Social Justice - A Conversation

Wesley Knight 0:00
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Charles Stanton 0:18
Good evening. This is Professor Charles Stanton, I'm a professor of Boyd School of Law,

Blanca Pena 0:23
and my name is Blanca Pena. I am a third year law student at the Boyd School of Law, and this is Social Justice a conversation, a conversation.

Charles Stanton 0:33
Well, good evening, everybody. Welcome back, Professor Charles. Here with my co host, Blanca Pena, we want to welcome you back. How could we start the show today? Well, they're probably in 25 different ways, but I'm going to talk a little bit, and then my my cohort Can, can join me on this, the situation in the in the Congress about sexual abuse, which I think is a really important issue, because it concerns people that are supposedly representing us in Washington. Over the last week to 10 days, we've had the situation where Eric Swalwell had to resign from the Congress, Mr. Gonzalez had to resign from the Congress, and I am willing to bet the ranch that that is only the tip of the iceberg as to all these people who are involved in the Congress, in all these misdeeds. I found it very fascinating. I found it very fascinating, and not and not fascinating in a pleasant way. But, you know, as somebody who used to do, used to do that kind of work, you know, it was, it was very, it was very sobering to me how there's almost like an acceptance of this kind of stuff. What was interesting to me, though, was when people talked about Congressman Swalwell, so many of those people said, well, that they had heard rumors that he had been involved in the stuff. There was all kinds of talk that he had done things that were wrong, indiscreet, illegal, whatever it was. And this was going on for years. This is a man who was, you know, in the Congress for many, many years. So, you know, it obviously was not something that was, was that much of a secret. And then something happened that really sort of just blew my mind. They wanted to decide what to do with Swalwell and Gonzales, and they were almost bargaining between the two parties that if one Democrat had to go, then one Republican had to go. So there'd be a balance of people being removed. Now, then it got to the point where it might have involved 678, people. So then is it four? Four? Is it five, three? And I'm thinking to myself, and I'm thinking to myself, what a messed up situation. This is when you have these people basically bargaining or bartering, or however you would put it, about which of these people to get rid of, basically accepting the fact that you knew they were doing this for all this time, and you're going to make some kind of a deal where, okay, we'll get rid of these three, and you got to get rid of these three, but you knew they were doing it. They shouldn't have been even there at that point. They all should have been gone if they knew what this man was doing, and the guy from Texas, if they knew what he was doing, you're out. You're out. There's no There's no other way to look at it. And that's why the article in the Times was so great, because the woman who wrote the article said, Well, it's just like an accepted thing. It is accepted that you can be abusive. I said this in our last show. And Blanca, of course, said it as well that it's just become normalized, that you can do these things, and it's good, yeah.

