Social Justice - A Conversation

Wesley Knight 0:00
You're listening to local programming produced in KU NV studios. 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.

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. Professor Charles here with my co host, Blanca Pena, and it's good to be back with you. I just wanted to start the program. And I really wasn't, you know, intending to start the program with this particular segment, but something really struck me that happened last week, the First Lady, Melania Trump, came out with a statement regarding her friendship, or whatever you want to call it, with, with Jeffrey Epstein, or her non friendship, or she didn't, she didn't know him that well. And to me, you know, you know, I'll be one of those people who will say, basically, I'll give her the benefit of the doubt that maybe she didn't know him that well. She might have known him socially, but she really didn't know him that well, and that she was never involved in any, you know, illicit stuff. So you know, I'll go with that. I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna judge her. But the thing that struck me was, then she said, Well, I think all these people who were the abuse victims should testify before the Congress. And I'm thinking to myself, well, but all those abuse victims have already testified. They've testified before attorneys general, they've testified by before district attorneys. They've given all kinds of statements to various attorneys. I mean, everything about this has already been laid out. What we don't need anymore is more testimony from the victims. We need more action against the people who perpetrated these crimes. And what always strikes me, too, is we're always in America talking about the moral superiority of America, that we're the, you know, we're the number one country, and all the rest of this stuff, other countries are inferior to us. Well, we have a very simple way to prove that. Just release all the files and we can do an investigation. We can have hearings. Let's have hearings for the people who are in those files. Let them explain what they were doing. Let's let them explain why they were in those files. And that will maybe, in some way, try to give sustenance to all the people who have been harmed. And that really, it really is strange to me. Though there was a very big article in the Times where this, this man, went into the psychology of the people who commit these crimes, and he was saying the vast majority of them really believe that, you know, they're entitled to do this stuff. And when you see the response from the elites, that's probably the way they

Blanca Pena 3:25
think, for sure. And I think without accountability, the legitimacy of the government just is not there. I think it's really odd, and it's off putting to know that people who you know violate basic traffic laws or trespass or steal a bottle of water because that they're they're thirsty, they suffer more consequences than rich men who touch little kids. You know what I mean. And I think when with Melania statement, I'm right there with you on we don't need more testimony. We just need the files to be out, and we need people to be held accountable. This, this entire administration, I think, has just been toying with everything and everybody. It's like the rules are laid out and they act as if they were never there. I think, you know, especially last week with the so called cease fire, and then not that much later, you have Israel bombing Lebanon over 100 times in 10 minutes, killing hundreds of innocent people. They're, they're, they're targeting innocent civilians. Are targeting schools, residential areas, hospitals. After this, this cease fire, which I don't even, I don't even know why we were here in the first place. I mean, the Strait of Hormuz was always, was open already, right? Then this war starts. They close it, which valid, in my opinion. And then Donald Trump is starting to threaten people like, Oh, if. Don't open it back up. In 48 hours, an entire civilization is going to collapse. Are you kidding? Why is the President of the United States threatening to use nuclear weapons on an entire civilization, and then for him to just draw back his statements A few hours later, as if it was nothing like sure, everyone probably let out a sigh of relief, but the first action have never happened. And what's most frustrating is that nothing happened to him. There's no accountability. He gets to just tweet or go on truth social and make all these threats and say all these ridiculous things, and then he just we go back to normal. And I think maybe, maybe we need someone here with, like, a psychology degree to really explain things. But I really do think this is a form of emotional abuse on the world, to have people constantly feel threatened, walking on eggshells. I can't even imagine what it's like to be in Iran right now, or in Lebanon, or in Palestine like these. These things are not to be played with, and we have an administration who does not have it together. But why would they? Because they haven't had to answer for their actions. So why should they start now?

