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Social Justice - A Conversation
Unknown Speaker 0:00
You're listening to locally produced programming created in pay you envy studios on public radio K you envy 91.5. Hi,
Unknown Speaker 0:11
I'm Charles Stanton. I'm on the faculty of the Honors College of UNLV. And the Boyd School of Law.
Unknown Speaker 0:19
Whether or not a third year law student and welcome to social justice, social
Unknown Speaker 0:23
justice, the conversation conversation.
Unknown Speaker 0:28
Well, good evening, everybody. And welcome to our last and final show of social justice a conversation because yours truly is hopefully graduating from law school on Friday. So, you know, we hate opening new shows with another shooting, I feel like we've probably done it, maybe half of every show we've done has opened up with some sort of conversation about some horrendous mass shooting that happened in this country, and the show is going to be no different. Because there was another horrendous mass shooting in this country, this time in Texas was a repeat offender. In this one was a little bit different. In that I had not seen so many graphic images, so many graphic videos, so many. I mean, really jarring, visually jarring images and videos came out of this, this situation and you know, part of part of you thinks that that's necessary, and you have to see it, and part of you says, honor and respect these people that died, you know, innocently. So I'm going to have the professor sort of go over some of these details and have him cover it. And we'll we'll have a chat about what happened in Texas. Sure.
Unknown Speaker 1:34
Thank you. Thank you, man. Yeah. Well, we had a gentleman who had issues, let's put it that way, having to deal with white supremacy and everything. And he decided to go to the mall, and live out those hatreds, at the expense of a lot of innocent people. And it was, of course, the great fortune of the people in that mall, that there was one police officer who was there on a completely unrelated purpose, who was able to stop him. And of course, you know, of course, told you that they had put out on the internet, a lot of really horrific images of what happened to the victims. I'm of I'm of a very divided mind about that. I was a very interesting article, of course, a couple of weeks ago, about Newtown, having to do with the men and women who had to respond there, and what their experience was to see to see this. And, of course, you know, there's the issue of privacy, all the things that the family has to deal with already. But I think we're at the point where we need something to jar us at this point. Because this cannot continue. And the fact that, you know, there are excuses made almost every single time one of these shootings occurs, is unacceptable. I found something very fascinating that I did not know. And I probably the vast majority of our listeners don't know, when they had the shooting of the man who was using his gun for target practice or whatever he was doing in his backyard. And he killed all those people. I think we mentioned on the broadcast that basically they had three police officers for a 700 square mile area. On last Saturday shooting, the bulk of the police force did not arrive until a half hour after they were notified. One of the women who was at the shooting last Saturday echoed what the woman said in the in the earlier shooting. And that basically was when they asked her Did she carry a gun? She said yes, I carry a gun. And my husband carries a gun, because there's no police. So in the one sense, I could see well, in this sort of a remote area, there might not be many police. But this was a heavily populated area
Unknown Speaker 4:25
in Texas is sort of outside of Dallas. I mean, it's not super remote, not remote enough where they shouldn't have had an immediate or relatively immediate response time. So I think you're right, that police presence obviously could have stopped some of the bloodshed and a lot of these cases and in Texas, especially looking at ivaldi, which was sort of the same situation. But I think what I want to talk about here is going back to the idea of people are anonymous a lot of the times and it's hard to see the humanity and other people anymore and look someone in the eye and understand that they're a human being and that human being has an intrinsic value, to see the videos we saw come out of the shooting and to see the images we see. I think it's terrible and it's horrible. And it does, it is a level of dishonouring that's doing to you know, these bodies and these. However, I think that the benefit outweighs the bad hear in that people cannot say that these people are anonymous. There's a face line there that's someone's handbag, someone's baby someone's cell phone, someone's hair, someone this is a person, there's a real person with real things and they're lying there. And they're dead right and I think it to see such horrible graphic thing will make if anybody if one person says I don't want to walk in a mall that looks like that. I don't want that to be my local mall. And that can shift the tide even one way I think that video did did some good, right? Yeah. So I think maybe it's time that we filmed the the carnage of these, and people really know what it is. And we can't pretend that these are all faceless anonymous, like we do on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. There's real people behind this and there's real lives affected. And then the ripple effects. And, you know, I'm not convinced that this was the correct thing to do is have this so publicly broadcasted. But like I say, if this even changes one person minds about the horrors of gun violence and what it really looks like on the ground, then I think maybe this is some good. Well, they have
Unknown Speaker 6:19
