So first and foremost, this is really supposed to be interactive. I'm going to try a different
style of presenting for our section here at the Voting Village. And there should be a microphone
right over there. If anyone, you guys are brave enough to grab it as I'm asking different
questions. I would love to hear you comment. This is something that's going to be really
important to me in terms of understanding where people are in terms of how they view
what it means to be an American, what it means to be a citizen, and that sort of thing.
So this is just to set the stage, let you guys know where I'm hoping to go. We're going to talk
a little bit about what it means to be an American, obviously. I have a laundry list
of questions for you all. This is so weird. And really, again, trying to establish a framework
for how we define this thing called democracy in 2023. We have technology intersecting with
these nasty laws, a patchwork system of privacy laws at the state level. And what I really want
to try to get a feel for is what you all think this democracy should actually look like.
Now, of course, the natural question is, well, Kendall, why the hell are we talking about that
here? So one of the things I'm going to do is I'm going to kind of set a stage for what this talk
is and what this isn't. But first, I'm going to tell you a little bit more about myself, because
I know the bio, I really didn't turn my bio in on time. So it's probably all over the place,
talking about blockchain, which is not really what I do anymore. So one of the things I do,
again, cybersecurity privacy attorney, I do a lot of diligence work, I analyze results
from penetration testing for my clients. And I really assist in the area of privacy law compliance.
So dealing with the privacy laws, both internationally, GDPR, and also in California,
the CPRA, and this, again, this patchwork system of privacy legislation that we have coming down
the pipeline. Something else that I'm going to talk to you guys a little bit about, which will
relate to what I'm going to discuss today, is on the side of that, I am also an antique and rare
book dealer. In November, I will be the, believe it or not, or maybe, I guess, believe it, I will
be the first black antique book dealer in the country, which is super weird, but maybe not
really surprising. And the youngest. So there you go. Right? I'm also a professional track
athlete. I'm a long jumper. Every day for me is a day at the beach. So the goal is Olympic trials
next year, and hopefully Paris. And then I can finally hang these spikes up and never see a pair
of running shoes ever again. I swear to God, I can't wait. Recently, and this is kind of what
I talked about yesterday on the panel with Chris Krebs and my colleagues, I was recently named to
the American Council on Germany. This was a post-war transatlantic effort to sort of address
transatlantic policy issues. And what they do, they take 20 German nationals and 20 Americans
in various sectors, they stick them in a room in Germany and sort of go through the discussion
process of how to address global issues, right? Everything from technology, law and policy,
to government, to how do we get along better? And how do we become the leaders of the world that we
really hope to be? And so I hope to kind of weave that in here today. And then there's also a bunch
of other boring stuff you guys probably want to know about, but please ask me. So here's what this
is, or here's what this is not, right? I'm not here to lecture you. I don't think anyone really wants
to hear about the law. I certainly don't. This is not going to be a broad discussion of election
technology. And we spent a lot of time on that today. I will leave that to people who are way
more intelligent than I am. And we'll be talking about that basically all week. This is also not
something that is going to be substantially about racial identity. I'm not here talking to you as
a black male with an afro and a picket. I should probably take that out. It's really not what this
is. This is really coming from my perspective as an American citizen, and about someone who
really cares about the welfare of this country, and about creating more young leaders that are
going to help protect what we hold to be near, dear, and true to our beliefs. And this also
isn't about personal politics, right? I really don't care who the hell you voted for. I really
don't. Part of my issue and how I came to address some of these topics is, I think it's utterly
ridiculous that we can't be in disagreement and have a productive conversation. And part of
what I want to draw on for this discussion is, how did we get here? How come we can't do
that anymore? And how can we fix it, right? What this is, like I was saying, we are going to do a
bit of problem solving. Problem solving in the sense of, again, like how do we create a better
system for effective communication? How do we both come to the table, having voted for different
individuals, having different beliefs, and use those sort of backgrounds and beliefs to create
a better country, a better system, and better institutions that will help protect what we
hold near and dear? Maybe it's a bit of a reality check, maybe not. But I definitely do want to
go about reidentifying some of these systemic issues in education, voting rights, and just
overall how do we get along better, right? And who knows? My hope for this talk is that by the
end of it, everyone's a little better off, not in the sense of anything that I'm saying,
but really what you all are saying. I want to hear from individuals who have been around a little
bit longer than I have, who have had different educational backgrounds, and can help draw on
some of their experiences growing up that maybe I didn't have.