Charles Stanton 6:15
Well, I think, I think one of the things that's crazy about this whole thing is he'll, he'll call a Cabinet meeting, okay? And he knows he knows nothing about the military or war, any stuff, okay? But you know, I'll give him a pass for that, because maybe a lot of the lot of the other leaders didn't know either. But when you have experts, people who are in the field, people who are commanders of troops, people who are experts in intelligence and all the rest of that stuff, and they're basically, they're basically telling you, like, you know you're going down the wrong road here, that it's not, it's not wise or advisable to be doing certain things. Apparently, even in one of these meetings, a number of the Cabinet members said the same thing, that they didn't know. They didn't know, you know, what we were doing there. What I don't understand is this, though, and this was, it's interesting how far out this administration is. Did you even have people who were you consider on the fringe, even even condemning it? Well, they had, they had this man was on, he was talking about, he was talking about, you know, the bombing that they were going to do, that they were going to, they were going to bomb Iran and the because they had nuclear capability. But if we think back a few months ago, according to him, the nuclear capability was ended. They destroyed all the nuclear capability. It was gone. It was it was it was gone. They They eradicated it. Okay, so if the nuclear capability was eradicated, and these people pose no threat to the United States, what are we doing there? What are we doing there that we get involved in this and then, and then, instead of what leadership would be, would be okay? We have this disagreement with these people. We're all going to sit down together and see what we can do to straighten this out. It's just these threats. I'm going to end civilization and everything like that. And you talk about accountability, but since he's come back into the presidency, there hasn't been any accountability at all because, because, as we've said on this program before, the system of government has collapsed. The system of government, which was founded, you know, many years ago by the founders, set up a system of government of checks and balances, that the President was not a king, he was not a Lord, he was just. He was just the president. And you had the Congress and you had the Supreme Court, and through the Congress and the Supreme Court, there would be a check on the president. Now, if you look at what he was saying, that they were going to do all these things to Iran, never in the history of the country was any kind of a threat like that made, or if he wanted to follow through on that without the consent of the Congress, the President has no power on his own to declare war. This is not a constitutional right that he has, but all these people in the government basically are derelict in their duty. They don't want to seem to confront him about stuff that's not even a close. Call it's, it's, it's wrong, it's morally wrong. And you have situation where the man's getting up at 230 at three o'clock in the morning, and he's tweeting people, and then he goes to meetings. He looks like he's falling asleep at the meeting. I mean, none of this, none of this is permissible that you may say, Well, you know you're a progressive. You don't you don't like him. This has nothing to do with whether I like him or don't like him, or whether I was a progressive or not a progressive, or or what have you. These are basic things that are abnormal. This is not normal. When you see stuff like this going on, politics fades away. Our country to retain the legitimacy that it always claims. It has, has to perform in a certain way. You cannot, you cannot tell other countries what to do when we ourselves are not doing it, and then I can only imagine now what the members of NATO think when they're seeing this kind of stuff going on.

Blanca Pena 11:12
I know we're the laughing stock of the world right now. I mean, if me as a current intern for the public defenders, if I fell asleep in court, I will probably not get a job when I apply for it as an attorney, right? Like, or if I misrepresented someone, or if I was incompetent in my representing of someone, I would not have a job anymore, right? And that's, that's what's striking, is that he can do everything wrong and he still has his position, yeah, and, you know, I think right now, it really does feel like Israel is calling all the shots, and I do not like that at all. I wish I could put it into more elegant, eloquent words. Besides, I don't like that, but I really, it really doesn't sit right with me that we have billions and trillions of dollars for wars, and we can throw all this money at killing people, brown people, and we can't even afford basic needs for people in this country, things like healthcare, things like daycare, things like social security, like I it, I always hated hearing the other side say, well, who's gonna pay for X, Y and Z, the taxpayers. It's that's the whole point. The taxpayers pay taxes so that the taxes can serve everyone in return, right? But what's going on now? We're paying all these taxes. And I mean saying all these taxes is an understatement, because we're paying taxes on the things that we buy, on the money we earn on the things that we sell, everything is taxed in every single angle, in every single way, and what's what? What is that money being used for? It's being money. It's being used for wars, and it's being used for all of these things that do not make the world better, do not strengthen our military. I don't think, I think we're just wasting our time, wasting our money. You have Americans dying and like for what like, like, what are we? What are we doing? I will say, I am so one thing we do, right? I think I'm really proud of the the Artemis, the space trip around the moon. I will say that is that's always been very fascinating to me. And I love that we have a black man on there, a white woman, right? Like we have really intelligent people who continue to give hope, and I think that that's what we should be aiming for, having real good, competent people who do not give up on furthering the like us as a human species, right? Yeah, I think we cannot let go of things like that, because as soon as we do, then it's people like Donald Trump who continue to win. I just wanted to say that also just and I was talking about this before we went on air, about how Claudia Shane bomb instilled universal health care for Mexico, for Yeah, for all Mexican citizens, including dual citizens that have American citizenship and Mexican citizenship, which is great like I think these are the things that we should be focusing on. We should be focusing on the health of our people, our education system, things that make us better as a species, yeah, not protecting people in the Epstein files, not worried about, you know, going to war and and killing brown people in the name of freedom, because that that has never sat right with me, ever just I saw this video on Twitter, Professor, I don't know how often you're. On Twitter, but I feel like by this point, you know that I'm on there a lot. I saw this video of of like a touristy area in Iran, right? And it was, it had like, white people in there, and people were, like, at coffee shops, and they were laughing, and they were like, oh, you know, see, we shouldn't be bombing them. Look at them, that they look so normal, right? Like it was something like that. What I hated is that after watching this video, someone had the thought of like, oh, we should spare them because they live like us, or we should spare them because they passed my vibe check. No, we should spare them because they're human beings. I don't care if they look like, how you want them to look like, or not. They are human beings, and no matter how they live, right like, I don't think we should be killing people. But again, I think the reasonings and the justifications that they give us are just our lies, that they're blankets, that they just they want to kill brown people, and they they want to kill people who have different opinions and ideologies than them, and that's wrong. Well, I'll

