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Social Justice - A Conversation
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You're listening to local programming produced in K UNV studios.
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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.
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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 name is Kira Kramer. I'm a fourth year honors college student, a public health major and a pre law student. And this is social justice a conversation, a conversation. Well,
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good evening, everyone. Everybody. Charles Stanton here with my cohort, Kira Kramer, and we want to welcome you all back in the fold here for one of our major pre election programs regarding all the things that are going on in our country. And wanted to start off today's discussion, conversation with Kara talking about false equivalence. I think that's when one of the interesting things that I've sort of like
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looked at during this whole campaign, and how the ex president is given a legitimacy that he really doesn't deserve. When you look at, you know, when you look at their their background and their their achievements, you have a woman who was the district attorney of Oakland, California. She was the multiple term Attorney General. She was the United States Senator.
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And then, of course, the Vice President versus, versus the other gentleman who basically did nothing as far as public service was concerned, but, but, but way beyond that, it's a question I think, for for the American people to really ponder is to ask, ask themselves, ask each other, how important is ethics and values and morality
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as pertains to being the president? And I think that's something that, even though there's been a lot of talk about all the crazy stuff that went on in the ex president's administration, I think there is, or should be, a moral level of behavior that a person has to qualify for to be the president. And it is exceptionally disturbing to me as a person who, you know used to work in politics at one time, to hear the commentaries of people who work for the ex president. These are not people who work for Kamala Harris. They have no connection to her. They're not democratic, probably the vast majority of them, but each each one that seems to come out and speak, whether it's a person who was in an investigatory
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procedure like a Liz Cheney, or whether it was General John Kelly or it was the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, all of them throw around words that we never heard before in our description of American leaders, such as fascist basically, this is what We've been hearing more and more of and unfit, unfit for office, unfit by temperament, unfit by moral compass. Furthermore, even one, I've recently heard that one such party who had been working in the White House during Trump's presidency overheard Trump say that he was looking for he needed people behind him that were devoted to him, like those who supported Hitler. Was Trump's own words, yes, that he needs followers that are that will do anything for him. And that idea that you don't want to encourage civil discourse, you don't want the compromise that this country has been built on. You would rather be a dictator, and that's what you want? Yeah, no, I think that. I think that's very, very true. I think that he looks for a certain kind of person, a person who basically, in many cases, has abandoned their own morality and pursuit of power. I mean, we saw that on so many occasions when is when he was in the presidency, as in his first term, that you had all these different people who knew that what he was doing and advocating was wrong, but they just, they just went along with it. I think that we're seeing now, though, that where he had some people in his administration who you know were trying to put the reins on him and prevent a lot of the stuff he was doing. If he's elected to a second term, none of that will be present. He'll just have basically people who will literally, like cult like members, follow anything he has to say and.
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I also, I also find it interesting when we hear him speak about retribution and all the rest of these things, and how the American electorate is so supine as to what's going on, it's like, oh, that's just the way he is. They make excuses for him. Basically, they don't want to confront what he's really saying. Oh, he's just joking and all this stuff. He's not joking. He's telling you. He's telling what he intends to do. And of course, the other interesting thing is the 2025
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manual about how he wants to change the country, almost all the people who were involved in preparing that were involved with him so he's trying to, like, just, you know, disengage himself from it, and people buy it somehow. And even for those that make excuses I've heard so many times, oh, this is just taken out of context. That's not what they really meant. Context or no context. The phrases themselves, individually, there is no context that could presuppose any excuse. There is no context that could justify those words. Even out of context, they're so inappropriate and outrageous, yeah, well, of course, you know, when he he said that Hitler did some good things for Germany, and I'm just like listening to this, and I said, Really, it's that's an interesting thought, you know, but he has no sense of history, though that's been commented on by so many people that work for the man, he has no sense of history, and he has no limits. There's nothing that's going to confine him to a certain kind of behavior because he's been taught by the society, and by being a reality television star and all the rest of it, that you can get away with it so you're not being whatever you do is okay, because you're Donald Trump now, Kamala Harris, you know. And of course, Barack Obama were, you know, campaigning, and Barack Obama said, you know, if I had gotten on a stage and I had done some of the things that, you know, Donald Trump had done, you know, I never would have been elected. Well, I never would have been elected, but that'd be that say you need mental health care and everything you need, right? You need to see but, but it's a different it's a different
