WEBVTT 00:11.040 --> 00:15.220 So first and foremost, this is really supposed to be interactive. 00:15.520 --> 00:20.000 I'm going to try a different style of presenting for our section here at the Voting Village. 00:20.000 --> 00:23.140 And there should be a microphone right over there. 00:23.360 --> 00:27.820 If anyone, you guys are brave enough to grab it as I'm asking different questions. 00:28.440 --> 00:30.220 I would love to hear you comment. 00:30.220 --> 00:42.360 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. 00:43.200 --> 00:48.000 So this is just to set the stage, let you guys know where I'm hoping to go. 00:48.380 --> 00:52.080 We're going to talk a little bit about what it means to be an American, obviously. 00:52.080 --> 00:56.400 I have a laundry list of questions for you all. 00:57.080 --> 00:58.520 This is so weird. 00:59.800 --> 01:07.220 And really, again, trying to establish a framework for how we define this thing called democracy in 2023. 01:07.720 --> 01:14.980 We have technology intersecting with these nasty laws, a patchwork system of privacy laws at the state level. 01:14.980 --> 01:20.860 And what I really want to try to get a feel for is what you all think this democracy should actually look like. 01:20.900 --> 01:25.720 Now, of course, the natural question is, well, Kendall, why the hell are we talking about that here? 01:26.360 --> 01:33.300 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. 01:33.360 --> 01:39.200 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. 01:39.200 --> 01:43.740 So it's probably all over the place, talking about blockchain, which is not really what I do anymore. 01:43.860 --> 01:51.260 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. 01:51.400 --> 01:54.720 And I really assist in the area of privacy law compliance. 01:54.720 --> 02:05.020 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. 02:05.460 --> 02:13.640 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. 02:13.820 --> 02:24.080 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. 02:25.360 --> 02:26.360 And the youngest. 02:26.360 --> 02:27.180 So there you go. 02:27.180 --> 02:27.780 Right? 02:28.400 --> 02:30.160 I'm also a professional track athlete. 02:30.160 --> 02:31.000 I'm a long jumper. 02:31.000 --> 02:32.860 Every day for me is a day at the beach. 02:32.860 --> 02:36.480 So the goal is Olympic trials next year, and hopefully Paris. 02:36.480 --> 02:40.880 And then I can finally hang these spikes up and never see a pair of running shoes ever again. 02:40.880 --> 02:42.720 I swear to God, I can't wait. 02:43.640 --> 02:52.720 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. 02:52.720 --> 02:57.320 This was a post-war transatlantic effort to sort of address transatlantic policy issues. 02:57.320 --> 03:08.860 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? 03:08.860 --> 03:14.040 Everything from technology, law and policy, to government, to how do we get along better? 03:14.040 --> 03:17.560 And how do we become the leaders of the world that we really hope to be? 03:17.680 --> 03:20.300 And so I hope to kind of weave that in here today. 03:20.300 --> 03:25.240 And then there's also a bunch of other boring stuff you guys probably want to know about, but please ask me. 03:26.040 --> 03:29.640 So here's what this is, or here's what this is not, right? 03:29.680 --> 03:31.380 I'm not here to lecture you. 03:31.380 --> 03:33.540 I don't think anyone really wants to hear about the law. 03:33.540 --> 03:34.800 I certainly don't. 03:35.080 --> 03:40.160 This is not going to be a broad discussion of election technology. 03:40.160 --> 03:41.660 And we spent a lot of time on that today. 03:41.660 --> 03:45.480 I will leave that to people who are way more intelligent than I am. 03:45.480 --> 03:48.500 And we'll be talking about that basically all week. 03:49.220 --> 03:53.900 This is also not something that is going to be substantially about racial identity. 03:53.900 --> 03:58.180 I'm not here talking to you as a black male with an afro and a picket. 03:58.180 --> 03:59.980 I should probably take that out. 04:01.380 --> 04:03.140 It's really not what this is. 04:03.140 --> 04:18.720 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. 04:18.880 --> 04:22.280 And this also isn't about personal politics, right? 04:22.280 --> 04:24.840 I really don't care who the hell you voted for. 04:24.840 --> 04:26.300 I really don't. 04:26.300 --> 04:37.960 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. 04:38.320 --> 04:42.980 And part of what I want to draw on for this discussion is, how did we get here? 04:43.380 --> 04:46.040 How come we can't do that anymore? 04:46.040 --> 04:48.000 And how can we fix it, right? 04:48.380 --> 04:52.620 What this is, like I was saying, we are going to do a bit of problem solving. 04:52.640 --> 04:57.880 Problem solving in the sense of, again, like how do we create a better system for effective communication? 04:57.940 --> 05:12.660 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? 