"Stop the Hate" Plus the Alitos' Flag

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Sometimes it's difficult to oppose a governmentprogram because it's doing things that are kind
of obviously nice or obviously not harmful, or you'll look like a jerk saying
you think this is a silly idea. I'm going to take the risk of

(00:21):
saying this is a silly idea.The anti hate hotline now the language of
hate on the left. Stop thehate, oppose hate, anti hate.

(00:42):
I remember a long time ago,like I was a kid, I must
have been in high school, andmy mom heard about a stop the Hate
rally or something that was happening atI think it was at Fresno City College
or something, and she I think, very uh, perceptively. I've always

(01:04):
been a lot more trust. Thisis a flaw. This is a John
Girardi character flaw. I'm always tooI am trusting of people to a fault,
and this has I think actually hurtme several times in my professional life
where I trust people. I trustpeople, I trust people and then they

(01:26):
sort of burn me I and andit's I don't think it's like, oh,
this is not me trying to humblebrag about what I'm such a wonderful
person. I think it's part ofmy desire that things not be wrong and
that I not have to fix them. So I keep wanting to trust people
because that gives more equanimity to life. If you're well, he's going to

(01:49):
do the right thing, and ratherthan doing the difficult work of following up,
I'm sometimes tempted to lazily just sortof trust people anyway. So I've
always been a little bit more trusting, I guess and gullible. And my
mom was like, this is Mymom was very skeptical of this Stop the

(02:12):
Hate rally, and I was like, well, I don't think it's evil
or anything. My mom was like, no, this is a this is
an LGBT thing, and I waslike, I don't think it is.
And then going forward, you knownow today that is actually most of what
stopped the hate means. It's usuallysomething that has to do with LGBT stuff.
Now, in this California context,there's a story in the paper about

(02:38):
an anti hate hotline that the stateof California established after twenty twenty. Now,
in twenty twenty, some of youmay have remembered this. Early in
twenty twenty, there was this spateof various acts of assault that were being

(03:06):
committed against Asian Americans in California andin New York and it was kind of
noticeable and troubling. So in responseto this, California, because California legislators
can and this is I guess thefundamental flaw of the California legislature. The

(03:30):
California legislature is a year long legislativesession. It goes pretty much the whole
year goes from January through either theend of August during an election year or
mid September during a non election year. So our state legislators are working are

(03:51):
in Sacramento working on legislation for likenine months. They have way too much
time on their hands, way toomuch time and ability to screw things up.
Plus they're also term limited, sothey're kind of incentivized to pass as

(04:12):
many bills as they can. Soinstead of addressing the problem of hey,
here are all these anti Asian Americanacts of violence that are happening. Is
there something we can focus on here, Like, what can we do here
to better address this with the resourceswe have available? Should? You know,

(04:38):
should law enforcement more closely look atthis? Should should we allocate funding
over here? Should how should weaddress this? You know, are we're
talking with local sheriffs in the countieswhere this is happening or police officials.
No, the state legislature things weneed a new law. Part of the

(05:00):
fact that, you know, beatingup Asian people, last I checked,
is not legal in the state ofCalifornia. I'm not sure that there's a
new law that we need. Weseem to have plenty of laws that would
address the problem of beating people up, Asian or otherwise. So we pass
a new law. We pass anew law for an anti hate hotline.

(05:25):
And here's the thing with something likethis, like who's gonna say no?
Is someone gonna say no? Peoplewho are abused or bully, people who
are victims of racist whatever, weshouldn't help them. We shouldn't have a

(05:49):
hot light. You seem like ajerk if you say that. And so
this gets presented as something that issomething to universe acclaim. So here's the
story about it. Mina Fedor,who is Korean American, was in middle
school when she learned of identity basedbullying. I mean, it's kind of

(06:14):
when all of us learn about identitybased bullying, right Anyway, it was
the beginning of the pandemic, orof you know you have big ears based
bullying or bullying, or you knowyou wet your pants in third grade based
bullying. It was the beginning ofthe pandemic in twenty twenty, when reports
of eight anti Asian incidents and rhetoricwere on the rise across the nation.

