Democracy on Fire with Kay Brown | Premiere Episode
Democracy isn’t just under pressure—it’s under attack. In this premiere episode of Democracy on Fire, Kay Brown lays out what’s at stake, who’s driving the narrative, and why staying informed is no longer optional. This episode also features a conversation with Grant Nugent, a retired physician, former Republican voter, and Vietnam War veteran, who shares his insights on the moral implications of military leadership and the troubling shift towards Christian nationalism within the military. As they discuss the dire consequences of the ongoing conflict, including civilian casualties and economic strain, both speakers emphasize the necessity of public engagement and accountability in these trying times. With a focus on the path forward, they urge listeners to remain vigilant and involved in shaping the future of democracy.
What You’ll Hear in This Episode
- Democracy on Fire, addresses the alarming decline of political stability in the United States amidst rising authoritarianism.
- The implications of the Trump administration's approach to governance, which has fundamentally altered long-standing political norms.
- The ongoing conflict with Iran serves as a critical focal point for understanding current geopolitical tensions and their domestic repercussions.
- Grant Nugent articulated the moral dilemmas faced by military personnel when confronted with unlawful orders, emphasizing the importance of ethical conduct.
- The financial costs of the conflict with Iran are staggering, with estimates suggesting between 1.4 to 2 billion dollars being spent daily.
- There remains a glimmer of hope as voter engagement increases, suggesting that positive change is conceivable even in dire circumstances.
- What “Democracy on Fire” actually means
- Key political or media tensions right now
- What this show will do differently
Companies mentioned in this episode:
- United America Network
- Stanford University
- Saint Louis University School of Medicine
- Mercy Hospital Folsom
- New York Times
Mentioned in this episode:
Special Episode of Democracy on Fire
Special Episode of Democracy on Fire with Kay Brown: Kay's 23 Reasons We Need Regime Change Now
Andrea Garcia for Judge
The Riverside County Democratic Party proudly endorses Andrea Garcia for Superior Court Judge, Seat 10
Transcript
Hello, and welcome to Democracy on Fire, my newly launched and rebranded program, formerly Hot Spots with Kay Brown, only on the United America Network.
Speaker A:I've been doing this podcast since last September, and during that time, our political and institutional stability has continued to deteriorate.
Speaker A:The people of the United States, along with blue state officials and the lower courts, have been helping to hold the line.
Speaker A:At the same time, there's no denying that the Trump movement has captured the major levers of government, the White House, the Congress, the Supreme Court, in ways that are testing norms and limits that we've relied on for many decades.
Speaker A:The show's new title, democracy on Fire, describes accurately where we are now.
Speaker A:But it's not just a diagnosis.
Speaker A:It's also a direction for where our country could be in the days ahead, because there is reason for hope and there is momentum.
Speaker A:So on this show, we're going to continue discussing the threats and outrages as they unfold, but just as importantly, the way forward, how to get out of this and what we need to be doing.
Speaker A:Today, I want to focus on one of the central issues driving that urgency, the escalating conflict with Iran and the broader implications of that decision.
Speaker A:To help make sense of this, I'm joined by Grant Nugent.
Speaker A:Welcome, Grant.
Speaker B:Welcome.
Speaker A:Grant is a retired physician and Vietnam War veteran.
Speaker A:He served in the U.S. navy as a lieutenant commander and flight surgeon.
Speaker A:He holds an undergraduate degree in pre med and electrical engineering from Stanford University and an MD from the Saint Louis University School of Medicine.
Speaker A:He worked for many years in a range of medical roles across California, including as Director of Emergency Medical Services at Mercy Hospital Folsom and as an emergency department physician.
Speaker A:I'm looking forward to our chat to see how he's feeling and seeing this moment and the path forward.
Speaker A:So, Grant, it's so great to have you here.
Speaker A:Thanks again for being with me.
Speaker B:My pleasure.
Speaker A:I understand you are a former registered Republican, now an independent.
Speaker A:When and why did you change your party affiliation and how do you describe yourself politically now?
Speaker B:Despite the fact that I was a. I'm a fifth generation Republican and the first person I ever voted for was Barry Goldwater.
Speaker B:When I saw that Trump was going to win the presidency, I was overcome with a sense of initially disgust.
Speaker B:This person does not represent what a President of the United States should be.
Speaker B:And things have only gotten worse.
Speaker B:And I find that he is.
Speaker B:He acts in contradiction to everything that is really written into the Constitution and what constitutes an American.
Speaker B:And I cannot countenance that now.
Speaker B:I want to make it entirely clear that I am not A liberal.
Speaker B:Okay, so that's why I'm an independent.
