Social Justice - A Conversation

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

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

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is social justice, a conversation, a conversation you

Unknown Speaker 0:43
Well, hello everybody. We're back. I'm here with my erstwhile partner, Kira Kramer, and we're going to try to bring everybody up to date on stuff that's going on with the election, and also maybe a couple of other things that came across our notice in the since the last time we had our program, but Kara has a few things she want to talk about, so we'll get that started with her today or tonight.

Unknown Speaker 1:08
Yes, to start off our discussion, something that stood out to me since we've last spoken was the rhetoric from Trump's recent rallies about the enemy within, something that really stands out to me, especially in terms of the development of history and even learning from history, is that type of rhetoric being used against the people of the United States. When Trump was referencing the enemy from within, he was speaking about his own adversaries, anyone who challenges him ideologically, anyone who stands in his way. And when you think about that, of course, we could say that that's any member of our government that decides that they don't want to obey his will. Should that day come, for example, when Mike Pence decided to validate the election results. But also, I truly feel that the enemy from within. And this seconds what Vice Presidential candidate Walt had said at his recent rally, that it is us that he is targeting. It is the voter. And when you have a political candidate stating that the American people are the enemy from within, to me, it reckons a time when in world history we had a political leader, Hitler, who, in his rhetoric, made sure that the people of Germany understood that the Jews, members of their own community, of Germany and the surrounding regions in Europe were the common enemy, and in this case, Trump's common enemy being anyone who disagrees with his ideology. That's quite a vast amount of people, easily, probably half of the United States. And to me, that type of language is akin to domestic terrorism, and the fact that it's not being acknowledged as such, I find, is very disheartening and frightening, and he's already expressed, and it's expressed in the recent Supreme Court decision of presidential immunity that nothing is stopping him from using a militia or the national guard against the people of the United States. And while that may be far fetched, I don't think it's farfetched for a man who uses that type of rhetoric, and for a man that constantly praises and acclaims dictators globally,

Unknown Speaker 3:29
right? Well, I think you're absolutely right about that. He tries to demonize his opponents. There is no question that he's been an extraordinarily divisive force in the country going back to 2015 when he originally started his campaign to become the nominee for the Republican Party in the 2016 election. What's interesting to me is the fact that so many of the people who are going to vote for him. And there was a large article in the Times about it. Don't take him seriously. They just say, well, that's Trump being Trump. He's going to, you know, he always comes up with this crazy stuff, but you know, I'm going to vote for him anyway. But as you point out so astutely, now that the Supreme Court has basically removed any kind of sanctions on the President of the United States and any kind of behaviors that were obviously would have been or should have been prohibited in the past, he has that power now to use the military, to use all these Different agencies to suppress dissent, to suppress free speech to suppress people protesting. And I don't understand why there isn't more of a reaction to this kind of behavior. And when you listen to his speeches, basically, and you can't. Contrast the makama Harris's speeches. There's a it's a completely different vibe. His speech is, everything is bad. The country's going down. It's the Haitian it's the Haitian people. It's the Mexican immigrants. It's always something that's negative and always something that's pejorative of people who don't agree with them. And then, of course, what's very interesting is that he talks about the blood, the blood of America. The blood of America is being poisoned by all these people, you know, coming into the country. And what, what's interesting to me is those people who are supposedly poisoned the blood of America who are coming in here. So many of the people in this country who are going to vote for him should have that same problem, because they're the same ethnicity as the people who are coming into the country. Well,

Unknown Speaker 5:53
we all, we are a country of immigrants. And project 2025 has been flirting with the idea of removing national born citizenship. And when you have voters, I am a, I believe, second generation immigrant, my parents being a first generation immigrant. And how far back do does national citizenship come in this country being this is a country of immigrants. The melting pot of our nation is a value system. It's something that we as a country cherish. At least some people cherish it. And I just find his rhetoric in general, in general, to be absolutely the opposite of everything this country has stood for and does stand for for. And to just quote Trump directly, he says that we have some very bad people. We have some sick people, radical left lunatics, is what he says. And he directly says that, if necessary, the National Guard will handle them. And what I find so heinous about this rhetoric is that despite the fact that we understand that partisan party politics creates a lot of barriers to getting actionable steps done. The partisanship and the idea of compromise is something so it is a cornerstone of our nation, and it is in that compromise that such beautiful work can be developed. It is in the compromise and the checks and balances that we put on each other. It's in the discussions and the discourse of our nation that we come and we look together at policy issues to come up with the best solution that we possibly can with the compromise that we come up with and generate together and to demonize one half or one part of that political spectrum is so contrary to what the Founding Fathers themselves had to do in order to make this nation and the founding fathers, even though they were of different political ideologies, were proud of what they created together, and that pride of generating compromise and generating goals and solutions to the problems that we together acknowledge are so prevalent in this country is what is important. And to me, the hatred and the bigotry and the arrogance that we see in him is not what this country has stood for.

