Think Tech Hawaii's burning issue for America 2022, a webinar panel program sponsored by Hawaii Pacific University. I'm Tim Apachello, your host for the 60-minute discussion. 2021 was a time of confusing and confounding issues and events. These are likely to continue to perplex us in 2022 and to affect the future of our country going forward. Today, we look at five of the most trouble-similar of these issues with our five blue ribbon panelists. John Waihe, former governor and community leader, will examine the changes reflected in set motion by the January 6th insurrection. Neil Milner, former political science professor from the University of Hawaii, Manoa, will address the changes and threatens our democracy. Louise Ng, attorney, community leader and Denton's partner, will help us understand the changes that are affecting the social order of our country. Rupmani Kanadar, author and executive director of Global Relations Forum, will cover the changes that have emerged from the pandemic. John David M, history professor at Hawaii Pacific University, will analyze the historical and philosophical changes in our national perspective. In our discussion today, we will try hard to connect the dots, to make sense of these troublesome issues and events and to learn how they affect and exacerbate each other. We wanna separate the critical issues that are changing our world from the less important distractions we are subjected to in these difficult times. Click the Q&A button at the bottom of your screen to submit questions to our panelists. Keep your chat box open to see other attendees and what they're saying. And if you want closed captions, just click the CC button on the bottom of your screen. And now to our first topic and examination of the challenges reflected and set in motion by the insurrection with former Governor John Waihe. Good morning, Governor. Good morning, Aloha. Aloha. Go ahead, you have the floor. Well, you know, it was my privilege at about a few days, just a few days after the insurrection to actually interview all the members of our congressional delegation, both senators and the members of the House. And there's no doubt in my mind as they describe the events that were actually happened, that they happened as they happened that there was real fear there, that there was an idea that something horrible was happening to our government that had never happened before and that the insurrection was real. And by the way, they made very clear that their feelings were shared by colleagues on both sides of the House, that Republican colleagues are feeling the same way. Democratic colleagues are also reacting. And then when you got in, followed up in the news as to how these things are, the aftermath was unfolding. There were all these stories coming out like the Republican speaker calling Trump and begging the president to do something about what was happening at the state Capitol. The timing, everything. It looked like we had a non-partisan moment when people would say in America, hey, look, it's been fun, but enough is enough. You know, let's get serious about what is serious. And it was a very serious event. And yet as time went on, it's become very clear that the whole event is becoming something more like a political milestone. And that the former president has actually have been very able to use it not as an indictment, but as a, see, I told you so, these guys are picking on me kind of response. So in terms of what they, what's going on now may mean to America, you know, there are really two parts to it. I mean, and it's a mostly pressing subject for me anyway, in this sense that there's a kind of a policy emphasis where we actually have people looking into the merits of everything. And there's a political, there's a political aspect to all of this. And let me put it this way, that if Trump was a Democrat and the Republicans were in charge of studying the insurrection, my opinion would be that there might be some actual prosecution of the whole thing, I mean, it would get there. But unfortunately Democrats are so interested in being correct that the politics of this may play out so that nothing will ever be, nothing will happen because it all depends on who, if I'm making this point very clear, but it all depends on who wins the next election. If the Republicans take the majority of the leadership in the House of Representatives, my opinion is this will just be moved aside. And all of this content that would have been dug up and neatly packaged would just be started to be swept at least out of Congress. And I think that they, I don't know a president who was more worthy of being impeached than Trump and yet we could never get beyond the partisan line. So this is, the insurrection really is a part, a bigger part of America. And the current president actually really knows how to turn all of this massive to his benefit. When he's recent speech where he's promising to pardon everybody who not only participated in what happened on January 6th, but what may happen in the future if the, and this is really critical. I mean, this to me was the most depressing statement that he made if he is in the future prosecuted in any of the urban areas that he mentioned, by racist, racist, politically motivated prosecutors. And also with this racist House committee, all of which are, what most of which are headed by African American leaders.  I mean, how much crazier is this African cat? So in terms of what the implication is for America, you know, I don't know, I don't know because I don't know. Let me focus in on that point, John, let me focus in on that point because it's a good one. You mentioned this very important, you know, rally he had in Texas and the fact that he was going to, he stated explicitly, he was going to pardon all those that were convicted in the January 6th insurrection. Then he, you're talking about the prosecutors, you know, being focused upon for protests in the future. Does this give his base more incentive to act violently at future events? Absolutely, you know, what he has learned is what every Tim Horn, you know, I guess what Trump is doing in my opinion politically is he's doing what we grew up being taught would be unthinkable. It would be unthinkable to even think the kinds of things that think up the kinds of things that he is doing in America, I mean, just not done. And therefore nobody did it. And yet every Tim Horn dictator all over the world in many times in history use the same kind of tactics to avoid prosecution, to, you know, to keep themselves in office and the rest. So what he is doing is he is appealing to, for example, when you call the chairman of the Senate select committee investigating January 6th as his actions as racists, who is he being racist to? You know, and for the first time, you're having people playing through the ultra-right wing base of the American public and thinking it's comfortable. But what you're really doing is you're trying to avoid prosecution by political means. You're using the institutions of politics to avoid prosecution because it's like when he called, everything Trump does, he does publicly. And so all of a sudden, okay, it's not that bad. It's not really a crime. It's not really a sin. Doesn't feel like it because why would it? He's talking about it, he's admitting it. I'm going to pardon everybody before I pardon everybody. He used to, that was done in a sixth grade, well, I don't know if we teach civics in sixth grade anymore, but if we teach civics in a class, that's obstruction of justice. You don't go and tell the jury or tell people or tell the witnesses that, hey, if you don't prosecute, you know, you don't testify against me, I'll make sure you get away with it as soon as I've really left it. It's just not done. You know, John, I'm going to assume that you remember the 60s and 70s.  Do you draw any parallels or do you see any parallels between the conflict and all the problems we had in the late 68 to 71 year period to where we are today?  Do you see any parallels between that group and say the Proud Boys or the Oath Keepers? And what do you think about that? Well, I used to see parallels. I mean, they obviously were, you know, the Proud Boys and the Minutemen and all of that, were maybe different expressions of the political continuum. What's different is when you see those groups being supported in a political fashion. First of all, by the symbol of one of our parties, by the way, the party that was probably most likely to have prosecuted the dissident groups of the past. And all of a sudden, this becomes not so much, doesn't resemble in my mind the 60s and the 70s as much. Which we used to have a Ku Klux Klan's matching through towns and villages. I mean, those things are defensible, actually. But what we see now is something more akin to the brown shirts that appeared in Germany in the 1930s, in my opinion. And people going along with it. It's amazing to me and I think the difference is this. Democratic party that's supposed to fix these things sometimes gets caught up in their own self-righteousness. And they're more important about making sure that the T's across and the I's are dotted, then going after and ending something that may be evil. I don't think the Republicans have any, I'm not calling them evil, but I don't think they have any compunction about dotting I's and crossing T's. What they have is a belief that their side is right. And therefore, whatever it takes to get that right established, that culture established is worth doing. I mean, before the last election, the Republicans took 27 days to confirm a new Supreme Court justice, just like that before the election. Our, and I love them. I mean, it's the judiciary chairman for the Senate is saying, no, we're gonna take our time. We're gonna make sure Republicans are being, giving them a chance. We're gonna be non-partisan. Yeah, maybe, and maybe we should and maybe we'll get it done. But we also maybe missed the deadline. And if we lost the election, I don't even mean the presidency. I mean, you know, in the Senate, we'll do the same thing happened to us that happened in Obama. So when you look at the country, the groups that use totalitarian tactics to overthrow governments historically, we're not the majority groups. They were groups that knew how to take advantage of government institutions and flip themselves into power. Okay, all great points. Thank you, John, for bringing that to the table and for our panelists to think about and further discuss. Thank you. Going now to our democracy, we have Neil Milner. Neil, you have the floor. Thank you. Let me start by saying this. Right now, I can much more easily imagine a civil war in this country than I can imagine any other way that we're gonna move forward. I'm not saying that with relief. I'm not saying that with pleasure, obviously. I'm saying that in the sense of that's the most likely thing to happen. And the way that I go about looking at this is to try to look a little bit beyond the specific activities of the day. Specifically, I look at what kind of evidence is there about our situation that really shows how close we are to losing democracy and moving toward a civil war. And there are two really interesting things that I've come across very recently done by researchers who have been at this for a long time. One is a piece that says, we're at a tipping point. On the basis of all kinds of data, we're at a tipping point. What that means