Charles Stanton 16:09
say, I'll say this about it. I'll say this about it. And I try to, I try to look at all sides of something, even though sometimes it's pretty hard to do that. But this thing, with this thing with the war, though, you know, aside from, you know, what side we're supporting, or any of the rest of that stuff, it has to do with the competency of the person who's running the country, the cabinet has the ability to change this. We don't have to worry about anybody impeaching him, or any of the rest of that stuff. He can be removed from office under the 25th amendment. The 25th amendment says that if the majority of the cabinet decides that he's unfit, he can be removed from office. Okay, I will bet you the ranch that the vast majority of those people in the cabinet know he's unfit. They know he's in fit, probably far more than we do, because they're interacting with him all the time. So when they're listening to what he says and having these meetings and everything, and he's given ample evidence of that, if you if you remember back to the thing with Zelensky, where he has Zelensky in the Oval Office and all of all these other things that he's done, they're clearly not normal, not only not normal, but they're also violative of our security protocols. He's discussing, like, what the strategy is going to be for a country that's fighting one of our enemies in public, in front of all these people, but all these people, all these people that are, I wouldn't say, supporting him, going along with what he's doing, has to do with our political system. The vast majority of people in our political system, and that includes the Supreme Court as well, these are not people with beliefs. I'm always talking in the class. My example that people are probably tired of hearing has to do with the oath you're going to take when you become a member of the bar. And you're going to take the oath and I guess in the Federal Court House downtown. But that oath is only important if you have a core set of beliefs. If you don't have that core set of beliefs, it's meaningless. It's just like, it's just like if I were elected to President of the United States, and I go to Washington and I am there with the Chief Justice and I put my hands on the Bible and everything. That's great, but if you don't believe in anything, it's worthless. It's meaningless. And that's what we're seeing in our government and in our country. We're seeing we're seeing a lack of that belief, a lack of those core values. So they have a job that they have to do. They take an oath to do it, but they themselves don't believe in anything. And it's not just it's not just there. It's in corporate America too. It's in our entertainment industry. It's in our and it's in our social media construct. It's the people who are in charge of Twitter and and all these different conveyances of information. You know, you know that where they, where they got a judgment, finally, a few weeks ago, against Mark Zuckerberg and these other people. But you have a responsibility as an as an information. Patient carrier. You have responsibility to all those people that are part of that, particularly children, and you want to make sure those children are protected from, obviously, from predators, but also from the con, but also from the construct of something that could be addictive. You don't want to have that either, but nobody cares. You see, that's what you're dealing with. I remember a number of years ago, number of years ago, when I was going up to meet with Senator Menendez, Bob Menendez, the guy who now was in jail. Okay, right. So that was not, that was not a fortuitous meeting, but anyway, but as I'm going up there, and I'm in the elevator, it's a huge elevator in the I don't know if you ever been to the Russell Building in Washington. It's this humongous building. It's like, it's like, like, Taj Mahal, so to speak. And there's 30 people in the elevator, and I'm there, and there's 28 lobbyists, and they're all going there to see him. And you got Citizens United, where the money's Unlimited, right?

Charles Stanton 21:11
You've got all these things that make a lie out of the democracy, the one person, one vote. Forget about it, forget about it. And, you know, we're talking about one of my friends that I know very well, who's a lobbyist. And we were talking one night, and I was saying, you know, boy, I said I was talking about Kamala Harris. And he goes, Kamala Harris. He said, I could have told you. I could have told you five minutes after Biden dropped out that she had no chance. So I said, Well, how would you know that? And I thought he was going to say, well, because she was a woman, because she was a person of color, had nothing to do with that. She was outspent like 10 to one. They literally spent billions and billions of dollars that nobody even knew about to finance the campaign of the man who's the president now, yeah, and she was doing it. She was supposedly doing everything by the book, but the other people, they weren't doing it by the book at all, because they know the system favors them. Yeah, they know the Supreme Court is going to look the other way. Yeah, they know that. They know that in the Congress so many of these people are working for the lobbies. They don't work for us. Yeah, they work for the lobbies. So when people say, well, oh, you know, things are bad. You know, my health care is going down. I can't get food for my children. Well, look at the people who are serving you, but you're serving them. Yeah, they're not serving you. That's the problem.