Unknown Speaker 8:24
Yeah, well, I think, I think there's a couple of things that come to mind. One thing, of course, is I think he is a man who, at his core, doesn't believe in anything. I don't think he believes even in a lot of the things that he says that are so divisive. All he believes in is to accumulate power. And he knows, he knows the pitch he has to use for, unfortunately, so many people in this country who buy into that ideology. And, you know, he's talked about, you know, we're going to use the we can use the troops, we can use the National Guard. And it's, it's highly It's highly ironic when he says that, because on January 6, 2021 he had that opportunity. He had the opportunity to stop the insurrection before it got started. He had the opportunity to call out troops National Guard would have you to stop these people from going into the Capitol and basically ransacking the Capitol and threatening to kill the people in Congress and the Vice President and his family. And for hours and hours and hours, he sat watching television and did nothing. And then when he was approached by one of his aides that you know, the Vice President was in danger and the family was in danger. What did he say? He said, Who cares? Who cares? That same morning, when he was giving that speech by the White House, and he had always 1000s of people there, and he told the people who were in charge of the magnetometers. Turned the magnetometers off. A lot of these people had weapons. And the reason he gave was, well, I have nothing to fear from from them, implying that, you know, they were going to do stuff that was going to that was going to attack his enemies. So, so, so, so that's one part of the problem. But the second part of the problem, which is, which is, which is far more pervasive than him is the Republican Party. How the Republican Party has repeatedly ignored all the warning signs of him as a candidate, going back to actually going back to 2016 But now, when he makes these outlandish claims when he talks about, you know, using the military, you know, getting revenge against his enemies. Where are all those voices of the Republican Party? And I think one of the sad things that's happened in this whole scenario is, except for a few people, the Republican party apparatus has been largely silent. I mean, okay, you have Liz Cheney, you have people who you know, testified before the before the House Committee on in the investigation there, but the vast majority of people have not really said anything. And they've, they've not only not said anything, but but my idea is, if you work for this man, and you were aware of all the things that he did while he was the president, and I'm not going to get into you know whether they should have resigned at the time or not, or whether or they were writing a book which they probably should have written a lot earlier than they wrote it. But let's put that all aside now at the position where there's going to be a vote, if you know, and they apparently do know, the character and qualities of this person, if they know that this person was was really doing things that were against our government and our Constitution. It's not merely their vote not to say that, not to say that they wouldn't endorse him. It's their duty, really, to say that they're going to support Kamala Harris, because it's going to be Kamala Harris who's going to be the only safeguard against this man doing all these things that he said he's going to do, and the and as I, as we began the broadcast tonight, the idea that he's joking around or what have you, is completely ludicrous, because he really believes that to get power, anything goes, and he will absolutely do those things.

Unknown Speaker 12:38
I agree. I think, like you said, to say that any of this rhetoric is a joke is an insult to the people of the United States, the fact that such topics as removing United States citizens from their homes with the military and or threatening because I think that his rhetoric is a threat to anyone who doesn't believe in what he does, and to me, that is threatening, and what I have advocated to my friends and family who are not on the like off, like they're not Quite in one shoe or another, or with one party or another. They don't know which where their boots lay in terms of political ideology and or candidates. What I've advocated is that Kamala, whether you agree with her policies or not, faces checks and balances, and she will face those checks and balances in her presidency. We have a very conservative Supreme Court, and we have a very split Senate and or very split Congress, and if something is very highly disagreeable, like that, she produces, and that's very highly disagreeable, it's not something that can't be undone in the next presidency, or something that won't even pass the House or the Senate, let alone the Supreme Court. And so if some aspect of her policies is so heinous to you, the likelihood that it's gonna pass is probably slim, because we can't even pass hardly anything now with Joe Biden, let and like, if you consider Kamala to be more radical, we can't even pass anything with Joe, and I wouldn't even say he's not radical. And so however, conversely, with Trump taking the presidency, he has the court, he has the ability to sway Congress significantly. There will be few checks, if any, to stop any of the most heinous things that could happen. And even though we say those things may or may not be unlikely, it's the fact that he has aligned the stars to make the path to significantly dangerous acts very active. Accessible and easy to accomplish?