Blanca Pena 4:29
And what sucks to hear the most is that the issue started because of sexual assault issues, and because it's been so normalized, we are so quick to overlook that and be like, Okay, but what does this mean for the Congress, and what does this mean for our power and their power, and how can we overpower the other side? It's like, it's so bogus, the way that everyone looks at all of these issues, because it always just go back, goes back to what greed, power and money, greed power and money all the dang time. And it's, it's disappointing. But again, it's never, ever surprising. I one of the few things that I like remember from when I was in high school, like learning about history and stuff, was I remember when, and I think it was George Washington, or one of the founding fathers, one of those dudes, they they said that having a two party like system within the US would be the worst thing that could happen, having two different political parties. And I totally agree, because now we have this, this entire dynamic where we have Republicans and Democrats. And I would like to think that people like regular, everyday, average, good people in America, they don't necessarily agree completely with one side and disagree completely with the other side, like I do. I would like to think that the majority of people fall somewhere in the middle. And I think our access to social media and the access of certain like, like, radical people, both on the right and on the left, people who who become famous right, or they become known for those, like, very radical views, and they, they get put on a on a platform. I think it's the existence of those kinds of people that makes it look like either you're super far right or you're super far left, and there is no meeting in the middle. But I think there is. The problem is we have our politicians playing in the Congress like it's some sort of rugby match, right? Like it's just they want to overpower each other, and no one's doing the work. Who is doing the work? We elected these people so that they could work for us. They work for us. They fund their lives, they go to vacation, they play golf on our tax dollars. And what do they do? They're just fighting like babies, like, like, they don't even know how to do their jobs. And I was talking about this before we went on the air, but like, just being able to see Mayor Mamdani in New York City already implement so many different things and actually be transparent. I don't know if you saw professor, but he had made this video about how the budgeting system works within New York and how it gets approved, and what it means and and how they allocate money and everything. And he had even come out with another video saying that he was going to tax the rich. And he even went to one of like this, very like outside one of these very expensive penthouses in New York City. And he was like, we are going to tax people who own these million dollar homes and don't even live in New York most of the year. Because what are they doing? They're just, they're just, you know, harboring these empty spaces that could go for other things. But again, it goes back to the power and the money and the greed. So okay, if you want to be greedy, then let's tax you. Then, since you have so many things like, let's all get together to make sure that we're all paying our part. And yes, last week, Donald Trump came to Vegas to speak about his no tax on tips situation in in honor of tax day, right? But it's like, again, what are, why are we, like, all of our tax money, it feels like it's just being thrown away. It's either going to genocide or going to Trump's vacations, or it's going to these, these unnecessary, like things, and I don't know, it just feels like it's back to No taxation without representation. Unfortunately, I just don't think enough people are ready to have that conversation.

Charles Stanton 8:28
Yeah, yeah. Well, I think it's I think you have a lot of people in the Congress whose duty and obligation is not to the people. I think a lot of the people that are there are there for their own enrichment. Let's put it that way. But I also think, I also think that it goes beyond the Congress, it goes to the Supreme Court, it goes to the loss of the idea that they are our servants, not the other way around, especially like if you look at the executive branch, and you have all these people working in these positions, some of whom are highly intelligent and highly knowledgeable, and yet, because they're because their belief system has failed them. They go along with all kinds of preposterous stuff because it's about staying close to power. Lindsey Graham is a senator. He's a perfect example of that. He was one of the people a couple of days after January 6 saying this guy's got to go. He's got to be impeached the whole deal, then four or five days later, he completely changes his mind. The problem that you have, as I've said before, is a lack of belief you can elect somebody to do a job in the Congress. Yes, you can appoint somebody to be on the Supreme Court, you can even elect a president, but even having done those things, that does not necessarily guarantee that any of those people really have the beliefs that they need to have to serve all of us. And I think what's happened is a huge disillusionment on the part of the vast majority of people who live here, who basically, in a sense, have given up on government. They know that that it's not serving the public. They know it's not serving their needs as citizens, and they've tuned out from it, which has made the situation even worse, because then the people in power figure, well, nobody cares about what I do. I can keep doing it. I can even do more, more nefarious things than I was doing before, because nobody's watching me. So you have so you have that happening as well. But if you just take one example, and there's many others, just take the war situation as just being one example. Okay, so now there's supposedly a cease fire for five days, eight days. Who knows? But the cost of this war that never needed to happen is in the 10s of billions of dollars. It's an enormous amount of money. They were saying. They were saying at this point, point, I think it was, it was north of $100 billion which is an enormous amount of money, 100 billion dollars could, could, could solve our homeless problem, our food for dependent children, our health care plan, but we're not spending it on that. We're spending on, you know, bombing people. But if you put, if you put the economy together with the exorbitant expenditures, if you take that, then you take all the people who are slated to be losing their jobs in in these social media companies and in the technology companies, you're going to have a huge amount of unemployed people who will not even be able to get unemployment, because the money that the unemployment was supposed to be paid out of is being paid as being paid out in this war that nobody understands, nobody authorizes. And it has, it has not only harmed our country locally or politically, it's harmed it's harmed our country internationally. Our country is a joke, as looked on by other countries around the world, all these countries in NATO, they look at us like we were crazy. I mean,