is that this is a very unique time in our history. It is a time at which we've come to a point where issues, crises, don't unite us. They make it worse for us. The people who did this research said the tipping point is moved in that direction. Republicans move there first, but everybody is moving in that direction so that they use as an example would be COVID. Most crises of that proportion in this country you can think about 9-11, united us. COVID is an example of separating us. Barbara Walters, Barbara Walters, not Barbara Walters, an expert on democracy and civil war is part of a group that has for years been studying a large number of countries over a long period of time to see what is it that makes democracy unstable and that leads to civil war. And it's a very interesting finding. They say that the least democratic countries are not the most likely to have a civil war, not the most democratic countries, but what they call anocracy. Anocracy is a kind of democratic process that's quasi-democratic. It's weakened. And he said if that is the most important thing that predicts whether or not there's gonna be a civil war. And in fact, all of the information suggests that we've moved from being this country from being on the high democratic side into anocracy. And so we find ourselves in a position where for all kinds of reasons we are much more weakening than we are before. You can talk about Trump, you can talk about other things, but the process has been a longer developing kind of process. What's the main cause of it? Polarization, if you pick out one factor that shows up, Walter talks about a kind of factionalization that happens. We have the polarization for sure. We have a kind of polarization in this country right now in which everything important is defined by whether you're a Republican or a Democrat. Everything, your lifestyle, who you want your kids to associate with when they are thinking about getting married, all of these sorts of things, how you worship, where you worship, if you worship, that's what life has become. And it's become a kind of a way where we no longer trust the other side. John used the word evil before.  And so there's a lack of trust, there's a lack of so on. It's an extreme kind of polarization. So you have differences. You have significant differences. You have elements of race. What Walter suggests is that what's very important in the movement towards civil war are some various kinds of things. One of the things she calls is an ethnic entrepreneur. That is someone who will kind of light the fire to create ethnic differences. Trump is an ethnic entrepreneur, whites versus everybody else. That's one thing. A second thing is militias and the possibilities of violence. Well, let's talk about the possibilities of violence now. The recent polls all show the same thing that a significant minority of people in the United States are willing to think about using violence if they don't like what the government is doing. It's pretty much the same percentage of Democrats as it is Republicans. You also have, in this country, you've had for a long period of time a well-organized militia movement that's becoming even more well-organized. That's part of what you saw, just part. I'm gonna get to the rest of it in the insurrection of January 6th. And of course, you have a very polarization on whether the insurrection was even an insurrection, just as you have a polarization on whether people should be able to vote easily. You have the presence of these militias. You have, along with this kind of presence of militias, ones that have already used violence, that have attested to use violence. So the conclusion that she comes to and that the others come to is that there is a very good chance that you will have a civil war in this country. It's not gonna be the blues versus the grays. It's not gonna be a half million men on one side versus half million on the other. There's gonna be guerrilla warfare. Or remember, this person is not writing from her emotion. She's writing from good data, as are the others, who have this kind of experience to talk about it. So that's essentially where we are right now. A country that is really on the edge of moving in that direction. You want me to be optimistic? But I can say, okay, here, can I give you, do I have time, Tim, or? Yeah, very quickly, and then I wanna ask you a question. Sure, three things. None of them is easy. They require a whole different way of thinking about ourselves. One of which is powerful law enforcement and the political institutions that can put down attempts at insurrection. And it's a war. That's an open question for all kinds of complicated constitutional reasons and also because our political institutions aren't operating that well. We'll see, we'll see how that comes out. A second one is that, in effect, you have to change how you think about politics. You have to understand that if rebuilding and trust and a depolarization is gonna occur, it's gonna occur at the local level and moving itself up. That may sound my students' favorite slam word, idealistic, but look at the national institutions. The final one is that you have to begin to think about our conflict, not as a political conflict in the standard sense, but as an intractable conflict. Intractable sounds like a pessimistic word and it is. But I'll say just quickly what optimism is about it. Intractable means you have to think about the situation in the United States, the way you thought about the situation in Northern Ireland or the way you think about significant religious conflicts in other countries or the way you think about Israelis and Palestinians. Now, that's very hard to do. Very hard to think along those lines. There are people who do intractable political conflict work with some success. There's a whole group of them around the country, but the first thing that people have to do for the most part is to start posturing themselves and picturing this country, not as a unique democracy that knows how to settle itself in the usual kind of political sort of way, but as a country that has moved away from democracy in important sorts of ways and that may not be able, probably isn't gonna be able to recover on the basis of standard things like elections or who controls the Senate or whether Joe Biden is a good bridge builder and so on. All right, you know, while you're on this topic, you know, the filibuster for decades has paralyzed Congress, has gridlocked Congress. To what degree does this gridlock and the continuation of Congress's inability to get anything meaningfully done for the population? To what degree does that add fuel to the fire for those who say that democracy is seen as best of days? Nothing's getting done or under a democracy. To the base of Trump, does that further incite them to try to overthrow our democracy? Well, I think that there's two things going on there. The base of Trump is the base of Trump. Now, remember, Trump's base for the most part are people like you and me. The people who participated in the insurrection on January 6th, there was a small group of well-organized people, the health keepers and so on. The majority of people who were there were presumably Republicans. They were small businessmen. They tended to have jobs or women. They tended to have jobs. Their base is that they don't trust institutions anymore. I think from the broader standpoint is if you think that the filibuster is causing this problem, then you're underestimating the problem. And if you think that they had gotten the filibuster changed so that this law would have passed, as far as I'm concerned, that would have been great. But the fundamental structure of polarization and the fundamental inability for our political institutions to respond, which by the way is one of the things that gets democracies into trouble because people, not just those alertly against it, but people who become fearful and worry about whether the institutions can protect them, that's where we're going now. All right. Thank you very much for your perspectives. And now to discussion about our society, Louise Ng. Good morning. Good morning. Thank you, Tim. And thank you for ThinkDec Hawaii for this invitation. And I have to say that I was depressed coming in. I'm not going to be just as depressing on the social aspect because what we're seeing in politics, we're seeing in society as well, and that is increased polarization, increased intolerance. And it's not just the US, I think it's global. I mean, we're seeing religious intolerance and human rights violations, not just in the US, but all around the world and democratic institutions being threatened. I mean, it's all tied together. And what we're seeing here in the country that really upsets me is just the cultural and racial anxieties that are driving people apart. That's really kind of, for it sort of calculated and shown in many ways. I mean, we're seeing a calculated perpetuation of the big lie by GOP leaders and a great majority of their voters. And as Governor Wahey mentioned, the Trump saying publicly, that he essentially supports insurrectionists, we're seeing that in the assault on voting rights and fair elections, gerrymandering and issues that are going to hurt minority communities. Battles in school boards about what is going to be taught, the double-edged sword of technology, which is being used to just sort of foment extreme views where we really should be using it as a, to break the digital divide, it can be used for the power of good and education, but instead it's being used to divide people. We're seeing the politicization of public health issues, COVID-19, vaccinations, testing, even the whole issue of reproductive freedom is back and in danger. All of which, as we're seeing, can lead to civil violence, breakdown of society. As Neil mentioned, we're seeing increased polls and studies of increased fears of succession as well as civil war. And that's what keeps me up at night. I hope that there are ways that we can break through that. But yeah, that, and I agree, I think with Neil, that I think it's gonna have to start at the local level. We're talking, to try to fix these things, it's gonna be individual communities, local communities, local government and people coming together despite the ugly talk to try to reach common ground and have a more civil discourse. I guess that's the big picture. But Tim, what are your thoughts? What did you wanna ask me? Well, Neil mentioned that racism, like no other president, Trump has been successful of using that as a wedge issue. And I guess my question is, to what extent has white fear, if you will, white fear and the fear of being replaced, the old mantra from the white supremacist groups for decades and if not a hundred years, how has that entered into our politics today and polarized this nation? Well, Tim, I would say that's front and center. Thank you, I was gonna get to that because it's to me, and I've heard this, I've heard commentators mention that. I mean, that's our original sin. That's not just the country's original sin. That is original sin of colonialism and Western democracy, much as I love, I'm happy to, I love being here and glad my parents, my great grandparents immigrated, et cetera, et cetera. We need to reckon with that. And the problem is that some people are denying that and they're afraid of the old order being overcome. And I've recently, two things that I've got that I'm listening to on