it's accessible on the internet, I thought it was either the washington post of the times, they have an anatomical display of what the gun does, what the assault weapon does, what it does to the organs of the body. And I, I've said it before, and I'll say it again, there is no legitimate reason why any person outside of law enforcement or police, FBI Justice Department would have you, our army should have this gun, because it serves no other purpose, except to kill a lot of people very, very short time, and cause grievous grievous wounds and suffering to people. And how an 18 year old in the state of Texas is able to get a hold of such a gun. When you can't get a handgun until you're 21. There is something very seriously wrong there. They have they in the Texas legislature now they have in one of the chambers, they have passed a bill to raise the age to 21. But the chances of the bill being approved are almost non because in the Texas Senate. There there are a lot there's a lot of opposition to it. But it is as I think you said, I mean, I think we we need we need some kind of shock treatment, we need something that's going to that's going to, to affect us, move us frightened and scare us whatever you want to say that we say enough is enough. Correct? You know, well, we can jump from that that story to, you know, seemingly every day, the rise in prejudice against transgender and LGBT people. And we had gotten into this a little bit in the last broadcast, but it was very, very interesting. You know, there's two kinds of political opposition that you face in this country. There's the one form of opposition, but the people, honestly and truly believe these things. And, you know, we disagree with them on many things, but that that's their belief. And, you know, that's the way it is they don't do it out of malice. That's just what they believe. But then you have people who are in positions of authority, particularly in the legislatures of, of Texas, and Tennessee, and Montana, in places like this, who really, in my estimation, don't believe in anything. They're basically controlled by a group of people who are either lobbyists for the gun lobby, or people who are campaign contributors and donors for a radical conservative agenda. And I think it was it was best said by the by the, by the gentleman who was the son of the Montana governor, when he met with his father, and he talks with the Father and, you know, he's, he's nonbinary the son. So, right away, you think that if that's your son, and he's nine, but non binary, you'd have some special sensitivity to the issue and he meets with his father, he talks with his father. And then you know, nothing happened to course. And he was interviewed, they asked the son will, you know, you talk to your father, he says, Well, he says, you know, my father is a politician. My father's main priority is to get reelected. He sees what his stature is in the state. He sees the consequences probably if he does something that's going to displease these people. So, you know, he goes with it, even though he probably knows that it's wrong. And that's what we have a lot of in this country. We have a lot of people who are unprincipled. They don't and that's why you have such a difficult Path to having a conversation with them. Because you could sit down with a person who was anti abortion, you could sit down with a person, probably, who was anti LGBT, but you could have a reasonable dialogue with them as to what their reasons might be. And we would disagree, and maybe we would never convince them. But these people they believe in nothing. You know, I've had this conversation in some of the classes that I teach. And, you know, it may sound to some of my students as being cynical or harsh, but it's not really, it's my life experience in talking to some of these people being in politics. And you just, they really don't care. They don't care about transgender people. They don't care about the people who were shot. They don't care about women who might die because they couldn't get proper medical care. They really don't care. A lot
Unknown Speaker 10:49
of conservatism is no longer conservatism. It is grifting. And you'll you'll see that term like conservative Grifters sort of tossed around a lot, but it's reality. I mean, it's very, very true. You don't believe that these people genuinely believe a lot of the BS they espouse. In fact, for a lot of them, you can find direct statements they've made to the contrary prior to them being platformed in some way by the Republican Party or republican adjacent believers. So yes, what it is, is it's it's money, it's about money. It's, there's a huge population of the American populace who wants to buy into something because like you said, Professor, they believe in nothing. And they believe they're seen people that look like me, or people of color, or people that are gay, all of a sudden, are rising the ranks. And we've talked about it a million times on this show, but they see all the sudden the positions that were once only for a certain breed of white person or now for everybody, and they feel uncomfortable, and they do not know how to vocalize how uncomfortable that makes them other than with hatred and that hatred sells. And so what do you have you have figureheads for this hatred, and it obviously, I mean, look at what happened with you know, Dylan Mulvaney where they all decide that that's their thing, and that's boycott Bud Light? Well, it's this is very much on a larger scale, what's happening with transgender folks they've picked that that's their thing. That's the thing that people will spend a lot of money to keep out of their schools or keep out of their homes or keep, it's a grift. It's not anything more than the next grift, next 10 years, it probably won't be trans people, it'll be something else it'll be you know, they'll pick another marginalized group, another moment, you know, Jewish people got it for a while for six months here. Now it's the trans people's turn again. I mean, it's good, they're gonna pick a minority group, another minority or another, they're going to always have some sort of grift to keep people that don't otherwise know how to vocalize What's wrong on an institutional level, they're gonna find someone to blame not the institution's, not the things around them, not the people they vote for, but other minority groups. So, you know, obviously, I think you're 100%. Right. But I think all of what we're seeing, especially with the transgender people is just part of a grift, the larger grift to get people and you don't want to call them dumb people, because I do believe that Republicans in the south generally are redeemable, but that's who they are. As long as they're willing to spend money, we're gonna keep seeing people like this. Yeah.