Okay, so a couple questions. These are some things I want you guys to think about. So
hopefully you guys can see them, but really what I want you to keep in the back of your mind is
what does it mean to be an American? And this is an important question, right? If you notice,
I'm asking you what does it mean, not what it should mean. There's a very important distinction
because what I want to try to figure out is based off of what we see here in the world today,
what does it look like it means to be an American? If you were to come from a different country
and view everything happening in America in the past decade or two decades or three decades,
how would you view American identity, right? What does a functioning democracy require,
right? One of the things we talk about in this country is how much we uphold the system of
freedom and how democracy is important. And part of our role in the world is protecting democracy,
giving other individuals and other nations and the people within those nations access to
this beautiful system we call democracy. But one of the things that never gets talked about
is what democracy actually requires, right? It's really, in my opinion, it's not this system
that allows individuals to be passive. You have to be active. You have to be proactive.
And I want to sort of understand from you all's point of view, what does that mean? It means
different things to different people, depending on where you're coming from, your demographics,
and obviously the generation you came up in. And then finally, how do you find your place in
society? That's a typo. That is hilarious. But what I want to try to figure out is as we sort
of look at the way elections have been going, and we're coming into 2024 here pretty soon,
one of the concepts that always gets discussed is this vision for America, the future. What does the
future look like? And we hear about how we paint this picture, but one of the things that doesn't
get discussed is really how does everybody fit within that picture? So I'm going to talk a little
bit about what happens when people get excluded and is whether or not that is a symptom of some
of the protests that we see, some of the conflict that we see across the world and across America.
So you guys, like, does anyone not know who this is? George H.W. Bush. George Bush,
senior, right? So very young one. I picked this one on purpose because if I had picked,
probably a more recent one, you guys would have been slammed up. So the 41st president of the
United States passes away in November 30th, 2018. Why do I have his picture up here? Let me tell
you a quick story. So I'm from San Francisco, California, a small borough in San Francisco,
Ingleside Terrace, also grew up in part of Bernal Heights. I was never really politically engaged
growing up. Neither were my parents, right? And I remember growing up and hearing about, you know,
Clinton running for president and George Bush running for president and kind of, you know,
the back and forth. And when George Bush senior died, something really weird happened to me,
right? My family, myself, we were raised to be Democrats, right? And we'll talk about that later,
what it means to be raised in a specific political party and not really knowing why the hell you're
in that political party. So he passes away in 2018. And I remember watching the funeral procession
and I was like viscerally upset. And I had no idea why. No idea why. I had never met him. I had
never really followed his viewpoints or anything like that. But I remember feeling actually
heartbroken. And it took me about two weeks to put my finger on it. And I'll tell you what it was.
When he passed away, for me, it symbolized a true changing of the guard. Because when I was young,
there was a time where, yeah, maybe you're a Democrat, maybe you're a Republican,
you voted for who you wanted to vote for, you had your opinions, you had your preferences.
But you didn't really have this deep fear, right? Mainly because at the end of the day,
you felt like there was still a place for you in the country. You felt that even though
individuals had a different lens, they had a different viewpoint, they had a different approach
to progress. Those individuals still wanted what was best for you. The only difference was
what they thought was best for you was different. That's it. When he passed away, for me,
at least this is my personal opinion, it felt like the last of a dying breed. And I try not
to use the word patriot because I know that triggers people sometimes. Again, I don't really
care. But for me, he was a real symbol of one of the last patriots that my generation remembers.
In the sense of somebody who, hey, you know, listen, you're a Republican, you have your
different beliefs, but I still want what was best for you. So even if someone like him got elected,
I didn't have this deep fear that we were going to sort of plummet into chaos.