Audible and I think we're really illustrative is one is the warmth of other sons, which talks about the great black migration and talks about what people were escaping from the South, which is really horrifying, but we need to deal with that. We need to open our eyes and people need to be educated. We can't cut that out of the education system. The other thing that I just listened to recently was an Audible of Joe Wall. She has a talk show called White Flag and he interviewed Wajahat Ali, who is an author of a recent book, go back to where you came from which I heard about on NPR and he talks about the fact that we need to come to terms of the fact that this needs to be a multi, what we need to aspire to as a multicultural society. And that ties into the need in our workplaces and in our communities to support diversity, inclusion and equity. I mean, as we're seeing all these ugly trends but there's some good trends going on that good people need to get behind. Diversity, inclusion, equity, multiculturalism, appreciating the multiculturalism of our country and not feeling that that's a threat but it's a way to celebrate everybody. And I wanna see that also happen in education too. We're not, we shouldn't just talk about ethnic studies. That should be part of the American narrative and the American history that's being taught. So. All right, that's my story. Thank you. I have a question from one of our viewers here and that is the following. Is there a tipping point by which local government can't do anything? How do guns and gun owners figure into the possibility of that tipping point? Well, that is a concern. I mean, we are seeing people turn to violence. That's always been an undercurrent in our country. It's not new for 2021 and 2022. We've not been able to stop mass shootings. So, we've got the individuals who are sick but then we also have people who are talking. We saw that with the insurrection, with threats of violence. We need to, and I don't know, that's another intractable problem that we need to deal with but we need to fix the way people use guns not as a way to get out at other people. It's really going from, we're not using them as protection, we're using them as tools of insurrection and overthrow and getting out people's frustrations. And we need to put those guns down really and talk about, again, civil discourse. Civil education, civics education need to get that back into the way we educate kids. Critical race, there is not even an issue but let's get back to teaching kids and adults what the basis for our democracy are. Guns are not supposed to be there to affect social change. Louise, do you think that our younger generation has an opportunity to step up to the plate, so to speak, to make a difference in what seems a conflict that right now seems unsolvable? Do they step up in our society and what would it take for them to do so? They definitely need to step up. I think that it has been said that a lot of this anxiety and the fear of replacement is from older white people who will die off soon. Is that true? I don't know. I think we still have to think about our next generation. I think there's a lot of our next generation who are being raised in a much more multicultural society who are more willing to accept gender differences, gender orientation differences, being around kids of different races and cultures and that's what we need to encourage and celebrate but we can't forget to educate them as well on what makes this democracy strong. But I would say that maybe I'm just talking to all the kids that I agree with but many of them realized early, and I saw this in my own kids of wanting, realizing early on in the national debates, my apolitical kids realizing that Trump is just talking a lot of hogwash but unfortunately people were buying into that. I'm also seeing kids want to help further diversity and inclusion and just seeing why what are people, why are people even concerned about gender differences and gender orientation, stereotypes and the like? So yes, I think we need to look to our younger generation, encourage them to get engaged, run for office, vote as a way of trying to get past what are very depressing issues and situations right now. Alrighty. One last quick question. It's a tough one from one of our viewers and that is how do we as a nation conceptually get it beyond our tribalism? I think that's, yeah, good question because I think tribalism is almost a human nature and reaction. And we see that in the way Democrats and Republicans for instance, use the same language to vilify the other side. I think it's outrageous that Trump is using the term racist to justify what in my view are very racist things that he has done. And so how do we get beyond tribalism? I saw there was an interesting, somehow for this foreign policy magazine started popping up in my email. And at the beginning of the year they had maybe 10 commentators talk about how you save democracy. And one suggestion was you need to break down barriers societally, which is that people need to live together, work together, go to school together, be able to talk. And I think in Hawaii we have kind of a maybe a Petri dish here where we can use our closeness and the fact that we have family and we know people on opposite sides of the aisle that, but there are aunties and cousins and we can talk to them to try to heal that tribalism, try to understand where the other side is coming from, see if there's common ground. And if there's not, we just try to do our best to bring along enough people to, that agree that we just need to make our society better and overcome differences. Kind of the optimism we were looking for for this program, thank you. Tim, can I add one? Go ahead Neil, go ahead, question. The first thing you have to do to get rid of polarization is to admit that your tribal, tribalism is to admit you're a tribe. You know, this group here, when we're talking about tribalism, there's a kind of up to now an implicit notion that tribalism is because the Republicans are tribes.  We talk, I'm not saying everybody, I mean, I know what side, I know what side I think is right, but that's not the point. If you wanna get rid of tribalism or polarization, you have to realize that you're undoubtedly part of one of the polarized groups. If you wanna argue that you wanna impose or get certain kind of policies, that's different. But if you wanna get rid of polarization, you have to participate in the process of getting rid of polarization at which we're not very good right now, but it certainly doesn't involve just saying those people are evil because they're saying the same thing back to you. Good point Neil, thank you. Yeah, we need to just understand that yet we all have our biases and we need to get beyond that. We all need to deal with that and be uncomfortable about that. All right, thank you so much, Luis. And Neil, thank you very much and to our viewers that have presented these questions. Thank you. Moving along to the pandemic, we have Rootmati. Rootmati, you have the floor. Aloha, Tim, and to the other panelists also. Now, I wanna talk about, when you say my pandemic, it gives a feeling that the impact and spread of this pandemic has occurred at such an unprecedented pace because we live in a highly interconnected, interdependent global village. And the economic political social systems that went into a shutdown because of the unnatural number of deaths countries had to just implode because of the populations being arguably introduced to the concept of a pandemic. You know, it is the third year that we are running into this pandemic and the devastation that the pandemic has brought, it's around 900,000 deaths that have occurred. And still we have a huge portion of the population that denies the pandemic.  And in the process, they become super spreaders or they become victims. So as this dangerous brew of people like Jay says, calls them, it makes it difficult for governments to control them, to function and to provide effective relief to this pandemic because irrespective of the models of governance, this pandemic is going to be a leveler.  It is just going to affect you. So in a democratic form of governance, we find it more difficult to control the pandemic because of the fundamental rights, the issues of my right, my zone, my space, and I will not believe in the vaccine and it's okay for me not to come into the community and maybe I will not participate in this. So the governments find it difficult, whether it's Trump, whether it's Biden, now America needs an effective and robust healthcare system. We need, which is financially, it has to be diverted towards preventive care for the pandemic. It's unknown territory that this pandemic has brought about. Really, nobody knows how the vaccine is going to mutate or a study into the genome sequence of the, what do you call it, of the pathogen is not going to give us an insight of how it's going to predict, how it's going to behave. We have to make sure that we follow the government's instructions now. If we go to see forms of governance in which there is democracy is restricted, have been arguably more successful in controlling the pandemic. So that's a point to debate about whether you require force to make people understand the viability and of the threat of the pandemic. It is not an easy place to be in because it's really raging for three years. It can go on for infinite numbers because it's a mutating virus. If it was a zoonotic virus, we could have, it would have faded away. But it is mutating. And we don't, yeah. Well, one of our viewers has asked this question and I'm curious to get your answer on this. To what degree has Governor E. Gay effectively addressed this in the state of Hawaii, in your opinion? See Hawaii, Hawaii becomes, it is the safest, right? As the safest state during COVID-19. So it does say a lot that Hawaii has effectively controlled the pandemic situation as compared to the other states. We have a 19th position on the positive testing rate. We have the fourth lowest death rate and we have the second highest vaccination rate that is around 74.8 or 75%. So that itself is ample evidence that our governor is doing good things for this. If he had not been in a position to give these figures, we would have had one of the highest rates. But, you know, he's got the advantage of being isolated, the island, it helps. And the vaccination has been highest. Now he has to just concentrate on the tourism industry so that we have the income coming back because in the, all over the world, the pandemic has struck people financially more than, you know, the death rate is even all over. Financially it's hurting. And Hawaii, because it depends on tourism, we need our tourist industry to be back to normal. You know, that is giving incentives to travel that is showing that you can follow COVID protocols and come to Hawaii. All right, well, good points. And thank you very much for your perspective on the pandemic and how it affects not only here, our society in Hawaii, but our nation as a whole. Thank you. To wrap things up or to round things out, we have John, would you please take care of this and wrap it up? Right, so let me zoom out a little bit. And, you know, it's dark, man, I'm feeling a lot of darkness here and I'm not sure it's that dark, but it certainly is complex and deep in American history, deep in American political culture. So let me just outline some work I've been doing on my, on a book project that I'm working on that I call Liberty Battles. And I call it Liberty Battles because I see two different definitions of liberty in that are at play right now. And then I've actually been at play in American political culture for a long time. The first one is the civil rights concept of liberty, which we're all familiar with, right? The abolitionist freedom from slavery, the 14th Amendment, the civil rights movement in the 1960s, and then of course, the current day civil rights movements that are fighting for more rights for disabled people and LGBTQ people and all of the rest of this. So the other side, so we understand that well, the other side of this, I don't think this second definition of liberty, I don't think we really understand it all. And this is a much older concept of liberty that comes out of, it goes way beyond the American revolution back to Machiavelli. And of course, Machiavelli we know for, you know, writing the prints and, you know, the ends justify the means, but he actually wrote a lot on liberty and republics. And his concept of liberty can be characterized through what he wrote as, what he called Viveri libato, which is translated as to live freely, essentially what he meant was to live freely without outside interference.  