(06:36):
One classmate told her to eat adog, while she heard comments like go
back to where you came from,fedor learned what it was like to be
treated as a foreigner in her owncountry and experienced many Asian American face Americans
faced, She said. She recalledseeing anti Asian hate crime from across the

(07:00):
country and in her own community.The twenty twenty one death of Visha Ratanapakti,
an eighty four year old Thai Americanwho was violently shoved to the ground
and died in San Francisco during hismorning walk. Kids just miles away from
my home were walking to school withbats to protect themselves. Fendor said.
Elders, including Grandpa Vicha Ratana Pakti, were brutally murdered just for being Asian.

(07:26):
A year ago, the state ofCalifornia launched California Versus Hate in response
to a growing number of hate incidents. Oh, let me object to this.
Are we really seeing a quote growingnumber of hate incidents end quote in
California? Really? I mean notthat any of it is good. And

(07:55):
by the way, we're saying hate, and I think what we mean is
is discrimination against protected classes within theAmerican Civil Rights Acts, within American and
California Civil Rights Acts. I thinkthat's actually what we mean when we say
hate. No one actually gives acrud if okay, if it was,

(08:18):
because that's effectively what we're saying.When we're saying hate. It's basically violent
or otherwise you know, violent ormaybe nonviolent, but still harassing or abusive

(08:41):
conduct motivated by discrimination on the basisof race, sex, sexual orientation,
ethnic origin. I think that's actuallywhat we mean when we say hate.
And we're just using this as aeuphemism or we're using this to mean something

(09:01):
else. So California launched a hotline called California Versus Hate in response to
a quote growing number of hate incidents. The hot line is a first of
its kind in California and is offeredin more than two hundred languages. Why

(09:22):
on earth is it offered in twohundred languages? How many? How many
people totally speak some of those languages? Once we're getting to language one fifty.

(09:43):
I mean, if it's in California, I mean, I guess you're
serving immigrant populations, so maybe noteveryone speaking English, English, Spanish,
mong for Fresno, I guess wehave I guess a number of different Asian
language Asian immigrants, particularly in theBay Area. Two hundred languages. How

(10:07):
did we fund that? The anonymousprogram, funded by the state Legislature's Asian,
American and Pacific Islander Equity Agenda andthe Jabara Hayer No Hate Act grant,
is also a partnership with California BlackMedia. Since its launch, Okay,

(10:28):
so since its launch, so we'vehad this hotline in California for a
year, the program has received morethan one thousand reports of hate, the
California Civil Rights Department announced Monday.Within those reports, four out of six
people agreed to receive follow up serviceslike legal aid or counseling. During the

(10:52):
first month, the hate hotline recordedone hundred and eighty reports from across from
across the state. Now that's nota lot, because we're not talking about
a thousand reports of crime. We'retalking about a thousand reports of maybe someone

(11:18):
said a derogatory term, like andyeah, like okay, it's bad to
say something derogatory to someone based ontheir racial background, no question. Is
it a crime though, I meanit might be workplace harassments. If you

(11:41):
say that to someone in your workplace, Certainly that is handled usually not through
any kind of civil not through anykind of criminal process or anything involving the
state. It would be at thelevel of your HR manager. So if

(12:01):
we're talking about if we're talking aboutnot like hate crimes, actual criminal conduct
motivated by racial or ethnic bias,not assault, not battery, not robbery,
not burglary, not you know,uh whatever. If we're just talking

(12:24):
about anyone says something bad and youcan call this hote it says something mean
to you effectively, and you cancall this hotline, then a thousand calls
is an astonishingly small number for astate that has forty million people living in
in it. More than a thousandreports of hate. Yeah, there are

(12:50):
forty million people in this state.I'm surprised it isn't forty thousand calls with
hate, Like, you know,how many jerks there are. If you
put forty million people together. Whatpercentage of people you interact with in your
day to day are jerks? Youonly know maybe two hundred people. Multiply