05:13.600 --> 05:16.560 Maybe it's a bit of a reality check, maybe not. 05:16.560 --> 05:29.900 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? 05:30.140 --> 05:31.360 And who knows? 05:31.420 --> 05:40.900 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. 05:41.040 --> 05:51.880 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. 05:53.700 --> 05:56.640 Okay, so a couple questions. 05:57.200 --> 05:59.500 These are some things I want you guys to think about. 05:59.500 --> 06:07.360 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? 06:08.780 --> 06:10.620 And this is an important question, right? 06:10.620 --> 06:14.960 If you notice, I'm asking you what does it mean, not what it should mean. 06:15.260 --> 06:24.400 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? 06:24.400 --> 06:34.100 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? 06:34.360 --> 06:37.060 What does a functioning democracy require, right? 06:37.060 --> 06:43.200 One of the things we talk about in this country is how much we uphold the system of freedom and how democracy is important. 06:43.240 --> 06:52.780 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. 06:52.780 --> 06:58.460 But one of the things that never gets talked about is what democracy actually requires, right? 06:58.460 --> 07:04.020 It's really, in my opinion, it's not this system that allows individuals to be passive. 07:04.020 --> 07:05.140 You have to be active. 07:05.140 --> 07:06.380 You have to be proactive. 07:06.900 --> 07:11.400 And I want to sort of understand from you all's point of view, what does that mean? 07:11.400 --> 07:19.280 It means different things to different people, depending on where you're coming from, your demographics, and obviously the generation you came up in. 07:19.300 --> 07:23.200 And then finally, how do you find your place in society? 07:23.380 --> 07:24.420 That's a typo. 07:24.420 --> 07:25.440 That is hilarious. 07:26.260 --> 07:41.140 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. 07:41.140 --> 07:42.460 What does the future look like? 07:42.460 --> 07:49.680 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? 07:49.760 --> 08:02.980 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. 08:04.820 --> 08:08.440 So you guys, like, does anyone not know who this is? 08:09.860 --> 08:10.860 George H.W. 08:10.860 --> 08:11.220 Bush. 08:11.220 --> 08:13.200 George Bush, senior, right? 08:13.520 --> 08:15.960 So very young one. 08:15.960 --> 08:22.260 I picked this one on purpose because if I had picked, probably a more recent one, you guys would have been slammed up. 08:22.260 --> 08:28.020 So the 41st president of the United States passes away in November 30th, 2018. 08:28.240 --> 08:30.160 Why do I have his picture up here? 08:30.160 --> 08:31.500 Let me tell you a quick story. 08:31.660 --> 08:40.120 So I'm from San Francisco, California, a small borough in San Francisco, Ingleside Terrace, also grew up in part of Bernal Heights. 08:40.120 --> 08:42.460 I was never really politically engaged growing up. 08:42.460 --> 08:44.100 Neither were my parents, right? 08:44.420 --> 08:52.820 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. 08:53.280 --> 09:00.000 And when George Bush senior died, something really weird happened to me, right? 09:00.000 --> 09:03.720 My family, myself, we were raised to be Democrats, right? 09:03.720 --> 09:11.320 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. 09:11.380 --> 09:13.840 So he passes away in 2018. 09:14.200 --> 09:20.900 And I remember watching the funeral procession and I was like viscerally upset. 09:21.260 --> 09:23.400 And I had no idea why. 09:23.400 --> 09:24.300 No idea why. 09:24.300 --> 09:25.680 I had never met him. 09:25.680 --> 09:28.860 I had never really followed his viewpoints or anything like that. 09:28.860 --> 09:31.620 But I remember feeling actually heartbroken. 09:31.620 --> 09:35.180 And it took me about two weeks to put my finger on it. 09:35.180 --> 09:36.620 And I'll tell you what it was. 09:37.020 --> 09:44.860 When he passed away, for me, it symbolized a true changing of the guard. 09:44.940 --> 09:55.360 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. 09:55.840 --> 09:59.900 But you didn't really have this deep fear, right? 10:00.160 --> 10:06.480 Mainly because at the end of the day, you felt like there was still a place for you in the country. 10:06.580 --> 10:14.040 You felt that even though individuals had a different lens, they had a different viewpoint, they had a different approach to progress. 10:14.520 --> 10:18.120 Those individuals still wanted what was best for you. 10:18.120 --> 10:22.640 The only difference was what they thought was best for you was different. 10:22.740 --> 10:23.740 That's it. 10:24.200 --> 10:32.600 When he passed away, for me, at least this is my personal opinion, it felt like the last of a dying breed. 10:32.840 --> 10:37.600 And I try not to use the word patriot because I know that triggers people sometimes. 