Because the love for the country, the love for the people within that country was still there.
And that really was the impetus for my discussion. Because I wanted to figure out
how we restore that. How we get back to this place where at the end of the day,
there really is a place for everybody. And more importantly, that there is a restored
vision of America and of democracy that is inclusive in the sense of wanting everybody
to succeed and wanting everyone to have a seat at the table. Any questions so far? Comments?
Yeah, no, please. Seriously.
He was the last president who served in the military. So one idea I've been playing with
is should we have some kind of required service for everybody? Because we don't, I mean,
our generation has lost that feeling that we are all working towards the security of our nation.
Very interesting point. So what she said was, he was the last, I think you said he was the last?
I personally cannot verify that. But let's, but let's, your point is still made, right? The point
that she was making was that because he served in the military, there was a sense of being
educated and really having, feeling like you had ownership and duty for the welfare of the
country. I'm going to try not to skip ahead a whole lot, but that's a big part of what I want
to talk about. So I'm going to, like a bit of a spoiler. So I was born in 91, right? My birthday
was July 24, just turned 32. Yay, me. And one of the things that I want to talk about is this
concept of civics. Because as I was actually exploring how we got here, and why the viewpoints
were so different, I was, I was asking people who are a little bit older than me who had,
how they had developed this sense of duty and obligation towards protecting the nation,
not just on a, on a physical, military front, but just in terms of protecting the institutions,
doing things like showing up to the PTA meetings, protecting your schools, protecting your communities
and being involved. A lot of the conversations that I have with my generation, and obviously
it's not everybody, especially people in my community, depending on where you are,
there is a sense that the nation was was kind of just handed to you in the sense of, not that we
didn't have to fight for it, but there was a different way that we were approached in terms
of understanding our role within this, this democracy, right? One of the examples that I
use is I was on a plane. Actually, no, we won't use use that example. But my parents, my grandparents,
they were talking about growing up in an era where we were involved in very substantial
international conflicts. And what that did was at the federal level, that prompted discussions
about how do you educate these young people to really care about America to have this loyalty
to how do you how do you build the patriot? How do you build the American citizen? And for me,
what I found so far is a lot of it has to do with civics. Now, I would imagine that the civics
education, or I guess social studies, I think, for me, and maybe a few other of us was very
different than some of you all. Can someone talk about what they had in civics class, like, like
that experience? Can you? I had civics class, and you just learned about, like, a sterile clinical
approach to where the country was formatted and, you know, structured, but it was, you know, not,
not, I would say not passionate, because teachers were passionate, but it wasn't, you know,
biased or anything like that. It was just like a dispassionate portrayal of the structure of the
organization of the country. See if I can turn this up.
We can't hear him. I was trying to get everybody to hear him. It's okay. All right. So we're going
to switch gears here. So I'm gonna show you another president. We all know George Washington,
right? Part of what I'm gonna talk about here is sort of a difference in approach. So as I
talked to you guys earlier, one of the things that I do aside from being an athlete, aside from being
an attorney, aside from being someone who does a lot of work in the election security space,
is I'm an antique and rare book dealer. I'm sort of like the black Nicolas Cage in National
Treasure, right? And so one of the really cool things about having been a lawyer as well and
in going through Georgetown Law is a lot of these foundational documents that, you know, the
Supreme Court, that are presidential nominees, that just society in general seems to be talking
a lot about. I actually get to handle them. And I get to check this out. I get to read the rest of
the sentence. You see what I mean? You see where I'm going here, right? Exactly. Because I can read
cursive, right? And one of the things that I found to be so compelling is oftentimes these are
our founders, these very supported and revered leaders, really get misquoted. We get these
soundbites that says, well, they said this. Well, the rest of it actually said all this other stuff
about needing to revisit the Constitution and how this is the best we could do and so on and so
forth. Some of that, by the way, is Benjamin Franklin himself, actually, oddly enough. And so
I have two pictures here. Again, Antique and Rare Book Dealer. One is George Washington's
Farewell Address, which I actually did not in any other time, I would have brought it with me,
but I actually do have a copy of it, which is super duper cool. So if you guys have antiques
or want to nerd out about stuff like that, please just find me in the back at some point.