Blanca Pena 12:50
they they're not far off. They're really not, they're not far

Charles Stanton 12:54
off, exactly right? And what they're thinking of doing now, which which was always unheard of, is there thinking of basically continuing NATO without the United States just basically having all the other NATO countries, and they're going to protect Europe, what have you? Yeah, vis a vis Russia. But that was never, that was never what was going on? And then the other crazy thing that you've got going on, which is even beyond my comprehension, is all these buildings that are being built and all these shrines that are being built to the President. So, you know, they had the situation where he was destroying the White House. Then there was this thing with the ballroom, the ballroom wasn't big enough. Then he wants to create an arch that's bigger than the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. Now, why would you need to do that? Where is, where is the uproar from the Congress? And he also, and while he was in his spare time, he destroyed the Kennedy Center, so, but there's no, there's no pushback on this, because all these people, all these people, have sold out their values if they had any, but if they had any, and the it ties back into the sex scandal, because your job as a leader is not just merely to lead by yourself or on your own or even collaboratively. It's to watch the other people that are there, that they do so as well. And they can't do that. I won't do it. Yeah, you know, yeah.

Blanca Pena 14:35
It's, I mean, you listing everything out that he's done, even just with with the White House, and all the, all of these statutes that he wants of him. It's, it's disgusting, because one I think of like, Hey, your term is only for four years. Like, what are you doing? And why are you acting like, this is yours forever? That's like my first concern. But, yeah, why are we allowing it? It even happen. I just, I can't fathom if I were someone in Congress, shoot, even if I was, I was, if I was the person that was hired to, like, go and destroy the West Wing, or to go and destroy the Kennedy Center, I would not just up and, like, do it, you know, because it's wrong. And that's the thing goes back to people just not having those core values, that core belief system of preserving what is right and standing up for what's wrong. I think a big thing that I you know, that struck me not too long ago, now that we're talking about our country being a joke, is what they were saying about how we as a country presented ourselves during the peace talks with Iran and Pakistan and how those countries, you know, they sent the smartest of the smartest in their countries. You know, people with PhDs and an extensive like history and academia and in research and in advocacy and all of those things. And we have Donald Trump sending, like some what was it? Was it his son in law or something, or his nephew or something like that? Something, yeah, his son in law. And it's like, Why is he here? What are we doing? And not even that, but also the fact that JD Vance kept getting calls from Benjamin Netanyahu over and over and over. What is Israel doing with these talks? Why are they? Why are they calling Vance, basically being like, Hey, are you doing what I'm what I what I've been telling you to do? That's the thing. It's like. It's not even the fact that this country on its own, that's hurting its own people. This country is allowing another country to dictate what we do, both worldwide and domestically, and it's unacceptable, because we have all of these hard working people. You have people that are living paycheck to paycheck. You have people who would rather, for example, go to jail so they can at least have a shelter, a place to live, because being homeless in America is so it's a struggle that I can't even begin to imagine, but people fail to realize that we are closer to being homeless than we are to be rich, to be a millionaire, to be a billionaire, especially with things like healthcare right like people could be one medical scare away from losing everything, because a lot of people aren't covered, and if You're not covered and you have some sort of injury, like, where is that money gonna come from? People are scared, and people are trying to live their everyday lives. And I really try to empathize with the fact that people really are just trying to live. And sometimes it is hard to really invest yourself in world problems and and go out and protest and things like that, but at the same time, it's, it's that. It's that vibe, for lack of a better term, it's that normalization of the apathy and the numbness that we have just built up within us after time and time again of being let down. That's why it keeps happening, because no one is stopping it. No one is enraged enough, and people who are enraged enough, they're not like, it almost feels like our screams aren't loud enough, like I am screaming I like, you know, it sounds dramatic, but I feel like no matter how loud I scream, it's not gonna even reach the eardrums of anyone that could remotely change anything. And I think it's that feeling of hopelessness that ruins the momentum, and it discourages people from doing what's right. And at the end of the day, it's like you said, These people are going to serve themselves. They're going to campaign on issues, issues that they never plan to fix, so that they can continue to campaign on those issues, and then when they have those positions, as soon as they start receiving PAC money, oil money, tech money, you know, all of these different like, sources of funding, they're just gonna do what those people tell them to do, because that's who keeps them in their office, and that's what sucks. It's like, I wish I could just, like, shake someone awake, shake everyone awake. Like, Hey, wake up. Like, what are we doing? What's going on? And it's horrible. It is. It really is.

Charles Stanton 19:09
Well, that was what was interesting, going back a number of years when James Comey was working in the government, and he was summoned to the Oval Office by the president. And he said to James Comey, I need you to give to me an oath of loyalty. And James Comey said, I am the only oath of loyalty I can give us to the Constitution. What has happened in the Congress is all these people who the vast majority of know exactly what's going on, what is wrong and what shouldn't be going on, but because they have, they have sold out their conscience, presuming they had one in the beginning, which is a stretch, right? That's not going to happen, because everything is about me or. Entertaining my seat in Congress, and I've got to I've got to serve my master. It's the same thing with the people who are in the cabinet. You know, it would be like, give you a basic example, I'm in the cabinet, or you're in the cabinet. Let's say you're in the cabinet. I'm the president, and I'm texting and tweeting people at three o'clock in the morning with all kinds of like, insane stuff. And you know, we got to blow somebody up. And you're a cabinet member. And you know, knowing you, as I do, you'd probably be talking with other cabinet members. You say, Boy, you know President stands, he's doing some crazy stuff. What's going on there? And he's he's doing stuff that's not normal, and, etc, etc. But they're so desperate to keep that job that that they will overlook almost anything. I mean, if you, if you had that thing regarding the picture on truth social about where he becomes Jesus, the healer, the healer, if you will, the healer. But that is to not you don't even have to be a Christian.

Blanca Pena 21:13
Yeah, no, I'm not a Christian. And I'm like, What? What is that

Charles Stanton 21:16
you don't even, you don't even have to be religious. But if you see something like that, you understand that it is blasphemy, you know, in other words, like, you know, I come from a mixed parentage, okay, and I'm Jewish on my mother's side, I'm Irish on my father's side, raised with two different religions, but if you know, I see, if I see, like a mosque or something like that, I and I've been in mosques, I go in there as a human being, say my prayers, because I believe that there's One God, regardless of what religion you are, but you have respect for it. I mean, you know, traveling around as I have, and everything, you meet all kinds of people who have different faith systems, but I'm not going to denigrate somebody because they don't have a faith system that I have, or or even to claim, to claim that you're a divinity, yeah, that's even further out. No, that's insane, because now I'm not, I'm not the I'm not a professor anymore. Yeah, the ultimate answer, yeah, exactly.

Blanca Pena 22:35
I mean, I think someone put it best on Twitter. They were like, if I even saw my uncle posting stuff like that, like, I would go send them to the nursing home or something, because that's just crazy. It's like, or somebody else said something like, oh yeah, we put a, we put a Facebook grandpa in office, right? Because he's just obsessed with AI. And it's, it's insane. The depiction, what I think is even more telling, is people now are like, Oh, man. Like, I, you know, I love Trump, and I, I've been supporting him, but like, this is where I draw the line. This is where you draw the line. Like, like, this one right here, not when he was, you know, yeah, grabbing women by the pee, not when he was mocking a disabled reporter, not when he was approving funds to go bomb a bunch of different countries, not when he, you know, went to Epstein's Island and touched little kids for fun, not when he put his name on the Bible like he has a rap sheet of like everyone had all of these opportunities to renounce him, right for years, all of these opportunities to be like, Man, I don't think this, this guy is a good person, but you draw the line at him depicting himself as Jesus. And I think the funniest part is Caroline Levitt had said something like, Oh yeah, that is a that is a doctored image of him. And Donald Trump took that as he said. He said, Oh no, I wasn't putting myself as Jesus. I was putting myself in as a doctor. And it's funny, I don't know if this is true or not. I don't want to spread misinformation, but people started to speculate and say that there was, like, miscommunications with the White House press and with Donald Trump and stuff, and how Caroline Levitt said he it was a doctored image, and Donald Trump took that as like, oh yeah, I was just only depicting myself as a doctor. But it like, what are we doing? This? Is it? See, here we are putting up with this BS every single day, because it happens every single day. But I remember back then when people were losing their minds over Obama wearing a tan suit. And it's like, how did we get here? How did we go from literally being up in arms about a tan suit, or, dare I even say, like Monica Lewinsky, right? Like, that was a very like, sad and troubling time, also in like, American president. History like that was a horrible thing to happen. But that one thing, right? Like that stuck with Bill Clinton. You can't think about Bill Quinn. I mean, at least I can't. You can't think about Bill Clinton without remembering that scandal with Donald Trump, though it's, it's just too many to count.