Machiavelli was involved in the Florida time republic, which was under pressure from outside forces throughout his career as a diplomat, but his ideas then made their way into Europe generally. And then Cross the Atlantic in the 18th century became a part of the American rebellion actually, which led to the American revolution. And at that point, the American colonists became afraid that the British crown was going to steal away their liberty to prevent them from living freely, just like Machiavelli feared outsiders would destroy the Florida time republic. Now, so when we think about the American revolution, we actually have to think about this kind of liberty, which is darker, more fearful, and more reactive than the other, the civil rights kind of liberty. So when this happened in the, so this actually drove the American revolution, not the civil rights form of liberty, which was really not on the table during the American revolution very much. It was a very beginning of those kinds of concepts. So when we look into the 19th century, this form of liberty, this dark kind of reactive form of liberty, this fearful form of liberty, gets fused with racism in the question of whether or not you give political rights to African Americans in the Northern States, where you have lots of free blacks, but should you actually give them the right to vote?  So in this way, this darker kind of Machiavellian version of liberty became embedded in American political culture and has done battle, liberty battle, has done battle with the civil rights version of liberty ever since that time. Let's pull it quickly forward to the present day. And when we look at issues like the Berther movement, like counter protesters who express fear about Black Lives Matter and the George Floyd protests. And then of course in the insurrection itself, what we see in the language, the symbols and the concepts behind these movements very much matches this appeals to the American revolution, appeals to freedom, appeals to liberty. And so these movements actually have a progenitor, they've inherited political language and concepts from something which is very old in our history. So this darker form of liberty, now it should be noted that in the history of our country, this darker form of liberty has never won permanently. One could argue that you could see this in the American Civil War, in the secessionist movements, their claims to the generation of 1776 and the American rebels and American protests, the Tea Party protests and the rest of this are echoes of this darker form of liberty. The one thing about this darker form of liberty is it seeks to protect the political community from outsiders. And so I think that's how conservative and kind of these radical protesters that we see what they're trying to do, what they see themselves as doing is protecting American liberty from outsiders who threaten it. And so in the long train of history, it matches the Machiavellian concept of vivare libero. It's not to say that these two concepts of liberty are mutually exclusive. They can be held within the same communities and even I think by the same people. John, let me hit that point because you're saying that they're protecting the liberty from outside influences. Hasn't that always been the case with the know nothings and hasn't that been the case with all immigration issues is not just protecting the liberty but really trying to keep the races at bay? Right, so yes, and I think that's a good example. I mean, even you can even look at the populist movement of the 1890s, these are movements which characterize themselves as protecting the American Republic, as protecting American liberty.  So I think we're dealing with this another moment in this kind of conceptual framework of American political culture. It has implications for how we think about the opposition. I mean, Neil was talking about how, you know, we can't actually solve the problem of polarization without really understanding and maybe exercising some empathy for the other side. Well, if you understand the other side is making claims upon liberty just like your side, then you might be able to develop a little more empathy for the other side even though some of their creeds are quite noxious. Well, let me go to that. How do we do that when we seem to be in a mindless cult, the cult of Trump? How do we see what the other side thinks and whether they have valid points or not? Right, so I think you start with education.  We've kind of dropped the ball or certainly I see a lot less education about basic education about American civics. I'm not talking about patriotism courses. I'm talking about solid education about American political institutions and political ideas. So education, you know, I'm in the education field and I feel some responsibility for this. So education is very important. So let's put our resources into education and let's get word out that the other side even as it attempts to demonize our side, they're not demons, they're still Americans.  So I think ideas are very important. And if we express the right kinds of ideas, if the party in power expresses a kind of cherishment or a love of liberty, that might be language that all Americans can kind of gather around and kind of rally around. So we saw some of this in the inauguration, but then, of course, the political divisions reappeared and Biden is really struggling now because of those divisions. So, yeah. Okay. Governor, I see your hand up. Yeah, no, I saw one of the questions that came over, you know, on the chat lines from the viewers, which I really wanted to ask is John because I think it's an important issue and it's somewhat what he's talking about. And that is the equalization of various events as equally bad or equally productive. And the question was, do you find it a little hypocritical that politicians have given so much attention to the capital riot, to the insurrection? Yet, when small businesses are getting looted and destroyed doing the George Floyd incidents, most politicians and most people remain silent. The idea being, why are you treating the looters in the same political fashion that you may be treating the insurrectionist? So how does that fit into your discussion? Right, well, of course, you have to distinguish, right? I mean, the property damage is different from the overthrow of the American Republic, the American democracy. And I guess the point is why do people see things as being equal when you just said they're different? Right, right, right. Well, that's, you know, part of that does have to do I think with Donald Trump and his whole notion of fake news and kind of the disintegration of truths we hold dear or at least the degradation of truths we hold dear in this country. But yeah, so that's, you know, that's kind of a false comparison, but I do think the conservative counter protesters saw a Black Lives Matter through the Machiavellian lens as every bit the deepest threat that this country faced at that moment and made appeals to the American founders. I mean, Jefferson, of course, Jefferson participates in both concepts of liberty. Jefferson writes the Declaration of Independence, which invokes unalienable rights, but Jefferson also wrote about the Tree of Liberty being nourished with the blood of patriots and tyrants. So there's a more radical, Jefferson has had so much influence on our political culture and he's dipped into both sides of these definitions of liberty. And counter protesters have called in Jefferson, said, look, you know, we're gonna nourish the Tree of Liberty with the blood of communes, referring to the Black Lives Matter movement as communists or Marxists. Alrighty, you know, John, thank you very much. We've come out to the end of our hour and it goes very quickly, but we can't leave until we go around the virtual table here and ask for final comments or thoughts. So with you, John, Governor, for you first and we'll go around from there. Well, yeah. And first of all, I really enjoyed the discussion and I want to thank everyone for, you know, participating, giving us the time to discuss this. But I think the perceptions in our society, when we look at things and we give them the equal weight of this question that the person brought up is a very important one. So whatever little time I get left, I'm gonna pass it off to Neil. And hopefully he'll have a shot at giving his insight into that, so thank you for inviting me. Second place is to refer more to me, right? Thanks, John. Look, let me say one thing first. If you're gonna refer to the people on the other side as a mindless cult, you're off to a bad start. I'm not saying that I don't understand why you're calling them that. I am saying that that is a stigmatizing term that isn't gonna get you anywhere and that somehow doesn't explain the fact that if there are any Republicans living near you, your friends, your neighbors, people that work out with me at the Hawaii gym, they think that way. And that means that you're creating a kind of situation that reflects other people out there, not the people close to you. Now, that doesn't mean you have to accept them. It doesn't even mean necessarily you have to empathize with them. That's a tough word, but you have to have some sense. Let me just say one more point. I agree with the kinds of liberal agenda that Louise presented, but there are two fundamental issues here, one of which is every one of those things is contested and polarized now, which means that you can't do them easily. Another thing is that liberal America doesn't really have a good way of doing these. If you think that somehow we can bring about this kind of better emphasis on these good things, it's pretty hard. I watch my granddaughter go to school in Portland where there is an enormous amount of really interesting discussions among fourth graders and their teachers about gender fluidity. But it's contested, you can't just, you just can't want it to be there. So that, and I think the Democratic Party, I read a lot of the anti-Trump conservatives. And I think in this way, a lot of them are right because the data supports it. The Democratic Party has moved more to the left of his constituencies. It's showing up in the recent polls where Biden's numbers are abysmal. He's losing support among moderates. And you never, I mean, the Republicans, the Republicans, the strong Republicans and the strong Democrats pretty much mail in how they think about how their presidents are going. He's losing it. Part of the reason is he's losing it is that they don't like what he's doing about the race and policing. And he doesn't like what he's doing about immigration where the Democratic Party has moved to the left. They don't think he's governing effectively. You can blame it. You can say whatever you want, but you've got a conundrum, right? Especially for those of us who are left of center. If you want all this stuff, but you can't get this stuff by means that we understand conventionally, that means you have to do something else. All right, thank you very much, Neal. Louise. Well, hard to follow up on Neal because that's an intractable issue. But okay, let me start. That means something, aren't it? Yeah. Let me start at maybe at the individual side because that's where we start, right? With how we think. And going back to that author Wajahat Ali, he had an interesting take on this, which is that maybe we need to be less like Daffy Duck and more like Bugs Bunny.  