And I really wanted to talk about George Washington's Farewell Address. So
it's interesting. So George Washington, he has led this growing nation. He has been a military
leader. He has been sort of an economic savant and has created this or has leaned into creating
what would be the Supreme Court, working with John Jay. And here he is about to leave. No one
wants him to leave, but he feels like it's his duty to leave. Now, the question is, so why am
I talking about his Farewell Address? I would encourage each and every one of you to go home
and read George Washington's Farewell Address, not just because it's great to have some context,
but one of the things that I loved about what he put in there was he articulated this wonderful
vision for America and for what America should look like and what it would mean to be an American
citizen. So I put a couple, just a couple of stanzas here just to kind of give people a picture
of it. There's one or two of them that I didn't include that I want to talk a little bit about,
but one, you know, just like this first part, the name of American, which belongs to you,
right? This should be something we should actually teach, right? Because there's this concept of
ownership that so many of us don't actually get, right? Now, what happens when you feel like you
don't have ownership of where you, of really where you belong? Well, I think a lot of people begin to
take a backseat to getting involved. I think they begin to rely on other people to advocate for
the rights and privileges that we should all be advocating for. How many of you guys are
poll workers? How many of you guys work the polls, like work the voting polls, right?
Round of applause for you guys that do that. That is awesome. It's a very thankless job and
it's very necessary, but that's a perfect example. That's a perfect example. The people that volunteer
and work at election polls and those types of things, that is the type of citizenship
that I've always believed George Washington was talking about. So something else that I didn't
list here, and really the basis of the title of this talk was citizen or subject. And so towards
the end of his farewell address, George Washington talks about the difference between being a citizen
and being a subject. One of the things that he says is, a true American citizen takes interest
in ownership over the welfare of his or her institutions. A subject counts on other people
to do that for them. Meaning this, if you have a problem with your government, you say, well,
you know what? Someone else will do it. Someone else will vote. Someone else should figure that
out. I'm going to ask these five people over here to fix it. That's a subject in his view.
A citizen actually stands up and does that themselves. Now, I'm not talking about necessarily
protesting and storming capitals or anything like that, but I'm talking about taking the
type of responsibility that's necessary to actually create the America and create the
democracy that you want to live in. One of the first questions that I asked here was,
what does democracy look like? What does it mean to be an American rather than what it should?
So just pausing right there, I would love to get a couple of reactions.
What are your thoughts so far? In your opinion, what does it mean to be a citizen?
Yeah, please. I really hope this works.
For me, it was John Kennedy. Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for
your country. So what she said was, for her, it was Kennedy's speech where he said, ask not
what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country. So the million dollar
question for me is, how do we create that? How do we create that? No, that's an actual question.
Because one of the things that I do is I hold a lot of different discussion spaces for people
in my generation and across generations as well to try to get back at that core message of,
how do we actually repair the system? And how do we get back to the type of America that I think
we'd actually all like to live in, where we feel we have ownership, we have responsibility,
and we can actually build on the type of changes that we'd like to see?
So we had civics classes, but that was it. I don't think that how to be a citizen or how to
participate in a society is modeled in any of the entertainment or optional media that people like
to consume. And I think that the people who create media have a responsibility to model that
for us. Because if we don't have to go to school, only a few people who are interested in it,
basically as a hobby, are going to learn how civics works or remember how civics works on
an ongoing basis. When it comes to the media, I'm afraid they're more interested in promoting
what's interesting to the public instead of what's in the public's interest.
Interesting. So what she said was in terms of the media, right? In terms of the media,
it seems like they're more interested in promoting what is interesting instead of what is in the
public interest. That's an interesting point. Show of hands, don't mean to put everybody like
put anyone in like an age bracket, but can you raise your hand if you took civics during a time
where the nation was at war? I would really love to hear some like, I think one of the ways that
this discussion is important is I'd like to hear how that civics class went differently.