Unknown Speaker 12:56
Well, I think I think it's interesting. You know, and I, and I allude to a allude to, you know, one of my all time favorite movies that, you know, is the verdict, right? Where he, at the end of the movie, he talks about the institutions? Well, because we have a deadlock society, with the ultimate institution to decide is the Supreme Court. Okay, so the Supreme Court, in some way should reflect the views of the people who, who it ultimately represents. Now we see what the abortion pill situation that close this over 70% of the people. And then this national poll, which has been, you know, ratified by a number of other polls, believe that women should have access to this to this medication, and, you know, in that same vein, to medical care, and all the rest of these things, okay. So that would be bad enough, that they were basically denying women the right to, to have the bodily autonomy that they deserve as women. But now you have and women seeing and almost every day, a new thing comes out about the Supreme Court. You've got, you've got justice Gorsuch with the land deals. You have Clarence Thomas, you have the Chief Justice with his wife's logging and all the money she's made. And you reach a certain point where people really don't believe that the court has any credibility at all. And that's dangerous. Because when people start to believe that, then people start to think of what are the art or what are the alternatives?
Unknown Speaker 14:43
The fact that I'm gonna boil it down here, and this is gonna sound stupid, but I believe it to be true. The fact that women's rights hinged on Ruth Bader Ginsburg getting sick at a wedding and croaking is wrong. So there is some legitimacy to that court I'm sorry, the death of one woman then getting her replacement to take away women's rights basically, fundamentally, is wrong, that court shouldn't exist. There's a problem with that court if that's the system, right. And part of it is all blame RBG she should have retired, she shouldn't have allowed Trump to have the possibility of having a pic of unemployed he should have retired when Obama was president, I hate to blame, you know, one of the founders of you know, whatever. But that sucks. She should have retired. And I think that but the fact that we have a system in place where one death, one removal could cause such a domino effect to almost ripple the country right now, it did ripple the country not almost it did. That's wrong. And so I think there's some credence to the argument that it's an illegitimate court, there is some credence to it, how can a court that's that fragile, be legitimate? Well,
Unknown Speaker 15:48
and then, of course, the other aspect of it, too, is that it appears that it wasn't just limited to just conservative justices. Now, Ruth Bader Ginsburg arrested, so she went over to Israel for a month and a half paid for by I guess, a friend or whoever it was. And and so that's one person, you have a Justice Sotomayor, who apparently received a $3 million advance from Random House penguin for her book, and then she's sitting on cases involving whether a certain merger should be allowed Random House in the publishing is you cannot, you cannot I mean, I say you cannot, they can basic I mean, we're both products of a law school, alright. Okay. And I mean, there should be like a certain time when the bell rings for you. And you understand basic ethical precepts, or common sense or respectful wall, whatever you want, however, you want to put it, that in your role as a judge, you have to upset yourself from those things. Because it goes to the heart of the whole judicial system. If you're sitting on cases repeatedly, where people who have given you money or or you bought stock in their company and doing anything, the rest of these things are you're collaborating with them, your verdict, even even if the verdict may be an honest and true one, based on law, people will look at it and say, Well, this is not, this is not really legitimate. And if you keep keep pursuing that, you will get to a point where people will just think the court is a joke. And when they think it's a joke, then there's another alternative. That's not a court.
Unknown Speaker 17:47
Right? Well, and I don't think there's any escaping this. And I think it'll be honest to God, it'll probably trickle down. But when your highest court in the land, when you cannot hold the nine people that were appointed to the highest court in the land responsible, what person can you hold, if they can't be held accountable, or even, we'll take it a step further. They don't want to be accountable. They themselves don't have the wherewithal or the gumption or the personal ethics to say this is wrong. I'm not doing that if those nine people we put them on the highest court of land, and they still can't do the right thing. You know, what's the whole system? And I think you and I have had many conversations about before that maybe it is just a total upheaval that has to happen. But look, look at what the nine people that we give the highest court in the land look at what they do.