Speaker B:I mean, after all, I'm a life member of the National Rifle Association.
Speaker B:But I cannot tolerate somebody who would be king.
Speaker A:All right, well, thank you for that.
Speaker A:I appreciate that, that you've seen the light on that and changed your affiliation.
Speaker A:As someone who served in the military, what is the line between a lawful order and one that should be refused?
Speaker A:And do you think that that line is being tested right now?
Speaker B:Definitely.
Speaker B:Now, I think in the sense of full disclosure, we have to remember that as applied surgeon is a.
Speaker B:Is basically a civilian wearing a uniform.
Speaker B:I was a physician.
Speaker B:I was not a combatant and I never saw combat and I was never in a combat area.
Speaker B:But of course I did have extensive contact with people who had been in country and who had experienced the war.
Speaker B:And, and to me, there are certain things that a member of the military simply cannot do.
Speaker B:Among them performing acts that are in violation of the Articles of War, in violation of the Uniform Code of Military justice, and in violation of the Geneva Convention.
Speaker A:As a veteran, how do you view the conflict with Iran?
Speaker A:Do you think the current conflict was strategically intentional or the result of miscalculation or some other reason that we got into this?
Speaker B:Well, in a little background, remember that, you know, I was, I served during the Vietnam era and I am among the many, many, many people with whom I agree that I would personally go to hell if I were sure that Lyndon Johnson was there because he got us into a war that cost 55,000American lives, unknown God awful injuries to the Vietnamese and children, particularly with napalm.
Speaker B:And he did it.
Speaker B:I'll never understand why he did it, but to me, what Trump did was what you see in Wag the Dog.
Speaker B:His poll numbers were failing.
Speaker B:So, oh good, let's start a war.
Speaker B:There's no rationale to it.
Speaker B:There were much better ways of handling this and he made no attempt to it.
Speaker B:Not only that, but it has been shown that he went off without any idea of what he was doing and it has resulted in a disaster.
Speaker A:How do you view Secretary of War so called Hegsest leadership?
Speaker A:There was a column recently in the New York Times by Frank Bruni who pulled together a lot of information about this and I'll just quote a couple sentences from it.
Speaker A:He has made clear that every missile the United States fires, every bomb it drops, every Iranian it kills is for Jesus brandishes assertions about God's will with the exaggerated brio of an electronics merchant pressing flyers on pedestrians passing by.
Speaker A:His new megastore have I got a holy war for you.
Speaker A:Embrace the death, Exalt the destruction.
Speaker A:What only looks like hell is a ticket to heaven.
Speaker A:And there are now many emerging reports about Hegseth taking his Christian nationalist views not only into the White House, but into the Pentagon and throughout the military and with his advisors and people under his command.
Speaker A:So how do you see that evolution in military policy from just strict neutrality to this active pushing of Christian nationalism?
Speaker B:I could give you an answer, but I think that Pope Leo said it much clearer recently.
Speaker B:He said, woe to those who manipulate religion in the very name of God for their own military, economic and political gain.
Speaker B:Dragging that which is sacred into darkness and filth.
Speaker B:What more can I say?
Speaker B:It's frightening.
Speaker B:Not only that, I find it personally disgusting.
Speaker A:What effects is the conflict having on people's lives in the United States and in Iran?
Speaker B:I can only make the comparison to the things that happen in Vietnam and particularly those that were related in napalm, which is, although a very, very effective tool of war, including white phosphorus, it caused injuries among civilians that were absolutely horrific and beyond the imagination of anybody who's ever seen them.
Speaker B:Now, we have indiscriminately bombed civilians.
Speaker B:There's no question about it.
Speaker B:Think about Dresden.
Speaker B:And so the.
Speaker B:I find that war is war, but I think that the people in Iran, they're sort of helpless about it.
Speaker B:They have no control over what their leadership did any more than the German people did as a result of Hitler.
Speaker B:And again, in the United States, we're seeing economic disruption.
Speaker B:I was just reading this morning that the airlines are going to run out of jet fuel and they're cutting back their, their flight numbers because of it.
Speaker B:Look at the price of gasoline.
Speaker B:Look at the price of, of goods in general.
Speaker B:The price of meat, the price of groceries, the.
Speaker B:The price of your prescription drugs.
Speaker B:They are all going up.
Speaker B:And why?
Speaker B:It's because of the policies, what you might call an administration, which I call it tyranny.
Speaker B:And there's no rationale to it, and it certainly is not American.
Speaker A:Well, as we are recording this today, there's another ceasefire, temporary in the conflict, but it's still clear that the disruptions globally are significant and are going to persist for a while, even if the situation resol right away, which many are skeptical that that's possible.