Can someone please talk to that? Now, just mind you, one of the reasons why we're recording this
is we never actually have this talk, right? This never happens. So I want to really try to take
advantage of drawing on past experiences, drawing on what works and what didn't. I'll tell you
another story and then we'll wrap up and then I'll let you guys go back to eating.
So can you hear me? Is this working? So I grew up during the Vietnam War and all my family went to
Vietnam and it was a very unpopular war. However, when your family goes to war, my family's fought
in every war since the Revolutionary War, okay? You have an ownership of the country because your
family has sacrificed to the country. But on the other side of it, you know the pain of war
and you become a person who does not want to go to war. So you believe in detente and negotiating,
knowing that war is the last option. And I used to debate this in college, by the way.
So, you know, what can we do to become a community? How can we get along with the
other parts of the world? So I grew up with the civics being very proud of my country,
but also very reluctant to go to war because I knew the cost of war.
So interesting. So your civics course was love of country,
willing to go to war, but as a last resort. More focused on negotiation.
Like patching on a computer, we grew up knowing our country was not perfect. We'd gone to Vietnam,
right? And even though it was wrong, my whole family, all my 36 first cousins,
so everybody went to war. We paid the price because we loved the country,
but it wasn't exactly a great war, right? I also grew up during civil rights,
right? So it's like a computer patch. You know, we understood it's not a perfect country,
but it's a great country. And that we're going to constantly be improving and patching it versus
just saying we're a perfect country. We're imperfect, but I still think we're the greatest
country in the world. Okay. Anyone else? Okay. So I am a son of a Vietnam veteran.
And by the time I was 18, my friends were going off to fight in Iraq war.
One of the biggest things that I noticed, I'm rural Ohio, cows and fields and all that. And
the big thing about what we were taught then is you were expected to stand up. You had an
obligation as an American to step up and be part of the military, to be proud of your country.
Even though my father had a negative opinion about the Vietnam war and what happened to him
afterwards, he still appreciated and taught me and the importance of actually being active
within the community, within politics, as paying back for the benefits of actually being able to
be here, be an American. That's one of the biggest things I remember going up is, you know,
I remember trying to enlist in the military and not being able to, and being extremely disappointed
of many times trying to enlist and many times getting denied. Right.
And feeling like I was letting the world down.
And now I know with my children, that mindset, that mentality is not there.
Why do you think that is? Because, because here's the thing. So, so a lot of us,
civics for us was schoolhouse rock. Conjunction, junction, you know, what's your function,
all that stuff. You know, it was, you know, I'm the bill sitting on Capitol Hill,
right? That was no, I'm serious. I'm really not exaggerating. That was our civics. And it was,
it was, it was really, it was really interesting to hear about the different perspectives of how
people get educated on being productive members of society. For example, when your classmates are
being drafted, right? That creates an entirely different dynamic, not just on campus, but
internally, right? The, your, your viewpoint, knowing that at any given moment, your, you know,
your son, your, you know, your brother, your classmate, they can be shipped off at any given
moment. And the mindset you have to cultivate to, to accept that, to be proud of that, to support
that, I think is entirely different from what we see today. Now here's the twist. One of the things
that we talked about with George Washington was sort of what it meant to be an American, what it
meant to be a citizen, upholding your institutions, all these other things. We live in a completely
different era now, right? This whole concept of what I think we used to call the American dream
has shifted dramatically in the sense of now the American dream isn't, you know, hey, I want to,
you know, better my country. I want, I want to be involved that, you know, the American dream is
really, ideally, I would like to ascend to a level economically, economically, so that these local
problems don't really affect me as much, right? Why do I care about education when I can, when I
can afford a private tutor? Why would I care? Why would I care about public, you know, education?
And so one of the questions that I ask people is, have we made it too hard to be an American,
right? It is so hard to afford housing. You can't find nutritional food a lot of places.