10:37.600 --> 10:39.020 Again, I don't really care. 10:39.540 --> 10:46.800 But for me, he was a real symbol of one of the last patriots that my generation remembers. 10:47.200 --> 10:54.020 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. 10:54.020 --> 11:02.720 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. 11:02.940 --> 11:07.460 Because the love for the country, the love for the people within that country was still there. 11:07.460 --> 11:11.240 And that really was the impetus for my discussion. 11:11.240 --> 11:15.800 Because I wanted to figure out how we restore that. 11:15.840 --> 11:20.460 How we get back to this place where at the end of the day, there really is a place for everybody. 11:20.460 --> 11:33.160 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. 11:34.340 --> 11:35.700 Any questions so far? 11:35.700 --> 11:36.640 Comments? 11:36.640 --> 11:38.420 Yeah, no, please. 11:38.420 --> 11:38.700 Seriously. 11:42.240 --> 11:46.160 He was the last president who served in the military. 11:46.400 --> 11:55.140 So one idea I've been playing with is should we have some kind of required service for everybody? 11:55.140 --> 12:05.440 Because we don't, I mean, our generation has lost that feeling that we are all working towards the security of our nation. 12:06.030 --> 12:07.180 Very interesting point. 12:07.180 --> 12:11.300 So what she said was, he was the last, I think you said he was the last? 12:14.300 --> 12:16.980 I personally cannot verify that. 12:16.980 --> 12:19.920 But let's, but let's, your point is still made, right? 12:19.920 --> 12:33.880 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. 12:34.060 --> 12:38.780 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. 12:38.780 --> 12:41.300 So I'm going to, like a bit of a spoiler. 12:41.300 --> 12:42.720 So I was born in 91, right? 12:42.720 --> 12:45.060 My birthday was July 24, just turned 32. 12:45.060 --> 12:45.800 Yay, me. 12:47.200 --> 12:51.640 And one of the things that I want to talk about is this concept of civics. 12:52.280 --> 13:11.300 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, 13:11.300 --> 13:23.980 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. 13:24.020 --> 13:40.020 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, 13:40.020 --> 13:47.500 but there was a different way that we were approached in terms of understanding our role within this, this democracy, right? 13:47.540 --> 13:51.520 One of the examples that I use is I was on a plane. 13:51.520 --> 13:53.840 Actually, no, we won't use use that example. 13:53.840 --> 14:02.560 But my parents, my grandparents, they were talking about growing up in an era where we were involved in very substantial international conflicts. 14:03.140 --> 14:14.300 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? 14:14.300 --> 14:16.120 How do you build the American citizen? 14:16.220 --> 14:19.920 And for me, what I found so far is a lot of it has to do with civics. 14:19.940 --> 14:28.980 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. 14:29.160 --> 14:33.680 Can someone talk about what they had in civics class, like, like that experience? 14:35.380 --> 14:36.400 Can you? 14:37.880 --> 14:53.000 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, 14:53.000 --> 14:57.200 you know, biased or anything like that. 14:57.200 --> 15:02.620 It was just like a dispassionate portrayal of the structure of the organization of the country. 15:03.000 --> 15:04.420 See if I can turn this up. 15:08.600 --> 15:09.620 We can't hear him. 15:09.620 --> 15:11.180 I was trying to get everybody to hear him. 15:11.340 --> 15:12.020 It's okay. 15:12.200 --> 15:12.500 All right. 15:12.500 --> 15:15.180 So we're going to switch gears here. 15:15.720 --> 15:17.060 So I'm gonna show you another president. 15:17.060 --> 15:19.260 We all know George Washington, right? 15:19.740 --> 15:25.420 Part of what I'm gonna talk about here is sort of a difference in approach. 15:25.780 --> 15:37.100 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. 15:37.100 --> 15:42.000 I'm sort of like the black Nicolas Cage in National Treasure, right? 15:42.640 --> 15:57.140 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. 15:57.140 --> 15:58.880 I actually get to handle them. 15:59.040 --> 16:00.360 And I get to check this out. 16:00.360 --> 16:02.800 I get to read the rest of the sentence. 16:03.760 --> 16:04.520 You see what I mean? 16:04.520 --> 16:06.260 You see where I'm going here, right? 16:06.860 --> 16:07.320 Exactly. 16:07.320 --> 16:08.740 Because I can read cursive, right? 16:09.460 --> 16:21.700 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. 16:21.820 --> 16:24.200 We get these soundbites that says, well, they said this. 16:24.200 --> 16:32.960 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. 16:32.960 --> 16:37.080 Some of that, by the way, is Benjamin Franklin himself, actually, oddly enough. 16:37.260 --> 16:39.260 And so I have two pictures here. 16:39.940 --> 16:41.600 Again, Antique and Rare Book Dealer. 16:41.600 --> 16:55.100 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. 