Speaker A:So we just don't know what the ultimate costs are all going to be.
Speaker A:But we know from press reports there's already been over 1,000 Iranian civilians killed in this conflict and thousands more throughout the region where the war has spilled out of Iran into other countries around in the Middle East.
Speaker A:And the conflict is costing the US roughly 1.4 billion to over 2 billion per day, driven by surging oil prices, damaged infrastructure, and disruption to global supply chains, according to media reports.
Speaker A:So the impacts are quite significant.
Speaker A:And I think that's part of the reason that the war is unpopular in the United States, and maybe even our leader is beginning to realize that and is trying to get out of it and having difficulty doing so.
Speaker A:How do you see our country's trajectory politically?
Speaker A:Do you see historical parallels here?
Speaker A:You've mentioned Vietnam.
Speaker A:Do you think what's happening here with the imposition of authoritarianism is parallel to what went on in Germany?
Speaker B:Yes.
Speaker B:Or Hungary.
Speaker B:But back to the present, we have a bunch of guys who are in the military whose lives are being flushed down the drain for no reason.
Speaker B:And I just, it, it just, it infuriates me.
Speaker B:It really does.
Speaker B:And I think that in order to just really, really purge this country of this cancer that is.
Speaker B:That is Trump and his and his cronies are demonstrations that happen like in Vietnam.
Speaker B:But so far, there just doesn't seem to be that amount of organized public outrage that's necessary to cause a.
Speaker B:A shift that's more cultural than political.
Speaker B:There was a cultural shift as a result of the Vietnam War.
Speaker B:And I think it's going to take something like that to completely eliminate this cancer that is growing in our country.
Speaker A:For many decades, since the end of the Second World War, NATO and our allies in Europe and other areas has been really a foundation of our security in the United States.
Speaker A:Cooperation with allies.
Speaker A:Do you see those relationships being as they appear to be frayed right now?
Speaker A:Can that be restored?
Speaker A:Can we roll back the clock and go back to a time when we had that built that trust with those other countries around the world?
Speaker B:If we have a complete change in our administration and return to some semblance of rationality and particularly some sense of cooperation and compromise, then over a period of years, we should be able to recover.
Speaker B:But I think at this point, we have created generational hurt, generational damage.
Speaker B:And it's going to take many years before the people in Europe really trust this country again because of what we've done.
Speaker B:And again, it's a situation of, okay, you have this administration that's doing all these outrageous things.
Speaker B:Why aren't the American people stopping it?
Speaker B:And that's, I think, the problem that's going to be that we will have with our NATO allies.
Speaker B:Why didn't we stop it?
Speaker B:And it's going to take a long time for them to get over that.
Speaker A:If we look forward, say a year, 18 months from now, what do you think the most likely outcome looks like for this current conflict?
Speaker A:Maybe not the best case, but what do you realistically think we might be facing out into the future?
Speaker B:Well, I, what I hope we don't have is another Iraq or Afghanistan, and people simply don't understand the resilience and the will of the, of those people.
Speaker B:And they are fighting a holy war against us and it's difficult to stop.
Speaker B:And I think the longer we try to continue the war, the longer we will get hurt, the more it will cost us and we'll just end up like we did in Afghanistan.
Speaker B:We're going to leave with our tail between our legs.
Speaker A:Well, we're coming to the end of our time here and I want to thank you, Grant, for sharing your thoughts.
Speaker A:Really appreciate you being with me.
Speaker A:Recent political shifts abroad remind us that change is possible even in difficult conditions.
Speaker A:The Hungarian people's electoral defeat of Viktor Orban gives us hope, but as we've been discussing, there's been real damage here at home, and it can feel overwhelming.
Speaker A:But there is a path forward, a path of resistance and renewal.
Speaker A:Voters are engaged.
Speaker A:There are opportunities ahead in upcoming elections to turn the situation around.
Speaker A:And in the meantime, the work continues, showing up, participating, holding leaders accountable to their responsibilities.
Speaker A:Although democracy is on fire, we are not powerless.
Speaker A:The direction of the country is still being shaped, although the outcome is not yet decided.
Speaker A:We the people are resilient and we are leading the way to a brighter future.
Speaker A:Thanks for listening and staying engaged in a moment that demands it.
Speaker A:And please remember to hit that like or subscribe button so you'll never miss an episode of Democracy on Fire.
Speaker B:Democracy on Fire, with Kay Brown is edited and produced by Sam Page executive producer Joy Silver and is a production of the United America Network.
Speaker B:This is what democracy sounds like.