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standard of judgment. In other words, he's given a pass on all these things basically because, quote, unquote, he wasn't in politics. He wasn't he wasn't corrupted by politics. But being in politics doesn't mean you're corrupt, and not being in politics doesn't mean you're a moral person. That's exactly what it is, of course. And I would honestly argue that at least politics, in some way, promotes a system of checks and balances inherently in our government. But he comes from working from for big corporations and from families of wealth and prestige, and in those environments, there are no checks and balances, and the value for such checks and balances is not instilled, yeah, well, sure, oh, I think, I think it's, it's almost beyond obvious to say it, but the retribution that he promises if he's re elected is a certainty. It's a certainty for a number of reasons, where Reason number one is because he'll have a whole bunch of acolytes who will pretty much do whatever he want he wanted them to do. And also, the court system, primarily Supreme Court, has completely broken down, both legally and morally. So they're not going to put any kind of a stop on whatever he would do. And I don't think, I don't think most people realize that, but I also don't think that most people in our country, and I hate to say this
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from having traveled around, there is no country like the United States, I mean, with all our many faults, which we could be here till next month, cataloging on certain basic things, the right to free speech, the right to assembly, the right to all these things and many countries are a dream that the people who live there have never had that kind of freedom. It was very interesting to listen to the interview that Rachel Mano did with navalny's wife, the man who died in the Russian prison, and how that whole experience that she observed, and how these people were treated in Russia, and do all the atrocities that were committed against them. And you have a president, and he's he's like trying to emulate this man who's a tyrant. And you say to yourself, wow, some there's something really off key there, because the guy is just a bad guy. Everybody knows, everybody knows, but he doesn't seem to know, or he doesn't care, you see, and maybe, and maybe, maybe a lot of the people in the country don't care either. Maybe, maybe that's the basic problem. Maybe that's the basic problem, because.
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The man was elected president against Hillary Clinton. He was defeated by Joe Biden, but it was a case wholly chaotic election, and now he's running against Kamala Harris now, so he's back from his third go round. Then you say, Well, how could he, how could he still be in the public eye after all these things that convictions and all the rest of that stuff, a lot of people identify with it. A lot of people in our country identify with a kind of almost nihilistic way of looking at life. When I think a lot of excuses that I've heard personally Is this my economics, especially for the older generation, right like my economics, it's, I think it's pretty clear that young people and the working poor, understand who's really representing them. However, for other Americans who have fought and worked hard for their money, they feel that under Trump's economic plan, that they benefit more, but deep down, this has kind of made me think recently, all Americans are hard working, most, I'd say a large amount of, probably the majority of Americans, are hard working no matter how much money you earn. And all of us, I think, believe that we are entitled to the hard money that we earn through our work. Some earn more than others, and when you get to a point where you earn enough money to realize that one president or another helps you keep that money. Let's say, in Trump's case, perhaps you get a tax break because of how much money you make. And he like, let's say you make enough to have a tax break with Trump in what and when you see that certain people only the top get the tax break under his economic policy, and not your neighbor. Perhaps that works a landscaping job that works day in day out, just as hard, if not harder, for their money. How in your mind, can you say to yourself, yeah, I deserve to earn the like, to keep and remain, to have the hard earned money that I have acquired through my work, but my neighbor doesn't just because they so happen to make less than me, but they don't deserve to keep that money. And why should I vote for a candidate that's going to preserve that money when the vast majority of us are not in the position to receive a tax break from Trump's policies? And I just don't understand how people who do have the privilege to receive a tax policy think that other people who have worked just as hard don't deserve that break. Well, I think, I think his tax plan favors a subset of people who are the oligarchy. Well, we have the oligarchy, but it's also a decent amount of upper middle class Americans, and I think that because, of course, we'll never reach the oligarchy that knows how much money they're going to be making because of his tax breaks. Like there's the Uber wealthy them, Elon, but then there's the vast majority, the supporters that pushed his win in the 2016 election. You have to look at those people, these ordinary Americans, that are probably your neighbors, your next door neighbors, not the Elon characters that most definitely will benefit exponentially, way more than any of your next door neighbors ever could. Yeah. Well, I think, I think a lot of it, too is though there's a couple of things. One thing is that, one thing is that the Republican Party, who was basically backing him up, has abandoned all the principles they supposedly believed in, strong defense,
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you know, wariness of Russia, all the rest of that stuff, and they became literally a party without any beliefs Kamala Harris has introduced all these different ideas, her platform, her you know what she would do. There's been almost nothing issued by the Republican Party, but the Republican Party has always been the party of the wealthy and the well to do if you go back through history, and you look at going back to the time of Franklin Roosevelt. Almost every single social program in this country, in this country that was done to benefit the poor in the middle class was done by Democratic presidents. There's almost like nothing that the Republican Party has ever done. And yeah, and not only that, I saw a it was supposed to be a humorous post online, but I saw a post that stated, If public libraries never existed, and that was perhaps a policy that a current Democratic candidate wanted to put forward, the likelihood that it would pass would be slim, slim considering how polarized our politics have become and how shunned social programs are, Yeah. Well, that's, that's very true. That's very true. But my thought of it, my thought of it, is that he, he's honed his message. He's honed his message to a particular group of people who fear people of color, they fear immigrants, they fear the disadvantaged, the whole.