And I think that that goes ties into, okay, the importance of storytelling, for instance. We all need to be able to listen and hear each other's stories to get an understanding and empathy on where people are coming from. And maybe that helps overcome divides. I think that I hopefully will help us get to a more tolerant acceptance that we are stronger because we are multicultural, we are different and our differences unite us to use a term. And I have to go back to the role of education and how we turn around the digital divide and the bad things that social media and digital access do to really help use that to inform people, educate people, help people go back to books and reading and critical thinking and just again, learning more about our system and what makes us strong and what we need to do and why we need to vote and run for office and support our institutions. All right, thank you so much. Rootmani, your last thought. Yeah, so now to this webinar, I can give you the keywords that are to survive, adapt and to thrive. Like we have the Delta B1, 16, 15, 17, Omicron 16, 15, 29, these are all fuzzy names, but in 2022, we have to affirm that the pandemic is just not an event, it's going to be a process that is going to engulf individual lives, our national lives, our international realms. So we have to make sure that we are better prepared for it. There's a response strategy that has to come in, there has to be a capacity building for facing this pandemic and you have to have leadership, leadership at the individual level, at the community level and it has to come, it becomes very personal to international level.  Politics will happen, history will happen, yes that will happen, but this pandemic is unknown territory for all of us. We don't know how it's going to mutate next or what is going to be the next genome sequence that is going to come up. So I think for me, it is a very neutral and without anything, without any bias, we all have to face the pandemic together. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. John, you get the last word here for this program. Right, so it should be noted that Machiavelli has been proven wrong. I mean, the American Republic has lasted for over two centuries and I guess I'm not quite as negative or concerned as some of the other panelists. I do think that we need to re-up our understanding of it. I think very few people actually have a kind of a deeper understanding of the kind of the political combat that's going on right now. They get kind of a talk show, kind of a hot shot, very quick comments, just tiny little Twitter comments about this, which is not very helpful, but like I say, our republic has proved to be quite durable. I mean, we survived a civil war and as much as Neil might think that we're close to a civil war, I'm not sure that's the case being a historian. I'm actually teaching the civil war right now and I think the political combat was much more fierce than it may be 10 years from now, we might be closer to a civil war, but so I think the republic is durable and we need to find ways, find symbols, find a language that can unite people and try to resist, you know, kind of delving into our kind of basis, kind of most fearful instincts. I do think the Machiavellian version of liberty is dangerous. It's inherently dangerous because it plays upon our fears and the civil rights version of liberty. Of course, I embrace strongly, you know, the comments that Louise made about multiculturalism. That's been the progress that we've made as a country has really been largely connected to our openness to more liberty, more freedom, not less and not simply trying to protect the liberty that we have. So I think that's our future is to fight for that and not to fight to contain the forces of darkness around us and protect our liberty against others' liberty. Alrighty, thank you so much. You know, we're out of time. One thing that this discussion has shown to me is that these issues are not independent of each other so they certainly are intertwined. And I think through this discussion, our audience has seen that, that they're intertwined. My last thought is about the discussion is that after 245 years of trying to make a more perfect union, trying to break down our tribal boundaries is key and paramount to finding that more perfect union. So I'd like to thank our guests for today. John Wahey, Neil Milner, Louise Ng, Group Mani Kannadar and John Davidan. I'd also like to thank HPU for sponsorship of this program. I think it's something that we might look at again in the future to do again because we certainly just didn't have enough time and I apologize to all those that submitted questions but we weren't able to get at them. So maybe next time. Thank you for joining us for Think Tech Hawaii and we hope to see you again in the future. I'm Tim Apachele, your moderator and we'll see you again. Aloha.


amyloid fibrils are clusters of misfolded proteins that are linked together and form insoluble fibres. These fibres are responsible for a variety of diseases such as Alzheimer's and Kreuzfeldt-Jakob disease. Amyloid fibrils can be detected by a dye called fireflavin tea, that this dye binds strongly to amyloid fibrils and produces a bright fluorescent signal when bound. That can be used to measure the amount of amyloid fibrils present in a sample, allowing researchers to monitor their formation and progression. That also does not affect the rate of amyloid fibril formation, so it can be used to study the effects of other compounds on amyloid fibril formation. This article was authored by Christine Schwepp, Tiffany Ewan Lin, Dennis Charm, and others.


trying to force a relationship to work when he's on the fence about you or isn't that into you. And so this is going back to the thing that we're just talking about with the whole force thing, which is a big topic, right? It's this idea of force versus power, right? You're trying to make something happen. And anytime that you're trying to make something happen, what it indicates to another person is that there's something off about it, right? And when it comes to relationships, the power, the monogamy, the love, all the stuff that you want, all the good things, him valuing you, that comes from a space of him choosing, right? That comes from a space of power, that comes from a space of letting him make that choice that he wants you and that he loves wants to do these things for you. And you can kind of guide him along with some of your language. But when you're trying to force him to do anything, whether you're trying to make a relationship work, or you're trying to, you know, get him to be exclusive or, you know, and this happens a lot, especially in friend with benefits casual type relationships, where they're trying to force something to happen, instead of allowing him to choose it, right? Which is a much, much more powerful way to do it.  It's going to make him realize, make him think in his mind that, that you don't really believe that you deserve it, which is why you have to force it. Because if you did believe that you deserve that you wouldn't, you wouldn't be trying to force it. You'd be finding a guy who chose it, right? And you wouldn't be getting into situations where you weren't getting your needs met and you weren't getting your needs fulfilled from the beginning.


Cheaper and better by this, not that. Drugstore alternatives to high-end products. Whatever you wanna call them, if you wanna call them dupes, that is what we're talking about today. I have several different things that I wanna share with you and I wanna get right into that. We're going to take a look at what I have on for my sundress and my jewelry and all that. But before we do, I want to just quickly say that for me, when I'm talking about cheaper and better, I'm not necessarily talking about a dead-on match to the product that I am showing that is high-end. The reason that I feel so strongly about that, that I don't have to match it absolutely, is because when you get it on your face nine times out of 10, nobody's gonna ever be able to tell. You're the only one that's going to be able to see that it's different. Also, what I love about cheaper and better at the drugstore is that you can not only save money, but you're also being able to try more things. And I think that's all kinds of fun as well. I'm gonna show you several today. Some of them will be spot-on and some of them will be just alternatives. So I'll make sure that I tell you that as we go through. Let's take a look at what I have on. Okay, so I wanted to share the maxi dress that I'm wearing today. This is such a pretty floral print. I love it. It's got all kinds of pinks and gold and yellow and then it's got a little bit of a really pretty kind of celery green on it. It's just so pretty. It has tears on it. So you've got ruffle, ruffle, ruffle, but it just lays so pretty. This is a ruching right here through the waist right underneath the bust all the way down the waist. It's just adorable. And then it does have some buttons right here. This dress itself has so many prints and it's unreal how many different styles they have of it. It's just so comfy for summer and I think you're gonna love it. And then I just paired it with one of my black purses, quilted purse. Just think it's really cute. I will show you really close what it looks like. It's got the chain on it for the handle and you can make that shorter if you want to. So you can carry it across your shoulder or you could make it cross body if you want to. And then since I can't show you my shoes, here is the shoes. These are just super comfortable shoes. They say chive over, something like that. Anyway, really love these. They've got a plastic heel, it's not wood and I do like that about it. It seems to cushion just a little bit better. And speaking of the cushioning, it's fantastic. I wear these all the time and just really can wear them completely throughout the day and never have any problems with them hurting my feet or anything like that even though they do have a little bit of a heel there. I would say with the platform on the front of the shoe, it probably has like an inch and a half heel total. That's what I have on for today. Now don't forget that I do have a numbering system. One through however many products that we get through, you probably already saw a few go through with what I was wearing. We're gonna continue on with that numbering system. Then you can go down into the description box, open it up and shop that way with the number of the next to the product. And it's a lot easier because the link is there and any information that I can give you, like I'll give you the size of this dress. So let's get into the cheaper and better and the drugstore alternatives right now. The first one I'm pretty excited about because I absolutely love the line of the high end that I'm gonna talk about and that's Rare Beauty. I think that she has kept her prices a little bit lower. They're not so high on the high end scale. So if you're talking about Westmore-Tillier or you're talking about Chanel or any of your, any of those are really high priced. This luminizer is a liquid highlighter that is so, so pretty. It's in enchant and this one is one of those ones that I fell in love with immediately. It works into your skin and just gives you the most beautiful glow.  