16:55.620 --> 17:00.400 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. 17:00.880 --> 17:04.760 And I really wanted to talk about George Washington's Farewell Address. 17:04.820 --> 17:08.620 So it's interesting. 17:08.800 --> 17:13.000 So George Washington, he has led this growing nation. 17:13.320 --> 17:15.020 He has been a military leader. 17:15.180 --> 17:23.680 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. 17:23.860 --> 17:25.740 And here he is about to leave. 17:25.780 --> 17:29.380 No one wants him to leave, but he feels like it's his duty to leave. 17:29.660 --> 17:32.900 Now, the question is, so why am I talking about his Farewell Address? 17:32.900 --> 17:56.320 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. 17:56.460 --> 18:00.940 So I put a couple, just a couple of stanzas here just to kind of give people a picture of it. 18:01.100 --> 18:10.680 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? 18:10.800 --> 18:13.680 This should be something we should actually teach, right? 18:13.700 --> 18:19.680 Because there's this concept of ownership that so many of us don't actually get, right? 18:19.680 --> 18:25.720 Now, what happens when you feel like you don't have ownership of where you, of really where you belong? 18:25.720 --> 18:30.700 Well, I think a lot of people begin to take a backseat to getting involved. 18:31.020 --> 18:38.160 I think they begin to rely on other people to advocate for the rights and privileges that we should all be advocating for. 18:38.160 --> 18:39.740 How many of you guys are poll workers? 18:40.140 --> 18:42.960 How many of you guys work the polls, like work the voting polls, right? 18:43.280 --> 18:45.300 Round of applause for you guys that do that. 18:45.300 --> 18:46.180 That is awesome. 18:46.180 --> 18:50.080 It's a very thankless job and it's very necessary, but that's a perfect example. 18:50.260 --> 18:51.240 That's a perfect example. 18:51.240 --> 19:03.380 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. 19:03.420 --> 19:11.680 So something else that I didn't list here, and really the basis of the title of this talk was citizen or subject. 19:12.120 --> 19:19.860 And so towards the end of his farewell address, George Washington talks about the difference between being a citizen and being a subject. 19:19.880 --> 19:28.520 One of the things that he says is, a true American citizen takes interest in ownership over the welfare of his or her institutions. 19:29.300 --> 19:32.260 A subject counts on other people to do that for them. 19:32.340 --> 19:38.600 Meaning this, if you have a problem with your government, you say, well, you know what? 19:38.600 --> 19:39.780 Someone else will do it. 19:39.780 --> 19:40.980 Someone else will vote. 19:41.320 --> 19:42.560 Someone else should figure that out. 19:42.680 --> 19:45.700 I'm going to ask these five people over here to fix it. 19:45.740 --> 19:47.480 That's a subject in his view. 19:47.480 --> 19:50.520 A citizen actually stands up and does that themselves. 19:50.560 --> 20:04.480 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. 20:04.480 --> 20:08.920 One of the first questions that I asked here was, what does democracy look like? 20:08.920 --> 20:12.440 What does it mean to be an American rather than what it should? 20:12.440 --> 20:16.820 So just pausing right there, I would love to get a couple of reactions. 20:16.980 --> 20:18.540 What are your thoughts so far? 20:18.560 --> 20:21.540 In your opinion, what does it mean to be a citizen? 20:23.640 --> 20:24.900 Yeah, please. 20:25.020 --> 20:26.880 I really hope this works. 20:29.320 --> 20:32.920 For me, it was John Kennedy. 20:32.920 --> 20:37.140 Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country. 20:37.520 --> 20:47.740 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. 20:48.060 --> 20:51.360 So the million dollar question for me is, how do we create that? 20:52.020 --> 20:53.120 How do we create that? 20:53.120 --> 20:55.020 No, that's an actual question. 20:55.020 --> 21:07.220 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? 21:07.380 --> 21:17.480 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? 21:20.400 --> 21:24.180 So we had civics classes, but that was it. 21:24.180 --> 21:33.200 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. 21:33.320 --> 21:36.900 And I think that the people who create media have a responsibility to model that for us. 21:36.900 --> 21:46.880 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. 21:48.880 --> 22:00.980 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. 22:00.980 --> 22:01.600 Interesting. 22:01.600 --> 22:04.040 So what she said was in terms of the media, right? 22:04.120 --> 22:12.000 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. 22:12.100 --> 22:13.320 That's an interesting point. 22:14.500 --> 22:22.660 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? 22:23.500 --> 22:33.140 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. 22:33.780 --> 22:35.600 Can someone please talk to that? 22:35.740 --> 22:42.100 Now, just mind you, one of the reasons why we're recording this is we never actually have this talk, right? 22:42.100 --> 22:43.540 This never happens. 22:43.540 --> 22:48.980 So I want to really try to take advantage of drawing on past experiences, drawing on what works and what didn't. 22:48.980 --> 22:53.580 I'll tell you another story and then we'll wrap up and then I'll let you guys go back to eating. 22:57.290 --> 22:58.810 So can you hear me? 22:58.810 --> 22:59.430 Is this working? 22:59.430 --> 23:05.550 So I grew up during the Vietnam War and all my family went to Vietnam and it was a very unpopular war. 23:05.730 --> 23:13.090 However, when your family goes to war, my family's fought in every war since the Revolutionary War, okay? 23:13.250 --> 23:18.450 You have an ownership of the country because your family has sacrificed to the country. 23:18.450 --> 23:25.190 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. 23:25.190 --> 23:30.290 So you believe in detente and negotiating, knowing that war is the last option. 23:30.290 --> 23:32.830 And I used to debate this in college, by the way. 23:32.830 --> 23:36.190 So, you know, what can we do to become a community? 23:36.190 --> 23:38.750 How can we get along with the other parts of the world? 23:38.870 --> 23:46.730 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. 23:46.730 --> 23:47.550 So interesting. 23:47.550 --> 23:54.950 So your civics course was love of country, willing to go to war, but as a last resort. 23:55.230 --> 23:57.910 More focused on negotiation. 24:08.420 --> 24:12.780 Like patching on a computer, we grew up knowing our country was not perfect. 24:12.780 --> 24:14.560 We'd gone to Vietnam, right? 24:14.580 --> 24:22.120 And even though it was wrong, my whole family, all my 36 first cousins, so everybody went to war. 24:22.120 --> 24:27.660 We paid the price because we loved the country, but it wasn't exactly a great war, right? 24:27.660 --> 24:30.280 I also grew up during civil rights, right? 24:30.280 --> 24:31.980 So it's like a computer patch. 24:31.980 --> 24:35.420 You know, we understood it's not a perfect country, but it's a great country. 24:35.420 --> 24:41.560 And that we're going to constantly be improving and patching it versus just saying we're a perfect country. 24:41.560 --> 24:45.500 We're imperfect, but I still think we're the greatest country in the world. 24:45.600 --> 24:45.740 Okay. 24:45.740 --> 24:47.020 Anyone else? 24:47.520 --> 24:47.760 Okay. 24:56.240 --> 24:59.780 So I am a son of a Vietnam veteran. 25:01.560 --> 25:07.600 And by the time I was 18, my friends were going off to fight in Iraq war. 25:07.900 --> 25:13.900 One of the biggest things that I noticed, I'm rural Ohio, cows and fields and all that. 25:14.000 --> 25:20.500 And the big thing about what we were taught then is you were expected to stand up. 25:20.500 --> 25:29.300 You had an obligation as an American to step up and be part of the military, to be proud of your country. 25:29.960 --> 25:58.720 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, 25:58.720 --> 26:00.300 be an American. 26:02.100 --> 26:17.640 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. 26:17.640 --> 26:18.160 Right. 26:19.480 --> 26:22.080 And feeling like I was letting the world down. 26:23.420 --> 26:30.660 And now I know with my children, that mindset, that mentality is not there. 26:30.660 --> 26:32.200 Why do you think that is? 26:34.100 --> 26:35.540 Because, because here's the thing. 26:35.540 --> 26:39.180 So, so a lot of us, civics for us was schoolhouse rock. 26:39.380 --> 26:41.840 Conjunction, junction, you know, what's your function, all that stuff. 26:41.840 --> 26:45.740 You know, it was, you know, I'm the bill sitting on Capitol Hill, right? 26:45.780 --> 26:47.360 That was no, I'm serious. 26:47.420 --> 26:49.020 I'm really not exaggerating. 26:49.020 --> 26:50.220 That was our civics. 26:50.220 --> 27:01.180 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. 27:01.180 --> 27:05.500 For example, when your classmates are being drafted, right? 27:05.600 --> 27:10.160 That creates an entirely different dynamic, not just on campus, but internally, right? 27:10.160 --> 27:17.960 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. 27:17.960 --> 27:26.900 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. 27:26.960 --> 27:28.160 Now here's the twist. 27:29.120 --> 27:37.740 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. 27:38.020 --> 27:41.740 We live in a completely different era now, right? 27:41.840 --> 27:51.700 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. 27:51.700 --> 28:02.880 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? 28:02.880 --> 28:06.920 Why do I care about education when I can, when I can afford a private tutor? 28:07.120 --> 28:08.360 Why would I care? 28:08.400 --> 28:11.000 Why would I care about public, you know, education? 28:11.000 --> 28:18.060 And so one of the questions that I ask people is, have we made it too hard to be an American, right? 28:18.060 --> 28:21.160 It is so hard to afford housing. 28:21.260 --> 28:24.380 You can't find nutritional food a lot of places. 28:25.180 --> 28:28.640 Politics can be an absolute mess, depending on what you believe. 28:28.780 --> 28:44.720 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, 28:44.720 --> 28:47.300 you only have 24 hours in, you know, in the day, right? 28:47.300 --> 28:53.840 What time do you have to really investigate individual's politics and be involved in local elections? 28:53.900 --> 28:55.480 Now, this is not a belief of mine. 28:55.480 --> 29:07.980 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? 29:09.040 --> 29:12.920 All of you, yeah, that's going to be a, why don't we, why don't we pass it this way? 29:12.920 --> 29:16.080 I would hope not. 29:17.540 --> 29:18.500 It used to be... 29:30.280 --> 29:31.700 Battery change. 29:32.260 --> 29:33.820 Gotta love that, right? 29:42.230 --> 29:43.490 Yeah, go ahead. 29:48.330 --> 29:49.290 Okay. 29:51.790 --> 29:52.750 Okay. 29:53.010 --> 30:09.630 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, 30:09.630 --> 30:12.430 you still can get the information you need. 30:13.370 --> 30:21.310 So, I mean, so basically it has improved, just became more, you had to get tougher skin to deal with it. 30:21.370 --> 30:22.170 Okay. 30:22.170 --> 30:23.650 There's a lot more details are there. 30:23.650 --> 30:24.910 Just had to find them now. 30:24.910 --> 30:25.530 Okay. 30:25.570 --> 30:26.090 Go ahead. 30:26.090 --> 30:27.390 That's right behind you. 30:27.950 --> 30:36.810 I guess my question or comment is that one of the changes is the move of control from the local to the federal. 30:36.810 --> 30:47.030 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. 30:47.030 --> 30:57.190 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. 30:57.370 --> 30:58.930 So that's an interesting point. 30:58.930 --> 31:04.390 So his comment was the decision-making, the level of decision making has actually shifted, right? 31:04.390 --> 31:12.930 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. 31:13.030 --> 31:20.850 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? 31:20.850 --> 31:35.130 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. 31:35.350 --> 31:55.270 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, 31:55.270 --> 31:58.150 you know, hail Mary, throw a question. 31:58.330 --> 32:13.630 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. 32:13.770 --> 32:17.110 Can you trust the information that you see, right? 32:18.130 --> 32:19.870 Is there somebody else? 32:23.300 --> 32:28.040 So my feeling is that the local is what really affects my life. 32:28.040 --> 32:29.500 I'm in California. 32:29.660 --> 32:47.040 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. 32:47.040 --> 32:51.100 I'm not quite sure why people feel like they can't reach that. 32:51.340 --> 32:57.500 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. 32:58.200 --> 32:59.180 Do you do that? 33:00.900 --> 33:02.900 I have shown up at meetings. 33:02.900 --> 33:09.700 I haven't said much, but I do show up sometimes when there's policies I'm interested in, yeah. 33:09.780 --> 33:10.260 That's interesting. 33:10.260 --> 33:11.840 Just by a quick show of hands and we'll get to you. 33:11.840 --> 33:14.340 Quick show of hands, how many of you all have ever written your senator? 33:16.080 --> 33:17.180 This week. 33:18.180 --> 33:19.420 You said this week? 33:21.000 --> 33:24.340 What about showing up at county board meetings? 33:24.340 --> 33:26.720 Wait a minute, the FBI is here, we're not answering. 33:27.640 --> 33:28.740 I know, right? 33:28.740 --> 33:29.440 It's interesting. 33:29.440 --> 33:33.820 So, none of my friends have ever done that, right? 33:33.820 --> 33:37.400 And it was interesting, I'll tell you a really quick story. 33:37.400 --> 33:46.300 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. 33:46.620 --> 33:57.480 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. 33:57.480 --> 34:03.660 And I actually engaged in this very same conversation with them, which was dangerous on a six hour flight. 34:04.660 --> 34:09.600 She, full disclosure, she told me she was about 75, 76, he was about 42. 34:09.880 --> 34:17.220 And it was incredibly fascinating to hear the differences in where they thought their responsibility was. 34:17.240 --> 34:26.100 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. 34:26.580 --> 34:29.640 And I remember at one point, she talked about writing her senator. 34:30.000 --> 34:35.040 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. 34:35.880 --> 34:42.520 Gentleman to my left thought that it was completely unreasonable to do that because there would be no impact whatsoever. 34:42.620 --> 34:44.400 And he was just wasting his time. 34:44.500 --> 34:46.240 And we were too far gone. 34:46.680 --> 34:50.600 And the woman in the middle seat said something that I think I will never forget. 34:50.600 --> 34:53.960 It was a big part of why I want to talk about this. 34:54.200 --> 34:59.300 She quite simply said, this is your country too. 34:59.780 --> 35:00.040 Right? 35:00.160 --> 35:04.000 It's not about and this was what really shifted it for me. 35:04.000 --> 35:09.160 She said, you might not feel like you're going to change anything. 35:09.320 --> 35:14.860 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. 35:16.240 --> 35:23.160 She looked at it through the lens of, hey, I'm going to do everything I can, because this isn't really about me. 35:23.160 --> 35:25.320 This is about creating a better nation. 35:25.320 --> 35:27.260 This is about creating better policy. 35:27.260 --> 35:33.260 And this is about creating a world that moving forward, individuals are actually living better than I did. 35:33.260 --> 35:37.360 I might never see the progress that I'm advocating for ever. 35:37.680 --> 35:47.780 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. 35:47.780 --> 35:53.880 A lot of people we believe have been making policy decisions based off of the now, which isn't necessarily bad. 35:53.880 --> 36:03.600 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? 36:03.980 --> 36:05.900 I have no idea who has the mic. 36:05.900 --> 36:08.940 She was waiting and then we'll, we got about like five minutes. 36:09.240 --> 36:13.600 I've served on a public school board and a public park board, was elected. 36:13.740 --> 36:21.500 And when it comes to going to supervisors meetings or county commissioner meetings or school board meetings, you got to look at the budget. 36:21.720 --> 36:37.560 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. 36:37.560 --> 36:38.220 Right, right, right. 36:38.220 --> 36:39.020 It's a great point. 36:39.020 --> 36:43.480 So just, just to kind of actually, we'll go right behind you and then I'll ask one more question. 36:44.780 --> 36:49.600 I write to my local officials because I've learned that I get personal responses from them. 36:49.600 --> 37:01.180 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. 37:01.180 --> 37:17.880 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. 37:17.880 --> 37:26.820 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. 37:26.820 --> 37:27.880 Very interesting. 37:29.940 --> 37:30.400 Yeah. 37:31.540 --> 37:40.420 So just before we turn around a little too, too much, we're talking a lot about why you should get involved. 37:40.580 --> 37:47.420 And the people that, that do spend, spend time going to these meetings and writing their, their, their representatives. 37:47.420 --> 37:50.980 Does anyone not have any interest in that whatsoever? 37:51.160 --> 37:52.480 Like, is there anyone here? 37:52.480 --> 37:53.560 Hopefully this is safe. 37:53.560 --> 37:55.180 Hopefully this is a safe space. 37:55.180 --> 37:57.080 Does anyone just completely disagree? 37:57.900 --> 38:03.700 I'm only asking because part of, part of how we make progress is, is understanding the other side of this. 38:04.060 --> 38:08.260 Understanding someone who very well might say, listen, I'm a single parent. 38:08.260 --> 38:09.740 I've got two jobs. 38:09.740 --> 38:11.340 I don't have time for this. 38:12.500 --> 38:13.940 Anyone feel that way? 38:14.640 --> 38:16.060 Okay, cool. 38:16.060 --> 38:16.660 Yeah. 38:16.900 --> 38:18.560 Can we, no, no, no. 38:18.560 --> 38:18.940 Okay. 38:18.940 --> 38:19.480 Okay. 38:19.480 --> 38:20.300 Can you get it? 38:20.300 --> 38:21.720 Does anyone want to speak to it? 38:22.540 --> 38:23.100 Yeah. 38:25.980 --> 38:47.160 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. 38:47.720 --> 38:57.180 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. 38:57.180 --> 39:00.560 But if you do something that people don't agree with, you get pilloried. 39:01.100 --> 39:08.380 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. 39:08.560 --> 39:22.280 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. 39:22.760 --> 39:27.200 Social media has basically made every local race a national race in some cases. 39:27.260 --> 39:33.200 So there's a high cost to participating, whether it's a cost in terms of time or money. 39:33.200 --> 39:36.480 I mean, how many people want to serve on a jury now? 39:37.040 --> 39:40.620 How many places actually pay you anything to serve on a jury? 39:40.660 --> 39:41.560 That's a cost. 39:41.560 --> 39:52.920 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. 39:53.620 --> 39:56.940 These are all part and parcel of your responsibility. 39:57.580 --> 40:01.560 A lot of people want the benefits but are not willing to put in the time. 40:01.560 --> 40:05.480 But part of that may be because the cost is very high, like you were talking about. 40:05.480 --> 40:12.000 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? 40:12.400 --> 40:13.040 Yeah. 40:13.260 --> 40:14.580 Can we get the gentleman here? 40:14.660 --> 40:16.840 Why is it so hard to be an American? 40:16.840 --> 40:17.900 Why is it so hard? 40:18.360 --> 40:19.820 Why is it so hard? 40:20.460 --> 40:21.020 Right? 40:21.960 --> 40:27.860 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? 