Politics can be an absolute mess, depending on what you believe. And so all these, all these
different touch points, and then when you add on sort of our reliance on social media platforms,
and this whole digitally driven society that we live in now, all of this traffic that we're trying
to, to, to grasp hold of while supporting our families, you only have 24 hours in, you know,
in the day, right? What time do you have to really investigate individual's politics and
be involved in local elections? Now, this is not a belief of mine. This is, this is a question,
question being like, is it, is it, is it, do you believe it is too hard or become increasingly
and unreasonably difficult to do those little things that democracy requires?
All of you, yeah, that's going to be a, why don't we, why don't we pass it this way?
I would hope not.
It used to be...
Battery change. Gotta love that, right? Yeah, go ahead.
Okay. Okay. The, um, it used to be difficult to actually understand, it used to be difficult
to actually understand the policies or political stuff, but now with the internet and with you,
with all that social media, even though you can withstand the, you had to go through the
toxicity of it, you still can get the information you need. So, I mean, so basically it has improved,
just became more, you had to get tougher skin to deal with it. Okay. There's a lot more details
are there. Just had to find them now. Okay. Go ahead. That's right behind you.
I guess my question or comment is that one of the changes is the move of control from the
local to the federal. So it's much harder to be involved if the decisions are in Washington
versus if it's a local question in your town, much easier to just go to a board meeting and
answer those questions. So that to me has been a change over the past 20, 30 years where more
things have gone to the federal government and then back to states or local areas.
So that's an interesting point. So his comment was the decision-making, the level of decision
making has actually shifted, right? Local politics aren't really as much of an impactful deal anymore
because a lot of those decisions have gone on to the federal level. But isn't that potentially a
symptom of what we're talking about now in terms of getting people involved at sort of that local
baseline level, right? Like if individuals aren't feeling active, if they're not feeling like it is
their responsibility to uphold their institutions both locally and nationally, you sort of have to
rely on what's happening at the federal level. That could very well be a symptom of the very
discussion that we're having because the concept is those two should be able to coexist just well,
and so when I ask the question of have we made it too hard to be an American which is,
you know, I guess it's sort of like, you know, hail Mary, throw a question. It really does draw on
how we begin to learn how to manage, right, all of this different information, all of the
responsibilities, and also, you know, the gentleman here talked about social media and talked about
being able to access the information. Can you trust the information that you see, right?
Is there somebody else?
So my feeling is that the local is what really affects my life. I'm in California. The Board of
Supervisors for my county, their decisions about whether they're going to fix the roads and how
much money they're going to spend on the schools is going to be more impactful on my life than
the stuff that's being done on the national level a lot of times on a day-to-day basis.
I'm not quite sure why people feel like they can't reach that. I can write a letter to my
Board of Supervisors, I can show up at the meetings, and I can have a lot of effect.
Do you do that?
I have shown up at meetings. I haven't said much, but I do show up sometimes when there's
policies I'm interested in, yeah.
That's interesting. Just by a quick show of hands and we'll get to you. Quick show of hands,
how many of you all have ever written your senator?
This week.
You said this week?
What about showing up at county board meetings?
Wait a minute, the FBI is here, we're not answering.
I know, right? It's interesting. So, none of my friends have ever done that,
right? And it was interesting, I'll tell you a really quick story. I was on one of those
very unfortunate plane rides that are six hours long and you feel like you got stuck to somebody
who's going to talk your ear off, usually it's me. And I was, I had the window seat,
we had an older woman who was in the middle and someone who was a male who was about in his 40s
in the aisle. And I actually engaged in this very same conversation with them,
which was dangerous on a six hour flight.
She, full disclosure, she told me she was about 75, 76, he was about 42. And it was
incredibly fascinating to hear the differences in where they thought their responsibility was.
The woman, she went on and on about, you know, some of the stuff we talked about,
about what it was like living through a draft, what it was like when your siblings were going
away to war. And I remember at one point, she talked about writing her senator.