It's just a really pretty glow. I always, I'm gonna say this again. I know you guys have heard it a million times. I put my luminizers or my highlighters underneath my blush and for a mature woman, it doesn't show up any texture that way. But I did from Joa. I found on Amazon. I did find this product from them and this one is called, this one is called Liquid Race Highlighter and this one is in Pink Dawn. And so it's another pink color and this is the one that I have on this side today. And I just think that this was a really, really good alternative. It's a little bit more of a highlighter than the actual one from Rare Beauty, but you get that on your cheeks and nobody can tell. It's just lovely. It feels very soft and very blendable on your skin. I just really like it. So yes, that is our first alternative or cheaper and better at the drugstore. Next one is also from Rare Beauty and that has her liquid blushes. These are gorgeous, gorgeous products.  I'm actually wearing this one here today and I'm going to just swatch that for you and I'm actually gonna put it on top of those luminizers. That one goes on top of the luminizer from them or from Rare Beauty. So pretty, so easy to blend out. It just really brightens your face and they stay around for a long time. That's one of the things that I love about a liquid blush over a powder blush. You get such a long lasting look. The other thing is if you want a powder on top of that, you've got it sealed on your face, which is so nice. Now this one is called Grace right there and on one side of my face I was wearing Grace and that was this side and then on this side, I'm wearing the one that is the alternative and this is from Lakerrain Beauty and this color doesn't have a color. This doesn't have a color but I will make sure that I link it for you below. It's pretty darn close. The one from Rare Beauty I think might have a little bit more of the bluish tint to it. This is actually just kind of a bright, bright pink there. So these are so, so close. The way that the bottle is, the look of them, they are pretty much identical. I don't think you could pick them out if you turned the name around and you were looking at it like that. I really love that I was able to find something that was every bit as good as the Rare Beauty. Now these aren't super duper expensive. I know that Juvies Place just came out with their liquid blushes and they were on the drugstore side of Ulta and they're $18.  This one I was really excited to do. Now this is a Givenchy Prism Libre Four Pan or four squares on this little container right here has different colors of powder in it. Now I have had this one for such a long time and been babying it and hoping that it would last and so I finally was just like, I'm gonna use that up.  And when I first thought I was like, okay am I seeing that right? But you really have to be in a certain light to be able to catch it. Other than that, it's just a beautiful powder that is correcting you by the one that you feel like is right for you. This one originally, no it doesn't but it originally had a pink, a peach, a little bit of a blue in there and I think it had like a deeper pink on one side. So I can't remember because it's been such a long time but this is a really expensive powder. I wanna say that it's close to up there at about $60. Might be even more now that all the prices are going super high but Moira has this fantastic alternative. Now the Moira one has, let's see, I think it just has three. So the Moira has a purple, a pink and then a bright, bright pink in here and it comes out looking very lavender-ish when it gets mixed together. And what I love about a lavender powder is that it's super brightening. You can do pink and you can do lavender and you're gonna find that both of those underneath the eyes, you know, in the center of your face to set your makeup all over if you're pretty fair, if you're like medium to fair. But they're very, very brightening and that's one thing that I do love about this powder. It is super brightening. You're gonna have a hard time seeing it once I work it in a little bit but really for just a fraction of the cost and when I say a fraction, I really do mean it. You get as much product, if not more and there is no comparison as far as how expensive this one from Givenchy is. This one for Moira, as far as I'm concerned you could not possibly tell the difference. It might be a bit more mattifying than the Prism Libre but that would just be in look, not in feel because you're looking at powders on both sides and the Prism Libre might just have a little bit more of the reflective properties in it but wow, to save that kind of money all day long I'm going to reach for the Moira.  Anyway, she talked about how good these cream sticks are from Westman Atelier and they really are good. It's one that I've really been enjoying. It's seamless in the way that it blends out. I love that about it. I have it up in my hairline on this side today and I did this whole side of bronzing and also contouring with it. Really easy to work with. They're just a beautiful product but this one right here is $48. I believe the last time I looked at it, outrageous. I mean, for a stick that isn't got that much in it. I mean, it's got some but that's it right there. So for me that was just a little bit too high priced even though it did perform really well. But recently Essence came out with their contour sticks. It's actually bronzing and contour stick but I love this little dude. Look at the difference between these two right here. Look at what I'm always talking about how a contour is something that should make something recede or hide and then a bronzer is something that makes something warm up. This is a true contour. This is a bronzer. So I do have this in my hairline today. I was carving out my cheekbones with it and then also my jaws right here down the neck. I think this little thing is so great. Again, you're not getting a ton of product but I think you're getting just as much as you do in this one even though this packaging feels heavier. I think it's just all about the packaging. So this was a find for me and the reason is because the color is better and this is way cheaper. So you wanna talk cheaper and better. This one from Essence is absolutely it. Also, Tower28 sent me this product and it is their Daily Rescue Facial Spray and it's SOS Save Our Skin but I didn't feel like this did much. I used it as a priming spray. I used it as something that was my first step before makeup. I felt like it was a little bit hydrating but as far as Save Our Skin, Daily Facial Spray, it's just kind of a prep nice thing to have but it's not a necessity. But I did find that my Milani, the Supercharged Spray, oh my God, I need my glasses to read this girls. The Supercharged Revitalizing Facial Spray, this one has ginseng and citrus extracts in it. I love this. I love the smell of it. I love how I really get just a boost after I use it. I will use this throughout the day to kind of refresh my makeup. This has a super fine mist on it. Better than the Tower28, cheaper and better. Again, you wanna talk that. The Tower28 comes out a little bit more heavy and it leaves a few little droplets. I'm not crazy about that. But this one from Milani, like I said, this one is almost gone because I've been using it all summer long to just refresh my face.  That's how I felt so many times. So I just use this and it revitalizes my skin. And because of the fragrance, that citrus in it, it does have a fragrance. So if you're adverse to that, please make note of that. That orange citrus smell in it just is really revitalizing to me. I'm not sure why other than citrus definitely wakes me up when I smell it. So I do love that one over the Tower28. Also, I have this one. Now I was watching TikTok and this little gal said that she uses the Givenchy. This is a shadow, eyeshadow, liquid eyeshadow, I should say, sorry. She uses this in her inner corner every day and she has since she was a teenager in high school. I don't know how a teenager in high school can afford. Sorry, this is Georgia O'Rourm Money. Can afford Georgia O'Rourm Money because I can barely afford it. This one is the color 12S, I guess. I'll have to look and make sure it'll be listed down below and linked. It's a beautiful color, it's quite light and it does do a great job on your inner corner. It makes it really bright and really pretty and it lasts all day long.  Inner corner will get the brunt of all of that and so I'll have a tendency to wipe that off but this stays all day and it's really good. I really do like it. But again, huge price tag for this little bitty bottle but Nyx came out with their Glowche, Ultimate Glow Shots and this one is in the color. Let's try to figure this one out. I can't see that little print to save me. Okay, the colors will all be listed below. Sorry about that. But I do have the Nyx on one eye and then the Georgia O'Rourm Money on the other eye. You cannot tell the difference, right? You can't tell that I have one color in the inner corner versus the other one. These are really, really good liquid eyeshadows and I do not hardly ever endorse any liquid eyeshadows at the drugstore because you just can't find a really good formula that lasts and doesn't really dry out and make your eyelids feel like they're really creepy and when you're older anyway, you know, I'm 55 this year, when you're older anyway, it just kind of makes them look crinkly and worse. This one doesn't. So I would say that cheaper and better, cheaper definitely better. I would say that they're really close to the same so I really do like the one from Georgia O'Rourm Money but I would really like the price tag from the Nyx. All right, that is the roundup for today. I hope that you did enjoy seeing cheaper and better by this, not that, and drugstore alternatives. That's all rolled up into one. Please give it a thumbs up and don't forget to subscribe if you're not subscribed already. I would really love to have you here as a part of our little family and our little corner of YouTube. No drama, just makeup, just fashion and we love it. Please take care of yourself. I love you so much and come back around really soon in my next video. Goodbye, my friends.