Charles Stanton 25:15
I think, I think the answer is this, and I've analyzed this a lot. Donald Trump is the ultimate creation of a reality television society. Donald Trump did a show for 13 years called The Apprentice, and it had all these great reviews and everything, and a big audience, because much of America, and much of America, what America tunes into is reality television. I've said this to you. You know when, personally, I've said it when you were in the class that I was in. I've said it to the class that I'm teaching. Now look at every week the top 20 programs as to what people watch. They're all these programs that are reality television programs. Was he outlandish? And in a lot of the things he did on the reality television programs? Yes, he was so it. What it did to people was they knew what he was. He starts to run for president. He says and does things that are completely off the table, but he'd been doing that for years, so he got like, a discount or an excuse or a rationalization for all the things that he did, the thing when he was on the bus that was a disqualifier, you're gone. But people said. Well, that's Donald Trump, the racial the racist things he said against Latino people, that's a disqualifier, but that's Donald Trump all and all these other things. So it's, it's basically worked in so now, so now it's gotten to the point where he's basically created a war involving the United States of America and the killing of, God knows how many 1000s, if not 10s of 1000s, if not hundreds of 1000s of people. And they say, Well, we know it's insane, but that's who he is. No, no, that's not the answer. That's not the answer. The answer is not that he that, you know, he did these The answer is, it's wrong, that it's improper, that it's illegal, whatever you want to say, and we as a society have to condemn it. This is the problem. The problem is, everybody's like, Oh, you know, I watched a bachelorette or something like,

Blanca Pena 27:35
Give me a break. Yeah. And I think it's, it's, I think you're right in that, because growing up as a girl, right? Like, time and time again, I would hear like, Oh, boys will be boys, right, whenever they misbehave. But people don't realize how damaging and harming that really is, because it it tricks men to then avoid accountability and and they, they grow into the kinds of men who then? And I'm not saying all of them, right, but like a good chunk of them, start to think that they're entitled to things, and that leads to things like rape and sexual assault and coercion, or even just being like an a hole if a girl ever, like, you know, tells you no or anything like that. And and what do we as girls get told, Oh, boys will be boys, or the worst one is, oh, if, if a boy is mean to you, that means that he has a crush on you. And that's why a lot of women then grow into grow up and they find themselves in toxic relationships because they're it's kind of like an unconscious thing, right? Like, I don't think anyone is staying with someone because they love getting mistreated. I think it's a very like, deep seated belief that like things like this are normal. And it goes back to people thinking things like this are normal. So I should just go on about my day, even though the world is practically on fire. Yeah, well, I'll

Charles Stanton 28:55
say this. I'll say I'll say this. You know, I played sports going back when I was in high school and I had a guy who was a wrestling coach and a football coach, and I don't know what locker room talk is or whatever. Whatever you say, it was none of it when I was going to school, boy, things were what they were supposed to be. You acted like you were supposed to act. You were a gentleman. You conducted yourself in a certain way. That was the way it is, yeah, and that's the way it should be. It shouldn't be like, Oh, wow. We've got to beg people or ask people to act in the right way.

Blanca Pena 29:36
Yeah, definitely. It's just, it's disappointing how things play out, but all we can do is is take things for what they are and move forward with that knowledge and hope to do better, right? So thank you all so much for tuning in to us. We'll catch you next week. Yes, thank you so much. God bless all of you. Good night. You.

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