Unknown Speaker 18:33
Well tell you what's what's interesting to me. They're giving them an out basically, the you know, the Senate committee and all these people, they're giving them an out, they gave Robertson out, basically, you know, devise something devise some kind of formula or, or protocol. He just reacted that will indignity that How dare you? How dare you question, you know, what, what, what's been going on? And I, the other day now, the Wall Street Journal got the Pulitzer Prize for one of these stories regarding how many people in our in our government are compromised. People in legislature, in our Congress, people in our judiciary, people who work in the executive branch are all compromised. I'm saying to myself, you know, this is really, really bad, because the Wall Street Journal is a paper owned by Rupert Murdoch, right? It's a Republican business establishment paper, and they are coming for us with the revelation that basically the Hulk government is corrupt. And, and they're, they're taking the place of the investigatory bodies that were supposed to have in place to find these things out. And that's what I've been always harping on. You know, when when you went to class and we would discuss these things, it's not the business, it's not the business of good papers that they be, whether it's the times the Washington Post or The Wall Street Journal, to keep coming up with this information. It's the job of our inspector generals, and these people and law enforcement people to be doing it, and they're not doing it, or they don't care to do it. They don't want to do it however you want to, however you want, however you want to put it, you know,
Unknown Speaker 20:29
and I think we have a problem then where I think the median voter understands that there is levels of corruption. And I think if you ask the median voter, how corrupted Do you believe your average politician to be? They would say very much so But so then for the Wall Street Journal to report on things that I believe, like you said, were already generally known. It's not going to change the tides, right? The Democrats don't run on the fact that they're going to fix corruption, they don't run on the fact that they're going to come in and clean house and stop taking dirty money, they take the dirty money all the same, right? So I think then you have this median voter who understands that there's these levels of corruption is apathetic towards it, sees one party reporting on it, and the other party doesn't care. So I think you're gonna have these problems proliferate, because they're not voter issues. They're not talked about, we all know it, and we've all just come to accept it, because neither party runs on changing it. So I mean, there is every once in a while, you get oh, we'll take those girl politician. And that's maybe part of the reason why Trump won is because he was so far removed from what people believe a politician to be more corrupt than probably the average politician, but because he was removed, you can sort of remove that level of corruption, people just attach to the word politician, but then you have these problems proliferate, because you never have any action either way.
Unknown Speaker 21:39
Well, yeah, I mean, I mean, we're hopefully not going to see it to its full fruition. And that's the debt ceiling. Because now what you have basically, is you have a divided Congress, and you have a House of Representatives, with a man who was the negotiator with Chuck Schumer, to somehow solve this problem, literally owes his position as Speaker of the House to be dependent on one or two votes, because any now any single member of the House of Representatives can bring a motion in the body at any time to remove him. So he basically has to propose an agenda that is really going to be destructive. And he's going to propose an agenda where basically, many of vital important social programs are going to be decimated, or they will let the country go into default. And now basically, it's going to be thrown somehow, I guess, in some basis on the 14th Amendment, that Joe Biden is going to come up with some kind of a magic formula to allow this process to somehow continue. So we don't become insolvent. They had Lauren's tribe on the other night. And it was like, it was like Philly, you know, when you see like eat when you see like violence drive, right. It's embarrassing. It's an embarrassment, as an attorney to see it because we shouldn't have to depend on this, this venerable man on strive to tell us like very basic principles of law. Yeah, that the Congress pretty much composed of almost all attorneys, doesn't they? They don't get it. They don't get it. So so. So I don't know what the future is gonna be for that. You know, but it is it is interesting how all and of course, we wouldn't be totally remiss in our last we didn't mention what happened Tuesday. Yes, we must. We must we must mention that. The the verdict for E Jean Carroll against the ex president. Defamation, and yes, is sexual, sexual misconduct, sexual misconduct, which now probably, which now probably, I'm not going to be a prophet now is probably going to be the first of many, many actual similar cases like this, because there are many other women who were probably in the same position. What's fascinating about it, though, except for ASA, Hutchinson, the almost non commentary by the Republican Party,
Unknown Speaker 24:21
what do they have to say he's on video confusing this woman for his ex wife? And they're saying, well, she thought she was on a tract if he would have never, well, he confused her for his ex wife. So Hmm. I mean, what did they have to say? But that's the whole thing. I mean, they, you know, there's no confrontation of anything and so then these issues proliferate, but there's nothing there's nothing to be said. But you listen, when the tape came out, however, many years ago, that was now of him saying he was going to grab women by their genitalia. That wasn't enough. And they had him recorded saying he was a sexual assaulter I mean, they had I'm on tape saying as much. So why why would it be any different in the face of real evidence in the face of a jury? I don't want to change their mind.