Hello and absolute pleasure to have Robert Peel on the Teacher's Toolkit podcast today. I've been completely battering Robert to come on the podcast for a long time now as he'll find out when we have our conversation. He's got a huge amount of experience in teaching and education. He also is an amazing author. He's a historian. He's a co-head. So we've got so, so much to talk about this evening. So thank you so much Robert for coming on the podcast. Can you just tell us a little bit about your background, where you came from, how you worked yourself up to become the co-head of West London Free School and sort of what you're focusing on now. That'd be great. Absolutely. So I became a teacher in 2011 and started teaching in Birmingham. The first admit when I started teaching I wasn't entirely sure that it was the career for me but really, really fell in love with it and moved to West London Free School in 2014, where I've been ever since, and I became an assistant head there in 2016 and then a deputy head a few years later and then very soon after becoming a deputy head myself, my fellow deputy became joint head teacher. So I'm doing currently. Absolutely brilliant.  The first time I ever met you is that I came to West London Free School because you organised a history conference and I remember sitting there and I think you were just so above and beyond anything that I'd ever seen before. And I remember going back to my head teacher and going, I just don't understand how he's done that. So I think you were saying something about you might spend a whole lesson or a whole big chunk of time reading with a class and interrogating a text together and I sort of asked you the question, well how do you showcase that to an offset inspector? And when I went back to my head teacher at the time he said, well did you look in his books? And I said, well no, I didn't and he said, well yeah, obviously that's how he would do it. But it was just really inspiring for me actually and that's why I wanted to get you on is because I just wanted to get inside your brain a little bit more as well. Either for being ahead of the curve in terms of history or the quite quick ascent at the West London Free School, both have just been biden to the fact that free schools are very peculiar places to work and it was incredibly hard work and very stressful when I was first there. We didn't decide and there were all sorts of things that weren't in place but the one massive benefit was that gave you a blank slate just to think very innovatively about things like curriculum and it meant that we didn't have any inherited ways of working. We didn't have any inherited schemes work. When I first started there was only years seven, eight, nine and ten so I could spend almost all the time thinking about key stage three. So a licence and a blank slate on which to do things a reasonably innovative way although increasingly with every year in the past it feels like what we're doing is normal which I suppose is a nice thing. Absolutely. So just I'm picking your story behind being a co-head because obviously I'm very into that so I used to be a co-head and then went off maternity leave and I've come back as something slightly different so I didn't really know what to do and I'm just really struggling to get back into that position again as co-head and obviously I'm from secondary schools in Suffolk and you're in London so I just wanted to know sort of your background and your experience of it and how it's going. So it's going wonderful and I think it's a brilliant model if you can make it work however I think it's dependent in our case my co-head teacher is called Ben McLaughlin. He's in charge of pastoral and behaviour concriculum and I think it works very well but because of quite fortuitous circumstances which are that we both joined the school at the same time in 2014 we both became deputy head teachers at the same time. A huge amount of respect for what each other does but absolutely zero desires to each other's job. We were very good friends which helps and the year on we've remained very good friends. I'm long made at last so I joked with members of staff that it works if it's a love match but if it's in a range of marriage I don't think it necessarily has the chance of succeeding so I think it has, it has to be very particular circumstances. I wonder if they're the same as when you became joint head teacher that it was someone who you'd known for some time. Yeah and so we, I mean he joined the year ahead of me but at the same age, same point in our careers, became assistant heads together. I'm on the ying to his yang so he was progress standards and I was sort of teaching and learning a curriculum and obviously we actually had somebody, somebody else to sort of run on the behaviour but obviously we both did behaviour at the same time as that. So we were actually part of a free school too within that trust and it was quite small at the time so you just, it just worked really really well for it. Obviously now I want it back. I mean I, yeah, yeah I really do think it feels like a, it also I think both of, both Ben and I thought that we were years away ever being a head teacher when we were appointed but when the idea was suggested to us that we might be joint head teachers that felt feasible. So it feels like a very nice way into school leadership as well. Yeah I think it's a, I mean maybe it's still a honeymoon period. I don't think we'll be ready either but because we did it together you just had that support didn't you? One of our... So what are some of the focuses at the moment for you as a head? Cos obviously we're coming, we're still coming through a pandemic. I've seen, you know, operationally it just became an operational nightmare so every day your focuses weren't necessarily implementing a long, a long haul plan around teacher learning and curriculum. It was more about you know figuring out the cover and figuring out who's going to stand in front of the staff members for example. So what's, what's your focus at the moment in the West London Free School or as a head? So just getting up to speed with that and also keeping our heads above water with duple absences, absences, cover being harder than that. Yeah that, that has kept us occupied for the most part this year. We have done new things at the school but I think it has been mostly operational and I think even if it weren't for Covid that would have been the case because we just be sort of getting our feet under the desk and getting used to the role. And the other thing is the school is in a pretty good position. There wasn't a burning platform for change to what we were doing. So goodness I think in the years, in the couple of years we've actually booked out some time over half term to have a, to probably have a think about this and write to the school's development plan ready for next year. But the, in terms of teaching and learning, the big thing that we're really focusing on this year and we'll continue to focus on next year is pupil dialogue in the classroom. So one of the things that we've always been very clear about at the West London Free School is that we like teaching led lessons and we think that there's a good evidence base to that. We think from what we see around the school that that is for the most part the best way for pupils to learn. However, we are aware there is the danger that pupils become mentally passive. It is easier in those sorts of lessons perhaps to fool the teacher into thinking that you're learning when you're not actually. So we've been doing a lot on encouraging teachers to check for understanding, encouraging teachers to get pupils not just to speak in lessons but to speak well. We have various initiatives for that. It feels like something that we, I think we've improved this year on, but there's still some way to go. And even if it's one of those things that even if it had zero impact on pupil outcomes, we would still be wanting because, irrespective of what pupils get, the confidence to be able to speak in front of their peers and the willingness and ability to project their voice in a room is just one of those benefits that everyone should have from being at school. So that, I mean, in terms of teaching and learning, that's one of the big focuses. We, I think we still got work that we can do in helping our lower prioritizers. We, I think at the top end pupils at the West Anne Free School do really well. We have pupils getting into Oxbridge every year since the sixth form started. We've had four Oxbridge offers in history this year, which has been wonderful, which is 50% of the Oxbridge offers for the school, which we're very happy about. But I think that there's more work that we could be doing with the low prioritizers, particularly when it comes to literacy. We've got someone who's starting new at the school in September who's going to have responsibility teaching literacy to groups of low prioritainers, but also a better common language throughout the school and how we talk about sentence construction and paragraph construction. So then, yeah, those are two teaching and learning things that we're focusing on. And we have, as a third one of the big focuses that we've had this year is rewards. So we have a very tight, very effective behaviour system, which is integral to the school running well. But I think it has in the past been at the expense of recognising pupils doing things positively. It's a much more system. And I think kind of tied in with the pupil voice thing as well. We want pupils to speak more in front of their peers. So we have had, we've done more public speaking events at the school. But I would love if I could find the time in assemblies every week for pupils to their peers in assembly. That's something I've been quite a lot of reading on oracy. And especially yeah, because we're from Suffolk as well. And it's getting students to be able to go to a dinner party with anybody who goes to a public school and to be the same as them. So, you know, so that you've got exactly the same sort of vocabular and you've got exactly the same, you're exposed to the same types of texts and anything so that you're put in the right place to compete with them when it comes to Oxford, when it comes to Cambridge and things. I really agree. And if you go to, if you go to a public school, especially with a Church of England public school, which most they will have readings in chapel. And I would love for our school, which doesn't have a faith affiliation to have a secular equivalent of that to put together a selection of readings that could be read and repeated kind of year on year. So pupils get to know them. And, you know, we have 39 teaching weeks in a year. We've got 130 pupils. So if you have an assembly every week in three years, you could give every pupil the opportunity to speak in front of their peers in assembly, delivering one of these readings. So that's something that we would would love to put in next year. Yes, that sounds absolutely brilliant. I'd like to come and see that. That'd be absolutely really great. So can you talk us through a little bit about you as an author? So obviously you've published some textbooks, you've published a very good book called Progressively Worse and obviously more recently Meet the Georgians. So what's sort of your inspirations behind those, those things? Where do your ideas come from? The common thread is they are all in effect in history books. Progressively Worse, which is the first thing that I wrote, is is really a modern history methods from the, from the 1960s onwards. Well, that's what the good half of the book is. There's sort of two halves of the book. One is a potted history of teaching methods in schools. And then the other half is a sort of critique of child-centred learning. And I had the misfortune of the book being published in the same year as Daisy Chris Dulley's book, Seven Myths About Education, which did the critique of child-centred learning much better than I did. So I say to anybody who reads Progressively Worse, read the first half of it, the second half, just read, read Daisy's book. But yeah, the first half, which is the history of teaching methods, I just felt when I was teaching in Birmingham, I was teaching a school that had, that was, it wasn't just a knowledge basis to the curriculum, it was absence. It was positively discouraged. It was really the imbued the whole curriculum design and teaching approach. And a real, a real a version to teacher-led methods as well. And I had, I had read, I had this sense, had this feeling that these weren't new ideas, and that these were ideas that have been around for a long time. And, and I had read during my degree and during my masters of history, I'd read some 20th century history about sort of 1960s and 1970s culture wars. A term that has come back in vogue, but was very much used back then as a classroom was a real centre for it. There's a sort of turn in the 1960s and 1970s was the wellspring of a lot of these ideas. And what I wanted to do progressively worse was just to say, these ideas that often are sold in a very utopian way and are often said to be the avant-garde are actually 40, 50 years old. And for 40 or 50 years, failing to fulfil their promise in the classroom. And, and I hope that, I think particularly for people who are sort of bent to the way they like to think about things, it was a useful perspective on that debate, which I'm sure