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Listen to all those people. It's been framed so all those people, whether they're Haitians in Ohio or Mexicans in Arizona or what have you, they are a threat to you. They are attacking your standard of living. The deep irony is that those peoples are so disenfranchised that their power to mobilize is absolutely insignificant compared to the power and mobilization that Trump and his allies, particularly the multi billionaires and millionaires that support his campaign promises and are working behind the scenes to fund his campaign. These people that hold money and power in Washington and in politics are the people that we should be afraid of as a nation who are pulling the wool over everyone's eyes, the disenfranchised. We'll be lucky if we could mobilize enough to stop the direction that the country is going in as a result of the very select few in power well. But of course, the thing there is we can stop it, we can vote. We can make a statement that we stand for certain values. And I think that's gotten lost somewhere too. I think I've said it before and I'll say it again. I think in many ways, we're a reality television society. I think a lot of these basic beliefs and values, standards that we used to have have sort of ebbed away. Otherwise, how would you have this guy running for president? Can you imagine this man running against as white Eisenhower or a John Kennedy or a Lyndon Johnson or what have you? I mean, it would be it would be ludicrous. It would be ludicrous. But the society has changed. What the Republican Party and his movement have done, though, is they have, over the last nine years, and we're going on 10 years, have have perfected divide and conquer. So all these people that are coming in, the immigrants, the migrants, the homeless, the disadvantaged, they are cast as the enemies of the good, decent people who live here, that they're going to take everything away from you that you have, and that these are the people that are the invaders, and all the rest of this stuff. And it works with a lot of people. It works with a lot of people. It's just horrifying, because when you look at it on in this macro scale, why are large corporations buying up housing? Those are the real people taking away resources. How come the Kroger and the other large food companies, which own the majority of brands in our food system, why do they set the prices on their food and have no regulation, yeah? Well, sure, those are the people and the corporations and the entities that are actually stripping Americans of their ability to afford living. Yeah, yeah. Well, sure. I mean, I think, I think it's kind of comical that they, they're blaming Joe Biden and they're blaming Kamala Harris for the rise in prices, the rise in prices, we can see inflation has actually gone down. Yeah, but what's not going down is prices. And Joe Biden, and no matter who is in President, the government cannot check corporate entities. That's just not ethical and so and so the government will, I suppose they can't currently, because currently, the corporations feel that government checks on them is unethical. Well, they run the corporations run the country. Run the country. I mean, if you look at
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the votes of a lot of these people, if you analyze the votes, particularly in the Senate, when they're when they're able to vote, because they have the 60 vote rule. So right away, that's undemocratic. So if you have the Senate where you can't get any of these bills voted on because you got to get 60 votes, which is crazy, and then you go to the House of Representatives, where they basically pass no legislation at all, and then you have a situation with the immigration bill, where they had the bill, they had the bill. The bill was, was, was, was a consensus bill. It was basically written by Republicans. It wasn't even written by Democrats. The Republicans wrote it. Democrats put it in their, you know, contributions, and they were going to pass the law. And then the phone rings, and Mike Johnson picks the phone up, and he's told, You can't do it. You can't do it. And this past Congress passed the fewest laws ever. And it's not, it's not even a question of debating issues they don't want to debate. They would just want to. They just want to break everything down. So if you don't have a legislative body that's going to pass laws, and you don't have a supreme court that's ethical, moral and sets guidelines and boundaries, as the founders did when they wrote the Constitution, then that leaves the president basically unchecked to do whatever the President wants to do and what people don't understand.