Unknown Speaker 15:02
Yeah, well, I think that's, I think that's absolutely right. I mean, I think you see, the thing is that there's two things going on here. First of all, you have two candidates now we have the one candidate, of course, who has not made any mention of using troops or any of the rest of those things, as she's running on a platform of certain policies. The Republican Party doesn't seem to have any policies or any kind of a platform at all. It's basically immigration and few other things. But what's interesting to me is though, when they talk about, you know, her plan, her vision, and there are policies that she's laid out. She laid it out a couple of days ago when she was in Detroit, and she's laid it out in other places, versus a party who basically hasn't listed any policies at all, except, you know, remove immigrants. That's their that's their whole agenda. But what's interesting to me is, though, that they continue to talk about finding out more about her. You know, we got to learn more about her. Okay, well, you can try to learn more about her, but the other person, we know all about them. We know about them, not even because of what they've said. We know about them because of what they've done, because they were the president for four years, and he was, he was always attempting to use the Justice Department, the FBI and the levers of power to get back at his enemies. We know this because we have the testimony before the House Committee. We know this because we have the grand jury testimony before the grand jury that Jack Smith had impaled. We know all that so we know what. We know what he's going to do, and do we want, as a country, a rerun of that, except a rerun now, where there are no like there are there are no shackles on him at all. He can just basically do whatever it is he wants to do, and people don't have any recourse. One of the really interesting things that that's come out, of course, and it hasn't been mentioned too much, is how, when they had the situation, you know, with the hush money case, with Michael Cohen, how Michael Cohen had been released from prison, and then, because he was, he was he was speaking out, he was under some obscure for some obscure reason, he was sent back to he was sent back to the prison he had been in, but he was put for a number of days in solitary confinement. Now, there was nothing that Michael Cohen did that married him being put into solitary confinement, except for the fact that you know, Bill Barr was working for Trump, and what we're going to see in the next administration, if he gets to be real, he gets to be president again, there won't be any guardrails, because all the people that he's going to pick are going to be told loyalist to him. There won't be any General Milley. There won't be any, you know, Ambassador Bolton to the UN there won't be any General Kelly or general mass or any of these people. So what really needs to happen now is all those people, all those people who have experienced what he has done is to go out and speak out about it and say, Listen, this guy is a threat. But not merely that. He's a threat that Kamala Harris is the one who's going to protect those rights. She takes those rights seriously. She believes in the Constitution, all the rest of the stuff. Because he's basically telling you that he does not. He does not. He's telling you basically that I'm going to do what I'm going to do when I get in and, you know, I'm going to get back on my enemies, and, you know, the law is going to go by the books, but she's the absolute opposite of that. So I think that's the way it should be framed, more that you have this choice, but the choice is not merely that you elect one person and not elect another person. It's the fundamental change in what will happen in our country that those democratic norms that we always took for granted free speech and all the rest of that stuff that has a chance of going out the window, because if you're if you're being threatened with going to jail and stuff like that, you're going to be much more careful as to what you say. And America has always been about robust debate. Do we kick these ideas around? We discuss, we argue, we fight, but that's what a democracy is.

Unknown Speaker 19:43
I totally agree it that principle of we may disagree on many different topics, but this ideological shift to it is my way or the highway, and you are wrong no matter what, and we need to punish a. Everyone who doesn't think like us. That is nowhere found in the culture that established this nation. We had political discourse and debate, and we could look at the other person and see a human being behind the ideas. And I feel like that sentiment is disintegrating. I don't think that both parties can see the human being behind the political ideology. And it's a choice. It's a choice that we're making, that we're choosing, yeah, and that choice will have grave consequences. Yeah?

Unknown Speaker 20:35
Well, one can imagine, though, one can imagine, if you went back to the time of George Washington, John Adams, Ben Franklin and somebody wanted to nullify the election. What the consequences would have been, not merely for the perpen person who was the the prime perpetrator, but the people who were, you know, supporting them. I mean, look at the case of Aaron Burr, when Jefferson became the president, how Aaron Burr basically tried to basically overthrow the overthrow the government, and try to take and try to take Jefferson out. It wouldn't, it would not be looked unfavorably that all those people who founded the country the founders, they believed in those principles. And that's the question that I always have been coming back to, what do the people who support him? What principles do they believe in, or is it just a cult like thing where we're going to support this guy, but all those things in the Constitution that people take for granted, those things are not to be taken for granted, because we can see as you, you began your your discourse at the beginning of our program, talking about Hitler and all the rest of those things. Germany at one time was a democracy. Germany at one time, had all these different freedoms, and then slowly but surely, it became a cult of personality, the court system, which was supposed to be supporting law and justice, and everything ebbed away. I always, I always, recommend to everybody the Judgment at Nuremberg movie, because I think it's such a wonderful movie, and it's about people who are in the justice system, and they they took the wrong road. Basically, we saw that a lot when the ex president was, was doing his thing. Before that, they were, they were trying. He was constantly trying to get them to do stuff that was, you know, unethical, illegal, unconstitutional, but now if he comes back, he's going to be even more empowered, because he's the message he's going to get is basically the vast majority of people really don't care what I do, because if they did care, they wouldn't have voted for me. So I've got all those people who are really going to support me, and then I got a whole bunch of people who were indifferent and didn't vote. So, so that's why, that's why the vote is so important. We and we take that for granted too, because we've never a lot of us, anyway, have never traveled. But when you travel, when you go to these different countries, and you see, you'll even have to go to the different countries, just read the newspaper. You can see in a lot of these countries today. You can see it in Egypt, you can see it in Turkey. You can see it in Venezuela that one of those rights disappeared.

Unknown Speaker 23:27
And I think what I'm seeing, in terms of the supporter base, is this, oh, if I'm on the other side, if I'm on the side that's perpetuating the adversity and perpetuating the disparities against others, then I won't be on the other end ever that if I'm on the side that's winning, then I'm not going to be losing. But that's a very fine line between winning and losing. And the quest for power that we're seeing in this country, I feel is and I'm seeing it in the supporter base this. I need more. I have to have more. For example, in like, the reason so many, I wouldn't even say like, maybe above middle, slightly above middle class families fall for that narrative of he is going to give me the tax breaks in my economy. It's the economy. It's so much better when he's in power. But when can we draw the line that enough is enough for a single person, that enough power and enough money is finally enough and that the other person, the person the lower to middle class family that is struggling beneath you to even afford health care or medication? When is it enough for them is just being able to afford groceries enough, or is it the person who decides that they need the next luxury bag, luxury vehicle, they just need more, and that's enough for them. But I think what we're seeing is for the people that are coming into power, nothing is enough. Yeah. Yeah. And they are willing to remove the rights and privileges that have been afforded to every person in this in this country, in order to have the majority of the power. Yeah? And we can look to history to see how that has played out. Yeah?

Unknown Speaker 25:14
Well, I think it's it's also true that we have, in many ways, an uncurious electorate, because all these facts are out there. I mean, when he was, when he was talking, I guess it was when they had the debate, and he was talking about Obamacare, and he said he was the savior of Obamacare. He was not the savior of Obamacare. John McCain was the savior of Obamacare. Number one, number two, it would have taken away health care for 10s of millions of people. Many of those people who were would be voters of his who somehow believed that he was the savior of health care that he was going to he was going to cut your taxes, even though, if they had this tariff, he was going to cost you three or $4,000 extra as a family. But a lot of that, a lot of that has to do with the responsibility of the voter and and I'm always saying to people, and I say, you know, I've said that to you, and I've said it to my my students, you cannot just have one source of information. You need to branch out as to what you want to find when you want to find out about these issues, it's not just reading, it's just not watching Fox News or even it's not just watching MSNBC or CNN. You got to have a variety of information services, and you've got to have a variety of knowledge that you can plug into, and then you have to be like a person who's who's looking for gold dust out in the west, you've got to sift through all the all the to the water and to the dirt and everything to find those nuggets. And those nuggets are the true knowledge. But a lot of people, they don't want to do that work. They Kamala Harris says, you know, you got to do the work. It's about doing the work. It is about doing the work. Because citizenship is not a guaranteed freedom. No, it's not. Citizenship is something that you have to earn, and you have to constantly, you have to constantly fight to keep. That's what that's what Franklin knew when he left the convention hall and he said, you know, the man asked him, What have you created? And Franklin said, we've created a republic, if we can keep it. So even then, in those days, he knew the tenuousness of the American democracy, you know, and

Unknown Speaker 27:33
it is, it is a great responsibility, and it's a great privilege. We have the privilege now. We have freedom of the press. We have free speech. We have the ability to see and hear diverse perspectives, not only from within our country but around the world. And that is not guaranteed. And so I want to tell the audience tonight, please, please do the work that it takes to be a responsible and global citizen.

Unknown Speaker 28:00
Yeah, absolutely, I would second that, and I would say that the information is there for you. But what's also you have to realize is all those things we take for granted now may just go away like the wind, and we can come into a new society where all those freedoms have evaporated. So we want to thank you again for being our audience. And we want to, we want to look forward to talking to you again next time. Yes,

Unknown Speaker 28:32
and with about 20 days out, 21 days until the election, please go out and register to vote. And I believe mail in ballots are arriving at your doorstep as we speak, so please either make a plan to vote in person and vote either by mail or in person, and thank you very much for listening. And we hope you have a great rest of your week.

Unknown Speaker 28:54
Good night. You

Unknown Speaker 29:04
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

Unknown Speaker 29:33
we look forward to it.

Unknown Speaker 29:34
You.

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