(13:11):
that until you get forty million.Pe how many jerks are there in the
whole state of California. Yes,of course, You've had one thousand calls
with people saying of people saying hatefulthings. That's shockingly small. The most
common reason behind a report was discriminatorytreatment. Not not a crime, just

(13:39):
discriminatory treatment and broad based. Ananalysis by the University of California, Berkeley's
Possibility Lab found I think it's possiblethat this lab doesn't need to keep getting
our taxpayer dollars. Sixteen percent ofcallers said they were called derogatory names or
slurs. These incidents occurred most withina residential setting, according to twenty nine

(14:03):
percent of respondents. Nine percent happenedwithin a workplace environment or in a public
facility. So a lot of thesepeople are calling a state funded hotline because
someone in their neighborhood called them somethingrude. Again, not good. I'm
not pro using racial slurs to yourneighbors by any stretch. Seems like a

(14:26):
horrible thing to do, not athing I would ever do, not a
thing I would appreciate if my neighbordid it to me. I guess I
just don't understand why we have astate run hotline for it. When we

(14:46):
return, we'll talk a little bitmore about this idea that we need the
whole concept of the hate crime andof specifically hate legislation, as if there's
such a thing as a love crime. I guess that's next. On the
John Girardi Show, we have thisstory in the be talking about a state

(15:07):
run anti hate hotline. Hate beingI guess just the word we use when
what we mean is race based discriminationor discrimination on the basis of some other
kind of category that is protected inCalifornia law. And I've been sort of
a little bit mocking this because basically, California open up this hotline. Have

(15:31):
you been a victim of hate?And it's a hotline you can call for
resources and support. And they receiveda thousand calls over the course of the
first year of the program. Well, of course, there are forty million
people in this state. By rights, there should be forty thousand calls.

(15:54):
You know how many jerks there arein a state of forty million people.
It seems like if you only gota thousand calls to this hotline, like
they also said they can field callsin two hundred different languages. They almost
have more languages they can field callsin than they have calls. How do

(16:17):
they do that? Do they justtook you up to a translator service or
something? Anyway, regardless, it'sled me. Now these people are calling
this hotline, and usually it seemslike many of these calls are just people
who in their neighborhood were called somethingrude by someone walking by or by someone

(16:41):
that they interacted with in a publicsetting. A few people mentioned that they
were called this in their workplace,which that's more of an issue for HR
to handle at your work rather thancalling a state run hotline. And it's

(17:03):
it also just sort of seems like, yeah, yes, we recommended legal
or counseling service, legal services AIDor counseling services for some people, but
like that that's the other part ofthis that makes me sort of think,
Okay, how many calls for howmany of these calls did you have anything
useful as the State of California tooffer, like counseling services because you were

(17:29):
called a mean thing? I mean, I get again, this is the
problem with these kinds of programs.There's nothing wrong with seeking out counseling services
if you've been the victim of lotsof horrific racially based abuse. I guess
I mean that, I don't thinkthere's anything wrong with that. I'm not

(17:51):
gonna rant and rave at you ifif you decide to do that. I
guess I'm just not understanding why thestate is offering it when we have such
a small number of people calling aboutit, and when it's like they someone
could find this on their own withouta state run hotline. If anything,

(18:17):
I think you could find it easierwithout the state run hotline. You just
I don't know, google counseling servicesor something. And it leads me to
sort of ask this, this sortof thing, the whole idea behind hate
crimes, and I feel like Ikind of go back and forth on it

(18:38):
whether it's a useful concept at all. So the idea behind a hate crime
is, here's a crime, butif you commit this crime motivated by and
we as a prosecutor, can presentenough evidence to show beyond a reasonable doubt

(19:00):
that this was your motive. Ifyou commit this crime and it's beyond a
reasonable doubt that you committed this crimewith the motive of antipathy towards someone because
of their race or because of theirand then you insert whatever protected category is

(19:25):
in this case protected under California law, whether it's sexual orientation and gender identity,
sex, ethnic origin, race,blah blah blah. If we can
prove beyond a reasonable doubt that youcommitted this crime based on antipathy against that
thing, then we'll add basically aheavier sentence. It's a sentencing enhancement if
you do this thing out of someracially motivated thing. And I guess it

(19:49):
makes me ask the question, well, if you rob a liquor store versus
if you rob a liquor store becausea black guy owns the store and you
don't like black people. At theend of the day, you've robbed a

(20:11):
liquor store, should we care thatmuch what your motive for so doing was.
I mean, it's not like robbingthe liquor store in the first place.
It was a kindly deed of love, you know, assault and battery
versus assault and battery because I don'tlike the fact that you're Asian? Was

(20:37):
the assault in battery without racial animuslike a nicer form of assault and battery
was that a love crime as opposedto a hate crime. The ultimate example
of this was when Al Gore criticizedGeorge W. Bush for I guess not
passing certain kinds of hate crime legislationin Texas and brought up the example of

(20:59):
an African American who was lynched inTexas, and Al Gore was talking,
Oh, it's so terrible, GeorgeW. Bush, how you didn't do
this? And then George W.This was during one of the presidential debates.
George W. Pointed out that themen who had committed that act of
lynching all received the death penalty.So Bush basically was asking what possible extra

(21:22):
punishment could I have given these guyslike they We literally gave them the death
penalty. There's not anything more wecan do to them. Now, Maybe
if you see that racially motivated attacksare happening, and you think a greater
sentencing provision would deter that specific conduct, maybe there's some way in which it's

(21:49):
justified. I don't know, butI guess looking at something like a state
run hotline for people who and reasonably, by the way, it's reasonable to
have your feelings very much hurt whensomeone says calls you an ethnic slurt.
That's a totally reasonable thing to haveyour feelings hurt over. I guess I'm

(22:14):
just not sure what's the point ofa state run hotline for you to deal
with the fact that someone was rudeto you, Like the kind of what
help can the state offer you atthis point? You can't You know,
your neighbor says something rude to youand makes a derogatory racial comment, Well

(22:36):
you're not. You can't arrest him. No one's gonna arrest What do you
even want. You can't arrest theguy. We'll give you state recommended counseling
services. Well, I can findthat with Google. I just find the
whole thing. It's one of thesethings where you sound like a jerk if

(23:00):
you question its utility, And I'msure that is what I sound like right
now, but I still think it'skind of silly like this. This is
something that makes a politician be ableto pat him or herself on the back
like they're doing something and it's notreally doing anything. When we return the
weird story about Justice Alito's wife flyingthe American flag, upside down. That's

(23:27):
next on the John Girardi Show.This story comes out very suspiciously, very
suspiciously timed, I should say,and the timing of this is important.
So this is in May of twentytwenty four that this story comes out,

(23:51):
but this was an event that allegedlyhappened. In January of twenty twenty one.
This story comes out, and Ithink it was a New York Times
story about sam Aledo, and specificallythis has to do with some bizarre incident,
as Justice Alito talked with some reportersabout it, an incident involving sam

(24:15):
Alito's wife. So the Alitos livein suburban northern Virginia, in kind of
a suburb area of Washington, dC. And d C has so many
affluent professional people who are in someway, shape or form employed by or

(24:44):
contractors for the federal government, andfederal workers are these overwhelmingly left wing people.
D C is an astonishingly left wingcity. It's like ninety percent to
ten percent Democrat, and even amongRepublicans, even Republicans in DC are incredibly

(25:07):
anti Trump. So the Alitos apparentlyhave some very left wing neighbors who realize
that they are neighbors to the Alitoswho were putting up some putting up signs

(25:29):
or flags in their yards that wereincredibly aggressive and incredibly directly rude towards the
Alitos, including a specific sign rightthis neighbor of the Alitos, like right
across the street from them, withthe F word on it, like F
the Alitos or f F whatever,something to that effect. And this was

(25:59):
very distressed to missus Alito. Apparentlythey now this was all ramped up and
heightened and extremely volatile, apparently inthe timeframe immediately after January sixth, which
for DC area liberals they think ofas again not to say January sixth was

(26:21):
a good thing. It was abad thing. It it was a stupid
thing. It was a dumb right, et cetera, et cetera, et
cetera. Okay, you got todo all of our stupid you know,
go through this ritual action of declaringthat January sixth was a bad thing.
But for people who live in dC, the sort of liberal DC it's,

(26:44):
they think of January sixth as likethe absolute worst thing that has ever
happened in the history of this country. And basically there was some thought because
because Alito is who he is,that this is what you wanted. This
is you know, blah blah blah. So these neighbors of the Alitos put
up these derogatory like signs in theiryards with like cursing and things like that,

(27:07):
and it's very obviously pointed out theAlitos. The Alitos have go for
a walk. This is about aweek or two after January sixth, get
into this this sort of shit.I guess they have a very unpleasant interaction
with a neighbor as they're going fora walk, and apparently for some time

(27:30):
frame, in front of the Alitohouse they have a flagpole, they flew
the American flag upside down. Andthe way this was reported was that this
was a come that as a sign, this was a sort of Maga themed

(27:52):
symbol of that the country's in perilbecause the election has been stolen, and
so what it means is aha seejustice Alito believes in stop the steal.
Justice Alito believed that the twenty twentyelection, the most secure election in history,

(28:14):
was stolen and therefore that he shouldhave to recuse himself from all future
cases involving blah blah blah blah blahblah blah. Now Justice Alito clarified that
his wife did that he didn't haveanything to do with that, but it's

(28:36):
led me to sort of ask morequestions. And Alito said, basically,
his wife was very upset. Shewas upset with this angry interaction she had
with these neighbors and mad and thenthat's why she did that. Now,
there's a lot about this article thatis raising questions. First of all,

(28:59):
why is this coming out three yearsafter the fact. I think it's coming
out three years after the fact becausewe're about to have a series of Supreme
Court decisions. This We're about tohave a bunch of Supreme Court decisions basically,
all right, if the twenty twentyfour, if twenty twenty four is
going to be anything like twenty twenty, it's going to require the Supreme Court

(29:22):
to have to step in on acouple of election disputes. In twenty twenty.
The Court had to step in andbasically, like at one point they
had to tell Pennsylvania, hey,you cannot change your laws just by your
state Supreme Court issuing a fiat likethe day but like a week before the
election just out of COVID concerns thatthat's not appropriate. There are probably going

(29:49):
to be a number of election casesthat the Supreme Court is going to have
to decide on over the course ofthe summer into the fall. We're also
coming up to the end of theSupreme Court term, which is in June,
and usually it's at the end ofthe term that the Court issues a
lot of its decisions in some ofthe big cases that they've able to have,

(30:11):
they've been able to have full briefingon over the courts of the year,
and I think this story is beingreleased out of basically there's been this
ongoing campaign the last three or fouryears to try to paint the Conservative justices

(30:33):
on the Court as being unacceptably ethicallyor otherwise compromised, and that they have
inappropriately refused to basically recuse themselves fromcertain kinds of cases. So because Clarence

(30:56):
Thomas's wife, Ginny, is involvedwith a lot of Republican politics stuff,
therefore Justice Thomas needs to recuse himselffrom any cases involving Donald Trump. Well,
that's not how recusal rules work.The ethical rules involving when a judge

(31:18):
should or should not recuse him orherself. They it's you know, there's
there there are rules and guidelines andthings like that for when and in what
circumstances judges should do that. Butbasically, the fact that your wife does
something does not necessarily mean that youneed to recuse yourself. Now, if

(31:38):
your family has say, you know, a major business connection or major business
investments or something with say a companywho is a party to a lawsuit in
front of you, then yeah,you should probably recuse yourself. If your
wife is an executive with Budweiser andBudweiser's a party to the case in front

(32:00):
of you, yes you should probablyrecuse yourself. But basically, the fact
that your wife is an is anenthusiastic Trump supporter and a case that somehow
involves Donald Trump lands in front ofClarence Thomas does not mean Thomas needs to
recuse himself. But there's this wholecampaign going of, like justice Thomas was

(32:22):
friends with this billionaire who gave himfree flights on his on his private jet.
Okay, and I mean it mustbe nice. Yeah, I mean
that that's nice. I wish Igot free flights on a private jet.
That relationship is not ipso facto inappropriatefor Justice Thomas, Oh, John Roberts's

(32:50):
wife is a super highly paid attorneywho's getting a bunch of big contracts.
Is just purely because she's John Roberts'swife. Yeah, John Roberts's wife is
also a very accomplished attorney. Shemakes a ton of money, No kidding,
Like the basically what is happening isthe media is trying to get story

(33:15):
after story after story to attack thecharacter of conservative justices. It's always conservative
justices, by the way. Noliberal justice has ever done anything questionable,
by the way. There was allkinds of stuff about, you know,
if we want to talk about appropriatenessor inappropriateness of recusal, it was very

(33:37):
questionable that Elena Kagan, for example, did not recuse herself from the big
twenty twelve Obamacare decision, for example, which was one of the most significant
decisions the Court issued over the courseof the twenty tens, because she had
been Obama's Solicitor General involved in defendingit immediately prior to joining the Supreme Court.

(34:01):
That was highly questionable. Ruth BaderGinsberg was getting all kinds of you
know, perks and international travel andstuff like that just as much as as
Clarence Thomas was, if not more. But what's happening. The Left wants

(34:21):
to paint a picture through unfair hitjob after unfair hit job after unfair hit
job, that the justices on theconservative justice on the Supreme Court are so
ethically compromised, so engage in somuch inappropriate conduct that it therefore justifies Joe

(34:42):
Biden in presidential term two with amore compliant Senate, more compliant house.
Let's say Democrats win everything this election, it justifies them packing the Supreme Court.
That's what we're setting up. Whenwe returned, we'll talk a little
bit more about the Alito story,and it's particularly the idea that an upside

(35:05):
down American flag was a stop theSteel thing. Next on the John Girardi
Show, this big story came out, Oh the Alito family, Justice Alito
and his wife, they flew anupside down American flag outside of their house
after January sixth, a symbol showingthat they thought the election was stolen,

(35:28):
a well known maga stop the Sealssteel sign. Now, I wasn't super
big into stop the steal all that. I thought it was a very I
thought a lot of those efforts weredidn't have a lot to them whatever,

(35:51):
you know. Basically, I waslike, if you can give me enough
evidence that shows we can win incourt to overturn this thing, then I
am interested. If you cannot dothat, then get out. I don't
care. Stop whining. Either showenough evidence that we can actually win something
in court, or stop whining andanyway. Regardless, I have literally not

(36:21):
until this story from The New YorkTimes came out three years after the fact,
I have not once heard the notionthat an upside down American flag was
a symbol for stop the steal,or some kind of maga symbol or something
having to do with the twenty twentyelection having been stolen. I've never once

(36:42):
and by the way, I've seensome real right wing jobbery, I've been
to super right wing events. I'veI have friends who are super trumpy people,
some of my dearest people that Ilove very, very dearly. I've
never once in the last four yearsheard of, or seen or ever had

(37:09):
any inkling that an upside down Americanflag was a reference to stop the steal
somehow, you know what it remindsme of. There was several years ago
there was like an Army Navy footballgame, and one of the West Point
cadets was holding like an okay symbolwith his hand when the camera was on

(37:30):
him, and then everyone in themedia freaked out that this was a white
supremacist symbol and it wasn't. Itwas like some game, but like teenagers
play, I don't know, somestupid teenager thing. It feels kind of
like that, like the media isso confidently asserting that an upside down American
flag was a stop the Seal Magasymbol. And again, what this is

(37:52):
really about is trying to throw asmuch spaghetti against the wall, cast as
many aspersions as we can against allthe concerns vative justices in order to delegitimize
whatever rulings they issue over the courseof the twenty twenty four election cycle and
justify packing the Supreme Court. That'lldo it for John Girardi Show. See
you next time on Power Talk