Blanca Pena 22:51
That is the problem. I I remember growing up and always overhearing my parents talk about world events, right? And I was a kid, I didn't really know what was going on or what was true and what wasn't, but I remember, I kept hearing things like, you know, because we're from Mexico, so they talked about Mexico a lot, and they talked about how Mexico is very corrupt, and how, you know, the cartels run everything, and it's, you know, I don't know how it is right now, right? But just the way that they explained it to me, I had this idea that the Mexican government was very corrupt, because you have these cartels who are billionaires, and they're just running everything right. And I you know, in the middle of growing up here in America, where you are in an education system that makes America look like a true hero, a true shining, pure gold hero. I didn't think that that was the case here, right? Oh, boy, like I was so disappointed when I realized that that the corruption is just as bad, maybe even worse here, because it's true. You know, you have these people who work in Congress, and, I mean, they're being funded by all of these different companies. They could be oil company, like, it could be whatever your mind can think of, yeah. And they want to keep that money. They want to keep their position. So what are they going to do? Right? Like, they're going to vote in favor of whatever they tell them to. I think one of the most disappointing realizations this was like a while back, but I remember when Susie Lee voted for the Lincoln rally act, and I was like, oh, so, so you, you advertise yourself as as a Democrat, as someone who's gonna protect all people, people of color and documented people like this, that and the third. But then you go ahead and vote for the lake and Riley act like the things don't match up, and it goes back to your point about how you need the core values for the words to mean something. Because I could say words all day. I can, I can. Oh. No, I and this. You can apply this to anything. You can apply this to a boyfriend who's cheating on you but tells you that they're not right. Like, I can sit here and I can say words all day, but if I don't have the core values, they're not going to mean anything. And that's the thing you can you can even apply that to religion, right? You can apply that to people that say, oh, you know, I'm, I am a Christian, and I love God and whatever. But then those same people in the same breath hate people that are different than them or look different than them, right? And I'm like, where did you, where did you get the hate from? I don't get it. You're not following what your religion is telling you to do. I don't understand.

Charles Stanton 25:39
Yeah, yeah, no, I think, I think, to be honest with you, I think there's been a breakdown in the value system. This is what I think. I mean, I remember growing up, and I'm not going to idealize my growing up. But there were certain there were certain rules and everything that you were supposed to follow. I can't say everybody followed them, but that was what you were supposed to do. It was certain things that there were certain things that you were taught to believe. What you meant, you mentioned Mexico. That's very interesting to me, because I have a lot of knowledge about Mexico, and I can say this, the cartels will go out of business tomorrow if the market isn't there for their products. Number one. Number two, a lot of the drugs that are being brought into the United States from Mexico are being brought in by Americans, yeah, who go down to these hand guns? Yeah? And then we're worried about what Mexico is bringing in here. But we have the world's greatest gun trade with Mexico. We're funding funneling into Mexico 10s of 1000s or hundreds of 1000s of guns into that country. So that country can can be a wash in guns while we're getting the drugs from them, but we're judging them as being corrupt. We need to look at ourselves. The problem that we have in our country is more than just that, the government, the Congress, the courts, have failed, but we, in many ways, as individuals, have failed that we lack the introspection to look at our own situations and make things better, one person at a time, but we don't Want to do that. That's one of the problems.

Blanca Pena 27:42
Yeah, I think everything you just said is very true. Because, I mean, if, if another country was doing the same thing that this country is doing, we would call them terrorists, dictators, insane and like, they need wiping off the planet, right like but because we're doing it, it's okay. I think it's this. Everybody's gaslighting themselves, that what we're doing is the right thing. No, it's not, I'm sorry to tell you, but this country is not what they have been telling us that it is, and it could have been, it very much could have been. But the moment that you had white men step into this continent, wipe out everyone, and then talk about we the people where we're all equal while in the same breath owning slaves. The moment they did that, the words meant nothing, because the core values weren't there

Charles Stanton 28:36
so well, I'll just throw this. I'll just throw this in there before you take us out of our broadcast tonight, I recommend to everybody a book. The name of the book is contradiction. You'll see you'll see a different tale. Believe me, believe me. Thank you all so

Blanca Pena 28:54
much for tuning in. We'll see you next week. Have a good night. Take care. God bless you.

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