And the gentleman to my left, and I had also echoed this because I had,
I've never written my senator, I'll call though. Gentleman to my left thought that it was
completely unreasonable to do that because there would be no impact whatsoever. And he was just
wasting his time. And we were too far gone. And the woman in the middle seat said something that
I think I will never forget. It was a big part of why I want to talk about this. She quite simply
said, this is your country too. Right? It's not about and this was what really shifted it for me.
She said, you might not feel like you're going to change anything. But you're being selfish
because you're talking about it through the lens of whether or not you're going to see that change.
She looked at it through the lens of, hey, I'm going to do everything I can,
because this isn't really about me. This is about creating a better nation. This is about
creating better policy. And this is about creating a world that moving forward,
individuals are actually living better than I did. I might never see the progress that I'm
advocating for ever. And a conversation that I had actually at the American Council on Germany
with my American colleagues is we feel like there's a real lack in that type of thinking these
days. A lot of people we believe have been making policy decisions based off of the now, which isn't
necessarily bad. But the concept of having forward looking politics in terms of how do we create
a better system for the people coming up really feels like it's virtually deteriorating, right?
I have no idea who has the mic. She was waiting and then we'll, we got about like five minutes.
I've served on a public school board and a public park board, was elected. And when it comes to
going to supervisors meetings or county commissioner meetings or school board meetings,
you got to look at the budget. It is so driven by federal funds that they really can't make
decisions anymore at the local level, because if they don't agree with what the federal fund
is requiring, they don't get that money. Right, right, right. It's a great point. So
just, just to kind of actually, we'll go right behind you and then I'll ask one more question.
I write to my local officials because I've learned that I get personal responses from them. And I tell
all of my friends that, but most of the systems that we interact with in our lives seem to be,
they're designed so that you can say something, but you'll never get a response. Whether that's,
you know, an automated phone tree, whether that's a company policy that has no nuance
for exceptional circumstances, whether that is parts of, of government feedback processes that
like the point seems to be listening, but not actually acting on that feedback. I think that
a lot of my friends have the perception that this is designed to mollify them instead of actually
being something that's honestly soliciting their input. Very interesting. Yeah.
So just before we turn around a little too, too much, we're talking a lot about why you should
get involved. And the people that, that do spend, spend time going to these meetings and writing
their, their, their representatives. Does anyone not have any interest in that whatsoever? Like,
is there anyone here? Hopefully this is safe. Hopefully this is a safe space. Does anyone just
completely disagree? I'm only asking because part of, part of how we make progress is,
is understanding the other side of this. Understanding someone who very well might
say, listen, I'm a single parent. I've got two jobs. I don't have time for this.
Anyone feel that way? Okay, cool. Yeah. Can we, no, no, no. Okay. Okay. Can you get it?
Does anyone want to speak to it? Yeah.
I want to go ahead and speak to the idea that maybe now there's less,
there's less leeway for you to go out and, you know, participate in ways that don't, you know,
to the way you were talking about before, you know, people are trying to achieve that higher
standard of living so that they can sort of escape these problems. You know, I live in an HOA,
it's always a problem trying to find people to run for the board because it's a thankless job
that everybody wants results from. But if you do something that people don't agree with,
you get pilloried. At a local level, there's always the risk that if you act in a way that
some group doesn't like, they'll go and dox you. And there is a cost to stepping forward and
volunteering on a local basis because people perceive that for whether it's true or not,
what you're doing on a local level has an impact on a state or national level now.
Social media has basically made every local race a national race in some cases.
So there's a high cost to participating, whether it's a cost in terms of time
or money. I mean, how many people want to serve on a jury now? How many places actually pay you
anything to serve on a jury? That's a cost. That's actually one of your responsibilities
as an American citizen, is to serve as a juror, to allow people to have the choice of opting for
a jury with a trial with a jury of your peers. These are all part and parcel of your responsibility.
A lot of people want the benefits but are not willing to put in the time. But part of that
may be because the cost is very high, like you were talking about. If you're a single parent
with two kids and you're barely scraping by, how can you sacrifice a week or two to do jury duty?
Yeah. Can we get the gentleman here? Why is it so hard to be an American?