Unknown Speaker 25:06
My my, my theory on that has changed the world. But I'm ready. See, I always thought, well, they're mercenaries, basically, and whoever can get you into the castle will go. Right. I really think a lot of these people identify with that. Yes, they really believe that women are there for their amusement. Oh, yeah. And that that's the purpose of a woman
Unknown Speaker 25:32
and with the rise of Donald Trump with the rise of people like Elon Musk, the rise of sort of Andrew Tate deniers in your ideological culture, so
Unknown Speaker 25:40
you know, it's okay, because that's the woman's role. And, and he's the he's the, the standard bearer. And I think that from there, it goes into the racial issue. It goes into the LGBT issue, it goes into the issue. With immigration,
Unknown Speaker 26:01
all intersection, it's all intersectional. And I think we've we've talked about ad nauseam on this show. But as it is, our final show, I think it's a good wrap up is to say that so much of this comes from, I believe people and the predominant Person of the average Republican will go ahead and say, it has this level of discomfort that comes with the changing of tides, and a new guard and a new guard that does not look like the old guard. And I think that's where all of this stems from is just this level of recognizing that your spot is no longer coveted and your spot is no longer guaranteed, and that you aren't guaranteed a beautiful wife by way of getting you know a BA and being a white man, you are guaranteed some high paying job just by way of being getting your BA and being a white man. And I think that makes the vast majority of the Republican base or white men, incredibly uncomfortable. And so that's why we see these proliferation of issues. And then the people like Donald Trump, that people like Andrew Tate, the people like Elon Musk, who then espouse these ideas that women are lesser, they're the ones keeping you down. Black people are lesser, they're the ones keeping you down, immigrants are lesser, they're the ones keeping you down. As long as they're platformed. People will keep buying into it because people are susceptible to hive mind, people are susceptible the money and power of which these gentlemen have a lot of and so that's what's going to happen worse and worse and worse. And
Unknown Speaker 27:11
in a parallel way. Denial of voting rights, denial of critical race theory education. Yes, it all goes together.
Unknown Speaker 27:20
Yes. So yeah, I think that's a really good way to wrap this up. As we come to our last couple of minutes on this show is I want to thank everything I've talked about on the show. And every the way I'm able to articulate myself and talk about these issues in a real and meaningful way. And I think in a way that understands not only my position, but others position is because of the new College of Florida is because of the liberal arts education I received there is because I was taught critical race theory at an educated an educational institution that believed that that was proper and right to teach. The fact that Ron DeSantis is taking that away and is trying to and he has effectively shut down that school for everything it's worth will no longer allow children like me to be able to speak on programs like this and do so effectively. So if I take away anything or want to leave my legacy at all, it's that I support the new College of Florida, I support liberal arts education, I support the teachings of critical race theory. And I think they will all make us better, more informed citizens able to handle the complicated and complex issues that arise in our institutions. With that, I want to also thank the professor for having me on and allowing me to do this and share my ideas for an hour, almost two years, I've been very, very lucky and very, very grateful. I'm gonna let the professor give some closing
Unknown Speaker 28:27
comments. Sure. Well, likewise to all that, I think that we devise this show, to try to try to point out certain things in the society that had gone off the tracks. Certainly, what you've you've alluded to regarding your education, I think is is is, is is great in one sense that you're the product of that education, and you've graced this program and partnered with me in a very good way to give information to a lot of people. But it's also it's also sad because our society, in many ways is afraid of new ideas. They're afraid of science, they're afraid of truth. And they want to go in a hole and dig themselves a hole like an ostrich instead of facing what we need to face that we've never had face to the gamble of our history. And now perhaps the bill is coming due for all our ignorance and our all our inattention and all our indifference. And we we do the show basically because we want to wake people up. But I will say it's been my pleasure to have you as my partner here. And, you know, you you we will we will try to find someone somewhere actually somewhere out there to replace you. But I think the chances of finding a replica of yourself A very minimal but it's been a great pleasure for me as well.
Unknown Speaker 30:03
Well, and with that, it's been an honor and we hope that this show opened your eyes even a little bit and allowed you to continue social justice and having a conversation. Thank you so much.
Unknown Speaker 30:13
Thank you. Well, good night.
Unknown Speaker 30:14
Thank you for listening to our show. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us at whether one that's w e t h e l one@nevada.unlv.edu. Or to contact Professor Charles Stanton, contact him at CHA R L E S That's Charles dot Stanton, s t a n t o n@unlv.edu.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai