Ep. 2: The Citizen-Soldier: What are veterans roles in a democracy?

 In this episode, veterans Scott Cooper (U.S. Marine Corps) and Dan Vallone (U.S. Army) join Ellen, Jeremy, and Joe for a robust discussion on what our responsibilities are as veterans and how we can best continue to serve America and strengthen our democracy. Scott Cooper is a former Marine Corps EA-6B Naval Flight Officer and former founder of Veterans for American Ideals. Dan Vallone is a former Army infantry officer and current director of More In Common, USA - whose mission is to build a more united and inclusive America that is resilient to profound threats posed by our country’s polarization.   

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:00

The fact that we're kind of in this like zero-sum game type of things in politics right now, that it's become increasingly that, you know, if you support them, you're destroying America. And like both sides can be saying that. And so we're getting hit with all these problems with very few solutions that we can kind of coalesce around, both at the national level and at the local levels.

SPEAKER_04: 0:22

Hello and welcome to Vet Our Democracy, a podcast series produced by We the Veterans and Military Families. We are a nonprofit, nonpartisan, patriotic group of veterans and family members who are very interested in American democracy. I'm board member and retired Marine Corps veteran Joe Plensler, and my co-hosts today are Ellen Gustison. She is the executive director of We the Veterans and Military Families and a Navy spouse. And Jeremy Butler, who is a U.S. Navy Reserve officer and also our Chief Growth Officer. We're joined today by two very special guests, Dan Vallone and Scott Cooper. Dan is a former U.S. Army infantry officer and now serves as the U.S. Director for More in Common, an organization that works on both short and longer term initiatives to address the underlying drivers of fracturing and polarization and build a more united, resilient, and inclusive society. And Scott Cooper is a retired U.S. Marine Corps aviator, founder of Veterans for American Ideals at Human Rights First. He's a former candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives and current vice president of government relations for a company called Periton. Both Scott and Dan have collaborated on pro-democracy, patriotic, and civic issues in the past, and I'm really looking forward to hearing today's discussion on the role of veterans in American democracy. So welcome to everyone. It's great to be here. Thanks, Dave. So happy to be here. Hey, for starters, um, I know both of you have spent considerable time thinking about American democracy. You've done some important things uh to help strengthen democracy, both in your own organizations and together. Um and we both know democracy is a very different thing than civics. So I want to kind of start our conversation off today at the 70,000-foot level and get each of your thoughts uh and and Jeremy and Ellen's too on what's the greatest challenges currently facing America when it comes to understanding civics and why that's important.

SPEAKER_03: 2:13

Scott, you want to go first on that one? I'll start, Joe. You know, the the first thing I think that's critically important for people to think about, um, and I'm gonna quote a friend of mine, Steve Miska, who works at the VA now. He constantly is reminded us that citizenship is not a spectator sport. And I think as we talk about what it means to be a citizen, what it means to participate in our democracy, that may well mean be campaigning for dog catcher in your local town, or city council member, or school board member, or also engaging in things like what we the veterans are doing in helping people volunteer to become poll workers. And so that I think is one of the critical things that we need to think about. That, for instance, we just assumed a way. My mom worked as a poll worker for years and years and years at the church that was three blocks away. And I just thought that was just something normal that people just do. Now, I grew up in a small town and both people in the town voted. But that point is that it is, in fact, that we are what we're going to make of it. And I think reminding people of that over and over again, America's going to be what we make it. It's not a spectator sport, and we're not allowed to be spectators.

SPEAKER_04: 3:33

Awesome. Awesome.

SPEAKER_02: 3:34

Yeah, I also grew up in a small town, and similarly, yeah, yeah. No, I it's uh I'm thinking back to the town I grew up in, which is about 5,000 people, and how and New Hampshire also has a unique town hall meeting day where notionally every adult is gonna go vote on town budgets, and so it's a very interactive form of democracy, and it's hard to scale up. So it is a matter of trying like how do you make democracy accessible for folks in a country that is enormous and vast, and it's a recurring challenge America faces. But I think that there's three trends that I would point to as posing particularly significant challenges when it comes to civics in America right now. So the first is, and this was evident in the most recent Surgeon General's uh Surgeons General uh advisory on loneliness, which is Americans have a much narrower and more insular social life. And civics is such an interactive social process, right? So there's Americans are spending less time with fewer people and there's fewer associational spaces in the country. That's a huge problem when it comes to our civic culture. Uh the second is that just as our country has grown and as government has, as technology has advanced, civic engagement can become uh harder for folks to believe that they can actually do. There is the sense among the population in the data that we see that in order to participate in civics, you need to have some sort of specialized knowledge, that things are too complex or complicated, and that if you're not an expert, you're not supposed to participate. And so building that sense of agency and also demystifying some of what civics is all about are pretty critical if we're gonna shift that culture. And the third thing that I would point to is that we have lost common sources of credible information. If you were to look at the American landscape right now, it's really hard to identify a major media company or a major source of information that folks can collectively turn to to say, okay, this is when I should vote, this is what's gonna happen when I vote. And it that distrust is such an important variable that we need to overcome. And to Scott's point, it's why something like Vet the Vote is so powerful, right? Because here come very trusted messengers stepping in and saying, hey, come with me and let me show you the process, and together we can validate it. This is how it's supposed to play out. And I can make you feel like this is credible and trustworthy information.

SPEAKER_04: 6:01

Awesome. No, those are great thoughts. And for the folks listening, Vet the Vote was the uh campaign that we launched in 2022 to close a gap of about 130,000 election poll workers. And when we reached out to the veteran military community through our coalition of 30 different groups, uh over 63,500 volunteered to serve their country again, which was just heartening in today's day and age of political divisiveness. Jeremy, Ellen, what do you what do you think? Like what are the greatest challenges right now facing us when it comes to civics?

SPEAKER_00: 6:34

Well, I think one of the most interesting challenges in getting into this work is, you know, you assume as a educated American and a person who's been involved in the military community for a long time, that you know what the heck civics means. Um but I didn't. Um and I think the most interesting thing that we have have really started to wrestle with is what it actually means is the study of the rights and the duties or responsibilities of citizenship. And we in America talk a lot about our rights, which is really important because we are trying to protect our rights, we are trying to defend our rights, but members of the military, that's literally what they're doing is defending the Constitution. But we actually forget the responsibilities and duties part of it a lot. And so I feel like, you know, where we have come to as an organization and where I've come to as a citizen is trying to more deeply understand what my responsibilities are and what the responsibilities of the whole community are as individuals, as groups. And you know, we we as an organization have also talked a lot about, you know, there's this phrase civic engagement. Again, it gets like thrown around all the time. We we've sort of re-renamed that um patriotic participation, because that's what it is. It's like you love this country, you gotta get in the ring. And so that's, you know, it's essentially as as simple as people working together to protect our public values and to make community change, whatever that is. Um so I think you know, going back to some of those basics of of defining what we mean by by these terms is important for this conversation, but it's also really important for the rest of our fellow Americans to realize it's about our responsibilities and it's about protecting our shared values and making whatever community change we can together.

SPEAKER_01: 8:13

Absolutely. Jeremy. I'm gonna, if I could add, I'm gonna steal something from uh something that I heard last week. I was at the American Democracy Summit uh and one of the panels was with four, I think it was, um social media influencers that are big in the civic space, believe it or not, which was a surprise to me that that was even something that was out there. But they were all, you know, 20 somethings uh that um both professionally and then also kind of on the side had these civics-related um social media followings. And one of the questions that they were asked uh was what's the primary question that you get? What's one of the biggest, most recurrent questions that you get? And they all have interesting answers. So one of them was not knowing what elected officials do. So when people go to vote, um, this was generally younger voters, you know, they probably know what president, things like that are, but once you get a little bit farther down ballot, not knowing what these officials do and not knowing how to vote for them. Also, not understanding the court system and how single judges can have such a powerful uh control over so many in our society. Uh, a third was how one senator, a single senator at the U.S. level can have so much power. And then the last was how to get involved beyond just voting, which I thought all of those were really interesting and sort of tied into one, what a convoluted um system we have, and two, how maybe one of the best opportunities we have in being in such a divisive time is that it's an opportunity to teach people. Like these are questions that are coming up because we're in a very strange time where you know single judges are making huge decisions that affect so much of the country, single senators are putting holds on all nominations in the military, and there's symptoms of our system that aren't necessarily bad that those are in there, it's just how they're being used, if that made sense. It it I tried to make it make sense as I said it, but like you know, these aren't new things that are in our system, but they're becoming nationally known because they're somewhat being uh perverted in the ways that they're being used, I said. So maybe it's an education opportunity.

SPEAKER_04: 10:15

Yeah, definitely. And I think you know, one of the things when I you know look at headlines, you see a low uh a reduction in in public faith in democracy, in elections. From your perspectives, like what do you see as as like the long-term impact of this decline in belief in democracy? I know it seems kind of like a ridiculous question, but like where do you if we don't do something, what do you see happening?

SPEAKER_02: 10:46

Uh I'm happy to jump in on that one. I it's a really important question because I think and you framed it, right? If we don't do something, and I and again, more in common, we do a lot of public opinion research, we do a lot of focus groups that we're continuously kind of touching base with the American public. And I think one thing that is at least important for me when I like to hold on is as much as it feels like things are being destroyed or that we're losing things, a lot of very positive things are also being created. So that's like to to Jeremy's point, like there are civic influencers on TikTok and YouTube and Snap and all of these Instagram and all these places that are interesting and gonna have a longer-term impact. So there's lots of good things that are happening that we need to maybe lift up and highlight and figure out how can we reinforce them. But the long-term risk here, I think, is that A, we see cynicism towards democracy become deeply entrenched, right? Right now, attitudes towards democracy tend to move with political parties in power. So if your party is in power, you feel more confident that democracy is working. When it's out of power, you feel like it's not working. So what we need to figure out is a way to get commitment to democracy as a process to be something that endures beyond transitions in power, right? To see losing actually as an integral part of the democratic process. And in some ways, a healthy democracy is one in which, through a legitimate process, parties or people lose. And you realize that, okay, if I keep at it, maybe my side will win in the next one. And that it is a dynamic give and take. But if that cynicism becomes entrenched, I think that it will really negatively impact our capacity to respond to challenges, whether that's the changing economy, whether that's the national security threat presented by countries like China, or whether it's opportunities we're gonna miss out on, like the opportunities related to artificial intelligence, advances in medicine, and exploration of space.

SPEAKER_04: 12:43

Yeah, definitely. Other thoughts? Thank you.

SPEAKER_03: 12:49

I I I think also one of the things that uh we came to believe for a while is that we as Americans were immune to these kinds of things. Uh when in fact we we're not. Um there was, for instance, a group of people that were murdered when they were trying to register people to vote in the early 1960s. And and we thought until perhaps just a few years ago that we'd gotten beyond that. And so my point here is that it it takes a constant effort to have good hygiene, to have good democratic hygiene, and to participate in that. The other thing that I fear um, perhaps as you I ask your question, what happens here, is if people throw their arms up in the air and say, Ah, I'm out! I quit. I'm not I'm not involved in this. And I have often told the story uh of my mom, who is one of the sweetest ladies on the planet. She's 82 years old, and a couple of years ago she just said, I'm so sick of all of it. I just stopped watching the news. Well, except for George Stephanopoulos. I love George. Um and my point to my mom then was, Mom, no, you're not allowed to. Everybody has to play their part. And one of the ways I got her involved is one of my old high school teachers was running for school board. And my mom was all in. I mean, she was putting yard signs out and participating. Uh it was a nonpartisan election, and he's now on the school board, and my mom is just one of his big champions. Those kinds of activities, I think that restored my mom's faith a little bit in our democracy, in her community, in those kinds of things. I think that's one of the ways we overcome it. The the worst case scenario is if everyone just throws their arms up in the air and says, ah, I'm sick of all of it. I'm out. No, no, no, no, no. You're not allowed to just say I'm out.

SPEAKER_00: 14:46

Yeah, you know, that's such a great that's such a great point. And it's also such a great way of saying it. You know, and and we all say it, I mean, the idea of restoring faith in, right? Like that's just like a common phrase. And what what's, you know, when when when I think about restoring faith in, one of the most challenged elements of of the way our country runs is that we have these things called institutions. And it's like unless you're a total poly sign nerd, you don't know what the heck that means. Um, but it actually means like some really interesting broad uh spectrum of of things. The press is an institution, education is an institution, elections processes are institutions, the military is an institution, law enforcement is an institution. And the idea of restoring faith in those things is literally how we live as citizens all with each other. Because we need to have law enforcement, we need to have elections that work well, we need an educated group of people, we need to have press that tells us what the heck's going on because we all have to do our jobs. And so I think, you know, if we kind of loop and together all of these broad institutions, they all need our faith, they all need our commitment. And the idea that some members of society decide I don't want to deal with law enforcement, and some members of society say I don't want to deal with the press, it's like it actually to Scott's point, it doesn't work that way. We we need all of these things together to be a functioning society, and we all need to have a commitment to to finding ways to work together to make them to make them the best that they can be for for ourselves, for our neighbors. And so I I you know I just it's a it's funny how these fundamental conversations that are are all over the media, many of us kind of don't know exactly what they mean until we sit and take five seconds to say, oh, that's what it means to have a public faith in our institutions.

SPEAKER_01: 16:29

I think there's also a um Sorry, I I'll jump in real quick just to say that I think there's also a um it's it's unfortunate because I think we're so um skewed by the focus on national politics that we forget how much is done and accomplished and uh maybe is in a better situation at the local level. And that's really where so much of what happens in this country affects us in a much more uh profound way. Um and unfortunately, you know, it's it's tough to get involved and to necessarily keep track of everything that's going on there, but so much is done there uh that doesn't get covered, and you know, going back to the press, as we lose the institution of the press with local media coverage and things like that, we see less and less of what's happening there and how uh still good and positive it can be.

SPEAKER_04: 17:22

Unless I candidate's taking the time out to pull, you know, to create a webpage, it's really hard to find independent news about them, right? Because so many small town newspapers have folded up, and I think um you hit on a lot of good points. I think one is you know, we get a lot of national news these days, and you know, things seem much more pronounced because you know, before when it was just like three networks and a couple, you know, our hometown newspaper, you would never really hear about stuff in San Francisco or Texas or whatever. You know, you get a lot of local and then you know the three affiliate um nightly news things. But you know, now that we have like almost instantaneous access to all news around the planet, you know, I think it's you know, one, it's better that we're both connected, but two, I I think some things get distorted and seem more prominent, more important than they actually really are. Uh and I I love your point about local news because like that's where that's what usually impacts you the most, right? You know, uh how you're being taxed locally, who's running your county board of board of um supervisors, who's the mayor, who's the police police the chief or the sheriff, and things like that. Um sorry, I don't want to go down that rabbit hole too far, but you know, you you you talk about I've heard a theme here too, besides like faith in in democracy and our institutions, but you know, when we look around the world, there are a bunch of folks who would like to see this 247 year of um experiment in democracy fail. And you know, we can you know I I think Lincoln had a quote, and Scott, correct me if I'm wrong, I know you're kind of a resident historian, but like talking about how like you know, no no invading army could ever defeat the United States, he said if we're to fall, we will fall from internal discord. So I I just wanted to get your thoughts on that. Like, who's out there trying to manipulate veterans from your perspective? Um what's that at play? Like, you know, we we know that democracy is under siege around the world too. We can see it being rolled back uh in Europe, we can see it be rolled back in South America. Like, what what's going on around the world that we should pay attention to?

SPEAKER_00: 19:24

Well, this is one of those things that I've become really passionate about as a as a military spouse, which is that you know, the as we're we're talking about the institutions of the press and and and foreign influence. Well, one of the institutions that we now have to deal with is the institution of social media, right? Like that's just a thing. And that people see some of these social media platforms as an alternative to a what had been very much uh the free press in America. That's something that we were always proud of. And so as a military spouse, um I'm I'm I'm really f you know, sort of baffled by the fact that we could have a foreign adversary over. owned institution of social media where military families are getting their information about the world. And I you know that's very confusing, but it's it's something that only could possibly come from a real sort of lack of of of sort of information about, okay, who owns these platforms, who's making the news, who's who's deciding what meme you know gets put up in front of your feed or what video does. And and you know that's we've got to get back to some basics as a society and say, you know, we we want to understand who's behind this information that we think we agree with. We want to understand who has a motivation for certain information to get out there and who has a motivation for us to be fighting against each other. There's a lot of countries that would are laughing when Americans are fighting each other because it means they're not going in and fighting those adversaries. And I think, you know, I'm really passionate about that as a member of the military community because it actually is a risk to our national security and it's something that's right literally right under our noses in the form of our phones and we're just not paying enough attention to it.

SPEAKER_03: 21:04

Let me also talk about that, Ellen, as you're thinking about it. This is not unique to this time. All right human beings can be susceptible to manipulation. And I think if if you if you look to one historical example for instance um 70 years ago we were in the throes of a red scare that Joseph McCarthy was leading um accusing people of being communist and uh in many cases without evidence um as has now been proved as we've looked into this. And so um people were manipulated it happened to be about a communist scare but also about um an individual that had had garnered the attention of the media and the rest of the world about this. That resolved itself, I think, at one point when finally one of the heroes of that era Joseph Welsh who was the Army's general counsel during one of those McCarthy hearings said to him when one of his subordinates had been accused by McCarthy, at long last have you no sense of decency. And it was it was Joseph Welsh that had the moral courage to stand apart from the group and call him out. Now the the other part to that that I think is really important is that now we look back on that and we're like whew that solved itself. Who was silent through that entire time? Dwight Eisenhower. And so I think that again is important to think about oh we can be manipulated how do we have moral courage to call people out when you say no that's just not true.

SPEAKER_02: 22:46

And that is one of the challenges that we have today is that we have to have the courage to speak uncomfortable truth to power sometimes I I would uh sorry no sorry I was just gonna say and this is uh I you know we keep both building off of what Scott just shared and also in honor of of his uh his his years as a pilot but what's there's a military acronym VUCA right volatile uncertain complex and ambiguous right that it describes environments of fast moving change a lot of uncertainty it very well describes the era we are in right now across every possible measure right I mean artificial intelligence change uh migrations of people across the globe changing nature of the labor market etc in times of that kind of uncertainty and rapid change humans instinctively seek solidarity with people that they identify as a source of safety right we we retrench inward out of the out of a desire to try and protect ourselves and that gets exploited by foreign adversaries who can who know that they can weaponize social media very cheaply to to turn us against each other just to prime the the the prime it just so that we start to see each other as enemies and not opponents or as and not as common Americans. That's a huge risk obviously when social media is such a growing source of news and opinion influence across many many generations. I think one of the things that we also want to keep in mind is like what has always been and will continue to be an incredible source of strength for America in countering that is the very diffuse and decentralized nature of our democracy, right? The barrier to individual participation in our civic culture and civic life is actually shockingly low in America, right? Like because so much is actually done at the local level at the state level it's there and individual Americans can have an impact in a way that is almost impossible in any other modern democracy across the globe and arguably across any other country. And so this is also an opportunity for us to reinvigorate that decentralized kind of localized level of democracy that has always been a wellspring of health for this country.

SPEAKER_04: 24:57

Yeah no I love that idea because I mean what you're talking about Dan and and really everyone's kind of you know driving at the importance of institutions is really we've we've got a choice to make right we can either shore up our belief in the system of justice in the courts right to uh adjudicate differences and in our legislators actually propose new policy and get things done and really I mean the reason we have those things is so that we don't have to settle differences out in the streets with with violence right I mean you know and I think when people are ignorant about the um the mechanisms in which they have recourse within their system a lot of times it's easier just to turn towards uh venting their frustrations in other ways and I just want to get your thoughts on on that I mean because you know the the you're talking about our realities being constructed you know our brains are kind of garbage in garbage out decision making machines like if we consume bad information we're not going to make good decisions but all of it adds up right and so I just wanted to throw that out there for your action what do you what do you think yeah I mean I think I saw and you can see it also I there's another manifestation of this in the alarmingly high stats of like teen anxiety for example so it's hard to produce specific causality and like what's produced but our society is increasingly anxious and like what you just described has got to be a significant driver of it.

SPEAKER_02: 26:19

It's this sense that not only is a lot of change happening but I don't quite know my place I'm I'm concerned because I I see threats all over the place and every social media platform is amplifying this image of a lot of threats and few images of places where I can A have belonging B have agency and three and C have a kind of sense of cohesion across the American society. And so it is a really toxic cycle that we are in the midst of and it's tricky to get out of it because we need we need multiple levers to change. We need better behavior from our leaders and from kind of the elite influencers we need media platforms to take some of their responsibilities more seriously the easiest and most accessible points of change happen at the individual level and it's about organizing people and having credible messengers who are rooted in community able to have those conversations and spark people to to actually engage in the civic process and learn for themselves actually the picture isn't quite as dark and apocalyptic as you might think it is.

SPEAKER_04: 27:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 27:20

Jeremy I see you know sorry I'll just jump in real quick Alan then turn it back over to you I was just gonna agree and sort of add that you know it's we're getting inundated with all the problems in the country and in the world and I think you toggle that with the fact that we're kind of in this like zero sum game type of things in politics right now that it's become increasingly that you know if you support them you're destroying America and like both sides can be saying that and so we're getting hit with all these problems but very few solutions that we can kind of coalesce around both at the national level and at the local level. So I think it it really is getting back to that understanding that there are solutions that we can work on and that there are ways to do that. And it it but it does mean compromise which for you know unfortunately has been a co-opted word that in many circles is seen as a bad thing.

SPEAKER_00: 28:12

Yeah yeah it does yeah you know I was going to just actually bring up bring up the idea of compromise and and you know civic behavior. It's it's interesting I'm a I'm a a mom of three young kids and a military spouse. And when I think of the values that I am trying to teach my kids, I don't see very many of them reflected in people that are really loud mouthed on social media, people that are many of the leaders that are trying to run this country. And I think it's really funny that there's many of us, you know, who would fall back on what m people could maybe call traditional family values and really not see them very often in the public square. And that's that's raising a a a household of citizens you need to to understand what what citizens need to have. They need to understand how to play nicely with others and compromise. And like I don't know how that is not cool anymore in in in Congress, but like you gotta know how to play well and if someone has their turn with the toy you just have to give the other person some turn too. And that that's like totally normal when you're trying to teach your kids and then somehow it's not normal anymore when you're trying to make laws. And I think you know reading basic books, you you're not you know, other other than m maybe Santa Claus, you're not really going to pick up books that you know are not true and and try to read them to your kids. You know, you you want to read them things that that bring them increased knowledge or or or maybe belief in in a in a strong faith or one of those things, but you're certainly not going to bring them something that's just not basically not true. And you're gonna encourage them to do their own part. You're not gonna say, you know, just sit back and get at your phone and say say something really loud on your phone in all capital letters and there you are, you're doing your part. You're actually going to tell them to take the plate over the dishwasher and and put it away, right? And like I'm I'm I know I'm simplifying this as a parent but it's so weird to me that that's not what we hold leaders and voices and quote unquote celebrities to account with anymore when we know that's what we should be doing when we're we're you know in our own homes. I I I say you know as as a military parent, as a military spouse and and a parent, we've got to be expecting people to do what we expect our own kids to do. And and and that would engage you know that would create a more a more civic and civil society in many ways almost as much as anything else would.

SPEAKER_04: 30:34

Yeah yeah and I love that because I mean you know what you're also getting at there if I understand correctly is really a commitment you know I'm hearing this this theme too it's kind of like and I think there's an increasing appetite for it with the people I talk to anyway in America is there's they're sick of seeing um tribalism and so-called leaders just on opposite ends of the field just throwing mud at each other you know across the the 50 yard line and I think you know the the Americans I'm talking to every day at the grocery store post office and places are are looking for leaders who are willing to do the hard work of of coming to the middle and building consensus and finding compromise when they have to you know and I think you know that is that is a lost art.

SPEAKER_03: 31:17

And Scott I just saw you kind of perk up on that what you know at the at the risk of showing my age um and and and talking about that but but or being too nostalgic I guess um as as we think about role models today and you were talking about holding leaders accountable you immediately brought to mind one of my own personal heroes and it relates to this whole group as well all right Mike Mansfield you know your average American doesn't remember Mike Mansfield all right he was a senator from Montana and having grown up in Wyoming I can appreciate that but also here's what's extraordinary about Mike Mansfield very quickly he served from 1961 to 1977 16 years as the majority leader in the Senate and then from 1977 to 1988 he served as the ambassador to Japan for both the Carter and Reagan administrations. That is a leader and and the other thing I love to talk about when I talk to my grandkids about it is that he's buried at Arlington National Cemetery and you know what his gravestone says Mike Mansfield private United States Marine Corps because he served in the Marine Corps between the wars and that's what he cared most about and this group of people he was an engaged citizen but also back to what he valued he was just a private in the Marine Corps.

SPEAKER_04: 32:37

Yeah yeah I mean there's something poetic in that for sure right you know like how do you want to be remembered at at the end of your your time here on the planet you know you know and I think the one of the other points that that's come up is a lot of talk about our rights right you hear it all the time the my rights crowd is is alive and well and and kicking on the airwaves and what we don't hear enough about is our responsibilities to each other as citizens. And I think you know you know Jeremy kind of hit on it and Dan as well like you know the social norming and Ellen especially with like how are you raising your kids? You know what are you teaching them? You know even by your own example like when we talk about other people or people who disagree with us on the issue does that become personal right does that become filled with invective or or are we containing our comments to the policy at hand rather than making it you know a personal slight and it's all too easy with today's political tribalism to fall into that that seductive trap right and and and Dan hit on it right when when our we when we're uncertain the brain wants to reduce that when we're afraid it wants to reduce that so it's easy to grasp the simple answers in tribalism to kind of find that that protection or that sense of security. But fear is a hell of a drug and we do know that you know when you are in a state of fear you're definitely more manipulatable. Right? You know every con man, marketer um you know politician when they when they put you in that state they they really open up the playground for them to kind of manipulate your your thoughts and senses and get you to do things that maybe aren't in your best interest. And I can list countless examples of that but I won't hear because I promised Ellen I wouldn't nerd out on on um neurology professor stuff.

SPEAKER_00: 34:24

But uh you know I think Yeah I mean I could nerd out on musical theater though and talk about the music man. You got trouble in River City and then em t tells everyone they need to go join a band. So we can all nerd out, okay guys? But but no I mean I think I think the the point is you know the we we're also it's there's a weird there's a weird dichotomy in our in our country in in sort of what our understanding of patriotism is. And I mean we we're we're an organization of veterans military families who are incredibly proud to call ourselves patriots and that doesn't make us angry and it doesn't make us hateful and it doesn't make us you know wanting to take two sides of our country and put them back in in a in a cage match together. And I think we've got to remember that there is a positive patriotism that we can all grab onto as citizens but it actually means you've got to get to the table and do your part. You've got to have that responsibilities and duties part of citizenship not just the patriotic rights part of citizenship.

SPEAKER_04: 35:26

Yeah and that's really the hard work of shouldering the burden of of democracy right if we want to be free people and and choose our leaders and make decisions for ourselves then like Scott said you can't be a bystander to that. You know Hunter S. Thompson's got a famous quote he said hey in a democracy you've got to be a player right and you know the um but you know you know just relaying a quick story you talk about like divisiveness and I think the more news sometimes you watch the more grim you think the world is one of the most refreshing things about being an election poll worker you know the la last number of years that I've done it is show me another place in American society besides the military we have Republicans, Democrats and independents all coming together to do something positive and productive for America for their communities. Right? You know despite the threat of COVID 19 despite the threat of political violence um you know it it was a really refreshing thing because people didn't talk about what political party they were you help people vote whether they're Republicans or Democrats. Didn't matter you're like there to provide a public service and do some good um yeah I think you know we we I want to be respectful of everyone's time here. Um if I were to give each one of you a magic wand and say hey let's fix this um you know the challenges we have to democracy the lack of public education on civics what would be the one thing that you would like to see happen in order to make things much better?

SPEAKER_03: 36:52

I'll offer something else that that is why I'm involved in in vet the vote and what what you guys are doing and that is that that that vet the vote would have a million veterans that step up uh to be to be poll workers um and and that is I think one of the things you're yes we had 65000 in this last election I think it was um if we could have a million this time because what a statement that would be um that you have people saying like no no no no that's what we do we go to the polls and we make sure people get to vote you know grandma and 18 year old kid that you know has just turned 18 um and and that is one of those things that's gonna restore some of that faith in in our institutions and so you know I think that is among the keys. I'm gonna give one last story one of my favorite people um in where I grew up was Marianne Collins. She was the county clerk for more than 25 years um and I would call her every two years for 24 years that I was in the military. I mean my mom taught her daughters piano and she'd be like oh Scott how are you? Where are you these days? You probably need an absentee ballot don't you I mean the first election I voted in in person was in 2014 after I retired. I have no idea what party she was a member of but but man Mary Ann Collins the county clerk introna county you know that was democracy. And so you know I think that's one of the ways that we write this ship is to lift up people like Marianne Collins and for this this we the veterans work to not just double in size but like you know have logarithmic growth.

SPEAKER_04: 38:27

Yeah and it is powerful I remember the first time I I voted in person was 2016 and I was looking at my wife and she was looking at me and we're both like welling up with tears in our eyes because it was like some nostalgic American moment. We'd never seen it before like people exercising the right to vote that we had done by absentee ballot for 20 years in the military.

SPEAKER_00: 38:43

So yeah absolutely I love that other other other other thoughts you have the magic wand what what do you do to make make it all better I you know I I have a uh an obsession with this idea that we could expand the thank you for your service uh you know sort of one liner that that people say um as a as a you know as a relevant and important and kind nod to the military but we we gotta expand that to include firefighters and EMT workers and teachers and nurses and library workers and cops and you know I mean there are so many people poll workers, election workers there are so many people that work jobs that they probably got into with a sense of service and duty and commitment to their community and commitment to children and commitment to health and commitment to safety good reasons that good people try to take these jobs. And we're in a place where there's like some people who love teachers and don't like cops and some people love cops and don't like teachers and like that is ridiculous. You know there's there's a a whole cadre of great Americans who just do jobs to try to make whether it's our safety or our health or our Kids' education better. And the fact that we have let one type of service rise so far above the rest is not cool. And it's not going to serve us well because we're now having a hard time recruiting people to all those jobs. So I think it's time we expand the thank you for your service to include a lot more Americans who put on um whatever they put on to go to work every day and they they just try to make our communities a little bit better.

SPEAKER_04: 40:23

Awesome. Yeah, so if you're listening Delta Airlines or American or Southwest, like let the third grade teachers board first once, maybe. You know, I would love to see that. Um but yeah, you're right. We're all in this democracy thing together. So we we've got one for volunteering to be a poll worker, we've got another for expanding you know the concept of what it means to serve our country 100%. Dan, Jeremy, what do you think?

SPEAKER_02: 40:46

Yeah, so I would say so I yeah, and and Joe, you know, you said that fear is like a drug, and it is. If you think about actually how it affects the body, and there's a concept from social psychology called liquid fear about how fear can just be transferred and essentially aerothelized, right? Like fear becomes the at the oxygen that we breathe in. And I think it's arguably true that we have been failing fear for at least 22, maybe more years, right? Ever since probably 9-11. Because the antidote to fear, the only thing that actually is more of a potent drug is the combination of belonging and purpose. Those two variables combined allow anybody to overcome fear because you are confident that somebody has your back and you have a sense that I am moving towards an objective. And I think all of us probably understand that on some intuitive level from the experience in the military and military families. Far too few Americans have the opportunities to feel both belonging and purpose. And oftentimes they're finding it, they're finding belonging in places where the purpose is adverse to the health of our democracy or our civic culture. And so I think if I could wave a magic wand, it'd be dramatically expanding the opportunities Americans have to engage with other Americans, feel that sense of belonging, have a sense of civic purpose in many different ways, and for Americans to feel like, oh, responsibility is actually how I achieve belonging. Ultimately, belonging can't be just a group opening its door, it's somebody stepping in and saying, How can I help? How can I shoulder some of whatever it is we're doing together?

SPEAKER_04: 42:15

Yeah, I love that. Gabriel Mate once uh said safety isn't the absence of threat, it's the presence of connection. And uh once I heard it, I never forgot it. But you talk about building community, connection, purpose, absolutely love it. Jeremy, you've you've taken some, man. You've got the magic wand. What makes it all better?

SPEAKER_01: 42:34

Now I gotta give the wonky answer, but you know, again, I'm coming from the American Democracy Summit, so I spent a week talking about these things. Change in the primary system. I think the open primaries, we need to get more people voting early in the in the process to change who we're sending to the general. I mean, so much of the decisions, especially now as uh more of the country is becoming gerrymandered and there's less and less of actual um uh competition, you know, whoever wins the primary ends up getting that seat too often the case. And you're talking now about, you know, 10-15% of the population that really is getting involved in those elections. So if we could open it up, uh open primaries so anyone can vote and get more people out there voting, I think it'll change who we end up with in Washington, DC, which will hopefully get us to a point where there's more um willingness to compromise, like we were talking about before.

SPEAKER_04: 43:22

Yeah, definitely. I mean, and we know like from a lot of research, systems drive behaviors, right? So the you know, people will naturally follow the incentives placed before them. And right now, unfortunately, the way things are set up with with two parties and the primary system, it really drives the candidates to play to the extremes of the party in order to get you know get the nomination to become the candidate. And I think you know, we always understood that, but I think even now it's getting more and more wacky uh in American politics, and and really uh, you know, I think Jeremy, what you're saying makes a lot of sense and would do our country a lot of good to uh help drive behavior back to the center and reward consensus, doing the hard work of that and compromise when you need to. So awesome. Hey, um, this has been a great conversation today. I just want to thank everyone for their time, their thoughts. I know you're all busy people, and uh thank you so much for sharing your thoughts on what we can do as a veteran and military family community and and improving civic education amongst us and how can we extend that knowledge in order to preserve the democracy that we all swore to defend. So, thank you so much for your time. Thank you all. Thank you so much for listening. If you found this podcast episode interesting or useful, please share it with the people you know. This episode was co-hosted by Joe Plunzler, Ellen Giftson, and Jeremy Butler. The audio and video were edited by Cameron King. Vet Our Democracy is a production of We the Veterans and Military Families, a 501c3 not-for-profit, nonpartisan, pro-democracy organization. We are focused on promoting positive and patriotic civic engagement to strengthen American democracy. Find out more about us at we the veterans.us and follow us on social media. Until next time.