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Understand is that the people that you you may view as a Trump voter, that they're the enemy and everything like that. Maybe it's someday you'll tire of Trump, and then you'll become the enemy, and no Trump will tire of you, our temple tire of you, and then they'll turn on you. You see, I mean, one of the things that we were talking about before the broadcast was, was Jamie diamond, who's the head of Chase, and the guys, you know, he's a billionaire, and all the rest of that stuff. And he apparently had the intention, or has the intention, of supporting Kamala Harris, but he can't support her. So I'm figuring, why can't he support her? We can't support her because he's afraid of retribution. Should this guy get into the presidency? Now, as far as I know, as far as I know, Kamala Harris hasn't threatened retribution on anybody, as far as we know, or anybody else, but as I say, it's a different it's a different standard. It's not an equal standard. But the equal standard used to be that, you know you were a person of integrity, you you behave, you believed in certain principles. There were certain things you would do, and there were certain things you couldn't do, that that's all that's all out the window now, basically anything goes but a government can't run that way. Obviously, not because obviously you would have, you would have chaos. And it's interesting how people have very short memories. One of the things that I think they should have hit upon more than they did was COVID, because I think this was clearly a failure of the Republican administration in the executive branch, and also primarily in the executive branch, to tell people lives, to save people's lives, but that didn't that didn't mean anything. See that the lives of those people didn't mean anything. And what's happened in this whole
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play that we're going through this is like an old like a nine year play or a 10 year play is the idea has been put together that the lives of those people who don't agree with us are not of value. I was watching a very, very interesting HBO movie last night. I had seen it a number of years ago, but I saw it again. It's called conspiracy, and it's about this meeting in Yenisey. It was in somewhere in Germany where they where they planned that piloted out the final solution as to what was going to be done, versus the Jewish people who lived in all these different places. And what was interesting about that movie, and I don't, I don't think anybody's ever mentioned this was so many more people were killed than they actually accounted for that it wasn't even, it wasn't 6 million at all. It was a whole bunch of people beyond that, and all these different countries that they had gone into to, you know, to commit these crimes. But we don't have a sense of history in this country. That's another one of the problems, like our our judgment of these things is like, what happened five minutes ago, what happened 10 minutes ago. And that's the nature, in many ways, of computerization, the internet, social media and and just where there's too much information, where there's, like, I'll give example, there's too many polls, right? Everybody's got a poll, you know, we should get our own poll, literally,
Unknown Speaker 23:16
you know, talk to people in the street. Call it the UNLV poll. We want to know. You know, I don't know what the reaction would be. It might not be happy reaction, but, but it's crazy, though, and it's almost with all this mania about it, it's almost, for a lot of people, a disincentive to be informed, because they're just overloaded. It starts in the morning and all day long, with these shows and what's happened, what's happened, not just in conservative media, but even in liberal media, where you're not actually getting news anymore, you know, like, like, like, like, there was a flood, or there was, you know, catastrophe, or something like that. It's just endless, endless commentary, and they'll bring, you know, five experts on, then you'll bring another five experts on, and the people eventually are like a burned out, yeah, you know, people say, oh my god, I have talked to so many people, and they have all. Many of them have told me, I'm just exhausted. I get up in the morning, I put on Chuck, Joe Scarborough, and then there's somebody else, and then there's somebody else. It's all day long. In other words, it's not actually news. I mean, it's news in a sense, like what, what would what would really be, what would really be ideal is cutting back on the commentary and just covering these events. So you like President Obama was speaking, or Trump was doing. Whoever was speaking, just evaluate what they said. You don't need 9 million people to be telling you that their views on what they said or how they said it. I think that's the problem we've gotten, gotten into so much analysis. I call it analysis by paralysis. Paralysis by analysis because the people, a lot of these people, that are.
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Are going to vote are citizens like us. They don't know what to believe. They really don't know what to believe, because they're hearing so many different perspectives. But I believe, I believe, though, that there is truth. I believe there are certain things that are true and certain things are untrue. And what should be done, what should be done, I think in all these events that they have, there's going to be a town hall with Kamala Harris. CNN is going to do a town hall. Don't, don't get into, you don't like Kamala Harris, or you like, don't even get into any of that. Analyze what she said, What What specifically did she say, or what the ex president said, What did they say? Is it true or not true? I think everything should be fact checked. I think everything should be factored on every network, on every network, Fox
Unknown Speaker 25:47
One, America, news nation, all of it. And then the people would have an idea of what information they're getting. And if they're getting 5060, 70% of the information that the networks are saying is basically not true, then that gives you a message of who you should vote for. You see that the problem is, though, the problem is now that with the networks, particularly MSNBC and Fox and all the rest of them, is they have a constituency, so you're going to have to wean them away from that constituency and say, Listen, you know, I know you appeal to a certain group of people, but it's just basically, it's really taking everybody to a place where they're not getting information that they need to get, and it's exhausting them and just let them, just let them hear the truth as much as you can, you know, fact check it, and then they make a decision. I agree. I agree. We definitely need more news that does just that, you know, I think. But as our time is almost expiring, unfortunately, as I like to say to my cohort here, we could do this show every day. Of course, we would probably never be able to do anything else. But anyway, it's been, as always, a great pleasure to to converse with with each other, and have you listen to what we say and hopefully get feedback from you as well. Yes, absolutely. And seeing that the election is so close, please make sure to make a plan to vote. Go out and vote, and I hope you all have a great rest of your week. Good night. You
Unknown Speaker 27:24
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
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or Professor Charles Stanton, at C, H, A R, L, E, S, dot, S, T, A N, T, O n@unlv.edu.
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See you next time we look forward to it. You.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai