. But again, we've seen we have seen this before, though we have seen this before. Let's go back to the 30s. 1930s in Germany, the exact same things were happening. The judgment in Nuremberg movie having to do with the judiciary, how all these people, you know, could have done something to stop what was happening, but, but they, but they didn't do it. And of course, now basically, you know the article that Professor chemorowski wrote for the for the New York Times, has to do with the last stop, the last break on all of these things, which is, which is the court system. And you know, you were saying just a couple of seconds ago about, you know, what's going to happen with these storms and everything, what's going to happen when the actions of the different courts are not being followed, that the Supreme Court is ignored and it's not being it's not being listened to. Now my concern, my concern is two concerns. My one concern, obviously, is that it would, it would almost be like a dictatorship if it wasn't, you know, if it wasn't stopped, but accepting the fact that, you know, the courts themselves really have no power. I mean, the power to enforce everything in this country has to do with the FBI, the Justice Department, the military, what have you. But the question is that, but the other question is, how is that going to sit with the public? How is it going to sit with a bunch of people, many of whom voted for this guy, who lost their jobs, they lost benefits. They're they're they're decimating the Social Security Administration. They're decimating the, as you said, the GSA. They're decimating most of the IRS. They laid out, laid off 1000s and 1000s of people, just coincidentally, at the time the returns are coming in, and how are people going to react to that? I said this a long time ago. You know, not to sound like a seer or a prophetor or whatever you but I said that the only thing that keeps the country afloat, really is despite the flaws in our justice system, most people basically believe in it. They realize that there's a lot of things that are wrong with it. They realize that justice is unequal a lot of times, but basically, more or less, they believe in trial by jury. They believe in guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. They believe in all those things. But if you have someone or an entity of people where there's no sanction on what they do, then what is the recourse going to be for the people who've given up faith in the law? What? What happened in France was that people gave up belief in the king and the queen, and they said, you know, something's not going to work here. And of course, that's that was many, many eons ago. But the basic principle is, the basic principle is, if you have, let's say, half the country that doesn't believe in what this guy's doing at all, and then you have a large percentage of even the people who voted for him, who who are, who are disenchanted with him, what's the response going to be if they see that the laws being ignored, because the founders, in their in their wisdom, created a government where basically no one branch had that total power. That's what maintained the democracy. That's how we've lasted for all these years. Because when there were excesses of any one of those three branches, the other one or two would rein that in. But if you have now a system where there's nothing to rein them in, the man has in charge of the he's in charge of the executive branch and the FBI and the and the Justice Department, the Congress has been reined in because they have a majority in the Congress, and all those people are basically serving Him. But the courts. System, which is the final arbiter, hopefully, which should be is emasculated, then what recourse do the people have? You see that if you study history, and you know history, I know you do. If you study history, well, there's nothing new. There's nothing new in the history of humanity, except to understand that people need to learn lessons of the past. That's why civilization progresses, because people don't keep making the same mistakes. But if you you take the idea, basically, that you're going to create a new form of government without any kind of sanction, then you have, then you're greatly mistaken. That is not a that is not going to work out. And that's what concerns me. You know, a number of years ago, I saw a movie called The Purge. And, you know, it seemed at the time, Oh, that's fantastic. You know, people take, take up arms and kill whatever they want to kill. They got 12 hours to kill whatever they want to kill. And it sounds and seems insane, but that whole thing was based on the fact that people fell felt that the law had failed them. Basically, they felt that they couldn't rely on the justice system. Now, you always had a lot of people. You always had a lot of people in this country. This country who, truly, the justice system did fail. You had people of color, you had women, you had children who were abused. There was a whole bunch of people. But there was some effort made to try to remediate that, that, you know, we're gonna, we're gonna try to make things better. And you know, it's still, unfortunately, still a work in progress, but there was at least that hope. But if you can just arbitrarily send people to jail, prosecute people, bring charges against people who did nothing but fulfill their oath and duty as servants of us, I don't see where that's gonna go, you know. And there's a very good there's a very interesting article by Joel Gray, who was in Cabaret, the original cabaret, and he talks about what happened in Germany. And you had it. You had a democracy there. You had the Weimar Republic. You had the greatest, probably, cultural flowering in the history of the of Germany. And things went the other way. And then the whole country just disintegrated, basically. And, and they, they followed, they followed this man into into calamity, basically. And you're seeing it now, but I don't think, I don't think you're really seeing it for the majority of people, the numbers, his polling numbers, are very bad for for incoming president, usually you get a boost. You know, it's everything's going to be changed. We're going to do X, Y and Z. But he's basically taken all the enthusiasm out of a lot of the people, even who voted for him, because what they see is that none of the stuff he's doing is going to help them. It's particularly with the tariffs. Oh,

Kira Kramer 22:57
yeah. Well, he told them it would. But like, no one actually listened to any of us when we were trying to explain that that's not actually how this works.

Charles Stanton 23:05
Yeah, yeah. Well, they had a big article in the USA Today about the tariffs Mexico, China and Canada. Well, I'm not an economist, but if you look at that list, you better bring like, a huge like wagon to the store to buy any groceries, because already the prices are pretty high, and all these products that we depend on, you know that that's, that's another thing, you know. You probably see it in your, in your own experience. You go to the store and you want to get certain things, and, you know, bring them back to the castle, and you look at the price, and you know, it's, it's scary. It's a really scary thing, yeah, you know. And you know, he has this trade war now with Canada. He has a trade war with Mexico. And we never had, we never had bad relations with Canada and Mexico, really, or even China. I mean, even, I mean, Nixon basically opened up the daytime with the Chinese. And I mean, China was a rival of ours, but, you know, we weren't, we weren't at each other's throat. And he seems to, he seems to relish that. He seems to relish this hatred, hatred and animosity toward all these different people. Now, the guy who they made the new Prime Minister of Canada, he's not going for it. He's from, he's the old he's a different school than a lot of the more passive leaders. He's, you know, let's get it on, you know. But, but, you know, we rely on Canada for a lot of things, as they rely on us, you know. And then, of course, you know, of course, you have the situation in Europe with NATO, where all these countries are wondering, well, if something happens, or are we reliable, or are they just gonna just dump us basically,

Kira Kramer 24:45
honestly? I think international leaders need to put sanctions on the United States, as much as it will cause us to suffer like the global like NATO and global leaders across the country need to send a message that like, if he's gonna be this. Inflammatory and this disrespectful, then he's gonna get receive the same treatment. Yeah,

Charles Stanton 25:05
yeah. Well, it's, it was, you know, and we're talking about the things that he's doing. Well, they're putting, they're putting, as you know, a lot of pressure on the universities, and they, they want to eliminate dei my, my concern, though, is, my concern though is, though that they want to, they want to dictate to the universities the curriculum. I think that's, I think that's the next stop here, what courses can be taught vis a vis you're going into different departments, not just, not even just with Dei, but with science, with medicine, with all these different things, with with public health policy, with all those things, and make up and make up, either make up their own courses, which would be, which would be an intellectual stretch for them, or just ban everything

Kira Kramer 25:54
well. I mean, as we wrap up the broadcast, I think on this note, I would offer that medicine and the other sciences are humongous industries, especially in a capitalistic society, the United States prides themselves significantly on their on the quality of their collegiate education system, as well as the amount of research and development and money that's poured into these systems. And many of our most profitable industries in the United States benefit greatly from the collegiate system, like the pharmaceutical industry, our agricultural industry, among others. And so I think as Trump starts to push up against what benefits capitalism versus what benefits him, we may start to see some pushback. Yeah, well,

Charles Stanton 26:39
I think it's I think it's going to be a major issue. And, you know, we're, I think we're going to see it here. I think we're going to see it here. I don't think, I don't think they're merely limited to just the DEI stuff, but we're going to need people who are going to be very courageous and very direct about about supporting the purpose of a university. I think that's going to be a big challenge. And I think that, I think it really is, I think it really is up in the air as what's going to happen, you know, but on that, on that sort of somber note, but, you know, we have to, we have to bring the we have to bring the food to the to the feast that we're given. We want to thank you again for listening. It's, it's our show. Is you and all the people that listen to our show, and we always welcome your contributions and your comments. And you know, I think that's very important.

Kira Kramer 27:33
Thank you very much for listening. We really appreciate your time today, and we will be resuming our broadcast after UNLV spring break, thank you so much for your attention, and we hope that you remain informed and find little pockets of peace throughout your day. Thank

Charles Stanton 27:51
you again, and on behalf of both of us, good night. Good night.

Kira Kramer 28:02
You I 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 we

Charles Stanton 28:32
look forward to it. You.