40:27.860 --> 40:29.460 No, no, no, I'm not saying you're right or wrong. 40:29.520 --> 40:37.460 You know, I'm saying, well, I think part of it has a lot to do with time. 40:37.860 --> 40:38.500 Right? 40:38.580 --> 40:44.260 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. 40:44.260 --> 40:50.680 There's so much happening that, again, you're still limited to that 24 hours in the day. 40:51.160 --> 40:51.560 Right ? 40:51.560 --> 40:53.960 Now, it doesn't mean that should be an excuse. 40:54.020 --> 41:09.740 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, 41:09.740 --> 41:13.680 the question then becomes, what do we do about it? 41:13.880 --> 41:17.560 And not to make this dark, can we do anything about it? 41:18.940 --> 41:20.780 Let me just say this. 41:20.960 --> 41:22.160 One second. 41:23.620 --> 41:26.800 Yeah, let me just say, I think it's a lot perception. 41:26.800 --> 41:30.980 I was just at a fundraiser for Tim Scott, who I really like a lot from South Carolina. 41:31.320 --> 41:36.080 Tim Scott grew up at a time when if you were a black man, you couldn't walk on the sidewalk. 41:36.080 --> 41:38.320 You had to get off so a white man could walk by. 41:38.320 --> 41:42.820 His father told him when he was young, he says, you can be bitter or you can be better. 41:43.000 --> 41:45.000 I thought, boy, that sums it up. 41:45.140 --> 41:54.620 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. 41:54.620 --> 41:56.200 I was the negotiator for the oil company. 41:56.540 --> 41:59.060 So I got everybody coffee because they asked me to. 41:59.060 --> 42:06.200 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. 42:06.200 --> 42:09.300 Anyway, long story short, we've come a long way, baby. 42:09.300 --> 42:11.520 So you can be bitter or you can be better. 42:11.520 --> 42:13.260 I think part of it's a mindset. 42:14.020 --> 42:18.120 You know, I used to have 140 reps when I retired from my other company. 42:18.180 --> 42:23.160 And I could give somebody just crap territory and they always made it happen. 42:23.160 --> 42:25.760 And then other people never had what they needed. 42:25.760 --> 42:27.480 I think a lot of it's a mindset. 42:27.480 --> 42:28.840 We're still a great country. 42:28.840 --> 42:30.920 We're evolving, right? 42:31.060 --> 42:34.080 Jobs said if you're not evolving, you're going out of business. 42:34.220 --> 42:37.460 So get out of your pity party, pick yourself up by the bootstraps. 42:37.460 --> 42:41.520 We have a great country and make yourself better. 42:41.520 --> 42:42.640 Stop being bitter. 42:44.780 --> 42:46.620 Perspective, a common one too, right? 42:46.620 --> 42:51.180 The counter argument that a lot of people would say is, well, that's easier said than done, right? 42:51.180 --> 42:53.460 Which is which is a huge scapegoat for a lot of people. 42:53.460 --> 42:55.180 There's that's the other. 42:55.760 --> 42:57.240 That's the other side of it. 42:57.240 --> 42:58.360 Hold on one second. 42:58.660 --> 43:07.380 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. 43:07.380 --> 43:15.180 The huge number of people who don't even show up to vote, you know, let alone participate in making the government work. 43:15.440 --> 43:19.960 So , you know, can we how can we increase voter participation, for example? 43:20.820 --> 43:23.420 How do you make people want to, right? 43:23.420 --> 43:32.180 You know, the reason why I decided to have this conversation here is because we're not looking at the problem right here, right? 43:32.180 --> 43:33.640 We're in the voting village. 43:33.640 --> 43:47.960 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. 43:48.200 --> 43:50.460 But the question is, I want to see more of this. 43:51.040 --> 43:58.800 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. 43:58.900 --> 44:09.280 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. 44:09.640 --> 44:10.900 That takes work. 44:11.000 --> 44:15.560 And it takes people to actually believe that this is worth saving. 44:15.560 --> 44:22.120 It takes people believing that they have a responsibility, an obligation, a duty, and one that they feel here. 44:22.320 --> 44:34.020 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. 44:34.280 --> 44:36.280 So I'll end with this. 44:36.620 --> 44:38.280 I think there's a lot of hope. 44:38.280 --> 44:40.420 I think there's a lot of opportunity. 44:40.600 --> 44:46.080 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. 44:46.080 --> 44:50.300 I don't know if DEF CON's ever done one like this on a subject like it. 44:50.300 --> 44:53.380 And I really appreciate everyone's willingness to engage. 44:53.700 --> 45:01.100 The next task is to take this discussion home with you and actually think about what needs to change. 45:01.100 --> 45:18.680 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. 45:19.400 --> 45:36.200 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. 45:36.520 --> 45:39.620 So with that, thank you so much and I hope to see you guys soon.