Why is it so hard? Why is it so hard? Right? And I mean, you know, there's a lot of variance in
opinion in terms of whether or not it is and isn't difficult, you know, right? No, no, no,
I'm not saying you're right or wrong. You know, I'm saying, well, I think part of it has a lot
to do with time. Right? You know, when you're dealing with things like inflation, when you're
dealing with competing interests, we have the whole situation going on with China right now.
There's so much happening that, again, you're still limited to that 24 hours in the day.
Right? Now, it doesn't mean that should be an excuse. But if we have kind of come to an
agreement that it has become a little bit more difficult in terms of the distractions, in terms
of how you manage your day, how you manage your year, how to deal with sort of the ebbs and flows
of just being in society these days, the question then becomes, what do we do about it?
And not to make this dark, can we do anything about it?
Let me just say this. One second.
Yeah, let me just say, I think it's a lot perception. I was just at a fundraiser for
Tim Scott, who I really like a lot from South Carolina. Tim Scott grew up at a time when if
you were a black man, you couldn't walk on the sidewalk. You had to get off so a white man could
walk by. His father told him when he was young, he says, you can be bitter or you can be better.
I thought, boy, that sums it up. So in the kind of businesses that I was in and the time I was in,
I remember walking into a room and all the men in the room thought I was the secretary.
I was the negotiator for the oil company. So I got everybody coffee because they asked me to.
And then I sat down and I negotiated the contract of which apparently they hadn't read because the
clause allowed something they weren't aware of. Anyway, long story short, we've come a long way,
baby. So you can be bitter or you can be better. I think part of it's a mindset.
You know, I used to have 140 reps when I retired from my other company. And I could give somebody
just crap territory and they always made it happen. And then other people never had what
they needed. I think a lot of it's a mindset. We're still a great country. We're evolving,
right? Jobs said if you're not evolving, you're going out of business.
So get out of your pity party, pick yourself up by the bootstraps. We have a great country
and make yourself better. Stop being bitter.
Perspective, a common one too, right? The counter argument that a lot of people would say is,
well, that's easier said than done, right? Which is which is a huge scapegoat for a lot of people.
There's that's the other. That's the other side of it. Hold on one second.
What I was going to say was that we're not even we're talking about participating,
but we're not even haven't even scratched the surface with voting. The huge number of people
who don't even show up to vote, you know, let alone participate in making the government work.
So, you know, can we how can we increase voter participation, for example?
How do you make people want to, right? You know, the reason why I decided to have this
conversation here is because we're not looking at the problem right here, right? We're in the
voting village. We're literally here listening, discussing, addressing one of the pillars that is
fundamental to protecting this institution that we call voting, elections, democracy,
however you want to break that down. But the question is, I want to see more of this.
And one of the reasons why we talk why we spend so much time here is because at the end of this,
people are going to draft a report on what happened here today. And we're going to try to
turn that report into policy and encourage people to protect their systems and to invest
in better safeguards to protect their elections. That takes work. And it takes people to actually
believe that this is worth saving. It takes people believing that they have a responsibility,
an obligation, a duty, and one that they feel here. And I don't know if we're in a place yet
where we've figured out a mechanism by which we can spread that message to where people actually
interpret that, they digest it, and they begin to live and breathe it. So I'll end with this.
I think there's a lot of hope. I think there's a lot of opportunity. I am incredibly grateful
that we were able to have a discussion like this, one that is one of the first that I've been a part
of. I don't know if DEF CON's ever done one like this on a subject like it. And I really appreciate
everyone's willingness to engage. The next task is to take this discussion home with you and
actually think about what needs to change. Whether it's civics, whether it is giving people time off
so they can go vote, whether it's all these seemingly little things to make this process
that we talk about being an American not so much easier, but more manageable to navigate.
I think as we begin to rely more on technology, as politics begins to take more of a hold over
this next couple of years, it requires people to spend more time thinking both logically and just
generally about the issues and being able to question what they're reading and what they're
and then to be able to act on it. So with that, thank you so much and I hope to see you guys soon.