you remember from 2000, you know, around that time was really raging. There were so many interesting conversations going on at that time. Definitely. So what, if you, if you had to say what the best ever CPD you either hosted or ran or went to yourself would be, what would that be? Gosh, I always say that the best CPD is going to visit other schools, which may be a cop-house answer. It's one of the things that, it's one of the things that Ben and I bought in actually when we became heads of the one of our inset days to mid-November. And we had a day in mid- November where every member of staff got to go and visit another school. And it's something that we're going to keep now as a yearly fixture. Because I just, you know what, going to that conferences and things like educational festivals and things like that, the CPD is always really beneficial and enjoyable. But it's the incidental conversations that I often remember most and come away with most. It's the sort of, you know, the pub after research, ed, environment. And obviously a lot of the conversations are excited and talking about the sessions that they've seen. But I often think that the nice thing about those events is as much who you meet as the things you go and see. I just think that, yeah, visiting schools and having the ability, having the opportunity to go and do that just gives you so many ideas. And often it isn't even directly related to the things that you're seeing. It's just the mental space to sit in a school which isn't your own and reflect about what you do. Yeah. And yeah, and just to think, oh, I think this would be really good, or I think this would work really well with our staff. It's just, you know, people like you doing what you do, but in a different way. And I think there's as much we said about that, yeah. And there are tiny things that I now walk to the Son of Peace School and see. And if I think hard, I can think back to where we got that idea from. And they now just seem blindingly obvious. But all of them are things that I saw in another school and thought, oh my God, you've got to do that. I mean, a tiny example would be, I remember going visiting a racist south bank and they had their duty list on the stairwell on each floor. So if you were just checking who's on duty, you didn't have to kind of go on to the files bit of your phone and try and find it out. You knew that there was a physical copy up somewhere. And I remember that was such a good idea. And now it would seem mad to me that that wouldn't occur to you. But it hadn't. In all those years it hadn't occurred to us until we saw it being done somewhere else. So what is the best for you, the best bit of educational research or reading that stands at the test of time, that you would say perhaps to an ECQ, read this? Apart from the one that's... So I couldn't recommend that. I think it's under the book that I most enjoyed reading. It probably hushed cultural literacy because it's so well written and it's not written by a teacher. I'm not saying that's a benefit, but I think it's about more than just teaching methods. It kind of made me think about just like everything in general. I think it's a really profound book about the nature of knowledge and the nature of class and society and lots of different things. So I think in terms of reading experience, I still very distinctly remember reading that when I was first training to be a teacher and that sense of scales falling from your eyes has been really there. I think the most is what in students like school, Willingham's book, Daniel Willingham, and I think to any new teacher that would be very high on the list. In fact it's a sort of... It's quite easy to read isn't it and it's quite relatable to what's going on in front of them as well. Yeah and I think it also it's really good if you're ever in a school where you're being asked to do things that you know aren't working and you just want to find a way that book often is a real help. But then I think in terms of the books that really make you think and reflect quite deeply what does this mean for my morning book when I'm back in my lesson period one. Sean Allison and Andy Farby's book, Making Every Lesson Counts. Yep I haven't read it but I've definitely heard it yeah. Yeah I really like that. It synthesises a lot of the things you know more her, sure, whoever it might may be and gives them... It's written by two teachers, it's written by a science teacher and English teacher so it gives really good classroom illustrations of those ideas. Brilliant, sounds good and that's why I like doing these podcasts is because you get different answers from lots of different people and it's really interesting to get into your brain and to find out you know which one worked for you because there's so much out there. So what we're going to do now is we're going to do a little quiz if you don't mind this so that we get to know you and then I'm going to ask you the last question we're going to build up to an answer as well so you're only allowed to pick one and you're not allowed to think about it for too long okay. So it's just really silly things like dogs or cats? Dogs. Chinese food or Indian food? Indian food. Staff room or your own office? Oh that's unfair now I'm mad. You're allowed to say your own office. Do you know what? You know we have a coffee machine in our staff room and I still use it because the coffee is excellent and I find I have lots of the most important conversations of the day waiting the coffee queue so for that reason I'm going to say the staff room. Your staff will be very proud. An Android phone or an iPhone? iPhone. Hiking or jogging? Oh jogging I think. Okay primary or secondary? Secondary. Obviously. Beer or wine? Beer. Swimming or sunbathing? Sunbathing definitely. I've got to figure out what kind of plan you have when it comes to your family. There you go. And marking or no marking? Oh marking. Okay talk to me about that because marking is everywhere at the moment. Yeah and we've actually been rewriting our homework and feedback policy at Westerner Creek School and we it started the draft version started as our homework, marking and feed and then it became our homework and feedback policy because marking is a form of feedback but it's a subsection of feedback we felt, we felt the um and I think I what do I think about marking? I think. I'll jump in. I think it's important. I think it's important but you have to you have to put yourself first so because I think students like like to know you've looked at their work. And I also yeah I think students like to know that they that you've looked at their work. We've got an English teacher at our school who always says whenever if anyone says to her she's one of those teachers who who marks a huge amount and pupils recognise it and pupils will sometimes one year and have another teacher the next year they'll say oh why why isn't my work being marked like it was by such and such teacher. And she always says even if someone would say to her it has no impact at all that zero evidence of the impact that she has she says it's an act of love. I love the pupils who I teach, I respect the pupils who I teach and if they're writing to me it's incumbent upon me to read it. And I think I think really actually what I really I still teach an A-level class um two-level periods so four hours a week and I still mark an essay a week um from each of them. And I think actually what I'm doing really I'm writing a few things on their work but not exactly. I'm reading and it tells me so many things. Not only does it tell me how they're doing it also tells me how I'm doing. You get a real sense of the success of your lessons by looking at the pupil outputs um and it immediately informs what I do the next lesson reading what what they've done there and I think that's I think that's vital I think teachers they're the most important ideas they'll have for how they're going to do something different the following year should come from when they're looking at pupils work. So really I think what you're often what you're doing is especially in a subject like history um and you'll be kidding yourself if you think marking is what actually takes a long way to you know a tick and a kind of why is that question mark that sort of thing that doesn't take up the time is the reading and I think it's an important thing to do to read and review pupils work um and and I think the more experience you get the quicker you get to doing it um I know I know exactly how long it takes to get a to get a pile of that year 12 pupils work marked and and it's not you know and it and I can make it manageable but the key is just being so strict to yourself and just not spending any anywhere longer than its nexus area on it. Absolutely and I've to start teaching geography or a bit of geography and obviously I've been teaching history for a long long time um I have taught a little bit of geography but not not in this much detail so I know when it comes to marking it's going to take me a lot longer than it would usually when it comes to my my history work just because I'm just I'm not an expert in it although yeah a lot more words and a lot of the history work that you would do in comparative some of the geography work so it's it's vice versa isn't it um yeah we're going to end it there um and I think as I say we could talk for hours and hours and hours and I think you're absolutely wonderful and I think um I'm really really inspired by what you're doing at the West London Free School as well and I think if anybody out there wants to go and visit a school if you're allowed to uh go and go and visit it because there's some fantastic things and some really great practice to take away with there too so thank you so so much for your time thank you that's my pleasure thank you for your time


Welcome back to the channel, I'm Lauren Desperin. Now you may have not heard of Lordstown before, but they originally purchased the Lordstown Ohio plant. They then sold it to Foxconn, who is building vehicles for them. Now this vehicle is a work truck, so you will see them on the road. But this is a vehicle you could buy yourself. Now the idea is for them to sell it to the fleets, and eventually they'll have six other different models coming out so that you can also own a Lordstown. This is MXUX. This is about the six models she mentions in this review. Ladies and gentlemen, it's an absolute pleasure for me, Kevin Rice, the Chief Creative Officer of Pininfarina, to present to you today this wonderful vehicle, this absolute demonstration of advanced design, elegant design, which we've built together with the Foxconn team. Our challenge in front of us, Foxconn, in the backyard, I've just met with our chairman before I left, Chairman Yang said that we are going to support this with 100%. We are going to also produce more phone, more computer, more electronics product to support the spending in the automotive and mobility. So how's the exciting you?


We all know what numbers are. And negative numbers. But did you know that mathematicians classify numbers into different types? Into a number system. Let's start at the top with real numbers. They can be positive, negative, zero, decimals, fractions, pi. Nearly any number you can think of is a real number. Only imaginary numbers, like the square root of negative one, and infinity, aren't real. But we don't really need to worry about them at this stage. If you can put a number on a number line, then it's a real number. This symbol is used to represent real numbers. Real numbers split into two subsets. Rational and irrational. Rational numbers can be written as a fraction. I just remember rational-fractional sound similar. So any whole number, terminating decimals, recurring decimals. In fact, all numbers except for non-repeating decimals are rational. Decimals that do not repeat are irrational. Some well-known examples are pi, e, and square root two. So many square roots and cube roots are irrational. If the decimal places go on forever without repeating, then they are irrational. Now back to rational numbers. These can be separated down further. Natural numbers and integers. The integers are any positive whole numbers. Negative whole numbers, zero. Whereas natural numbers are just from zero and the positive counting numbers. Strangely, there is no general agreement amongst mathematicians about whether to include zero in the natural numbers or not. Sometimes zero is included. Sometimes it isn't. If zero isn't considered a natural number, then a whole new category is needed called whole numbers, which is exactly the same as natural numbers, but also includes the zero. Find a way of remembering the order. I always remember now what is real. And then you just need to remember the irrational numbers and the general name, real numbers. Answer these questions, making sure to include all that apply. Pause the video, answer them, and click play when you're ready. Now we just need to know that this real number system exists and why are different numbers fit into it? If you stick with mathematics in future life, you may study it in more detail. As I said earlier, I always just remember now what is real to remember the order of natural numbers, whole numbers, integers, and rational numbers. If you liked the video, give it a thumbs up, and don't forget to subscribe, comment below if you have any questions. Why not check out our Fusechool app as well? Until next time!