Deborah Pardes
@DBPardes · 2:37
Today on the Voiceover: Your Heart and Our Democracy - which one is crumbling faster if at all?
There are always consequences to standing up. Now, Maria is talking about the Philippines, but she could be talking about the United States. So here's my question. How are you feeling about democracy? How are you feeling in your heart? How are you dealing with the truth of some of the aspects that we see around us, the crumbling of our democracy? And I'm not going to go into detail because I want to keep this out of the headlines and inside your heart
Deborah Pardes
@DBPardes · 0:13
And for this episode of the voice over, I'm going to invite Ophelia, Clay, Jessica, and David, and I'll keep this as a panel for a couple of hours, and then I will open up for everyone to join. Thanks
Clay Lowe
@soulcruzer · 4:52
Hi, Deborah, what a fantastic question that is. And very I mean, it's 06:00 in the morning for me receiving this. So it's a very early, a very heavy question had to start my day off with. I'm just actually setting a car about to go into the gym. But I wanted to respond to your question because it's a very interesting question to me. And personally, I feel that democracy is in trouble and it's been in trouble for several years now
Clay Lowe
@soulcruzer · 3:33
So it very much felt like a police state stepping out and walking into that environment. Having come from this environment, I don't live in a super small place I'm in, I guess. What would you recall? The suburbs, but I'm only half an hour away from the second largest city in the UK. Anyway, that said, that's a perspective
Jessica McMillan
@JLMcMillan · 3:13
I know what democracy is. So I'm already assured by the fact that I know what it is. I know how it feels in my heart. It's the fact that it's not feeling that way on the outside in the world as I see it. And as a Canadian, I'm seeing the reflections of everything that's been discussed so far in this country as well. I see a very unfortunate shift to anti intellectualism
Deborah Pardes
@DBPardes · 2:52
That visual goes along with it as democracy kind of breathe in and breathe out. So do our own sort of relationships to the conversation. I, for one, feel heavy hearted a lot. It's not an issue of Democrat or Republican. It's an issue of people's rights to understand, really, what's going on and how those rights have been obfuscated by ill meaning messages and the wars of misinformation. I'd love to hear people's more thoughts and please
Ophelia Johnson
@LadyO · 4:48
Okay, but this is not a democracy and they know that and they understand it, and they're willing to take that risk. The United States and most, I'd say, Westernized or industrialized countries with great economies have basically become capitalist societies where only the rich and the more powerful have a voice. And the people who have less money and less power have no voice. And so therefore there's no such thing. You can't have a democracy if you don't have freedom. Okay
Deborah Pardes
@DBPardes · 2:29
And you're coming from a place of what people experience every day is more Truthful than what we look for every two years, every four years at the ballot box. What we experience every day, a lot of people experience every day is inequity and inequity doesn't feel like it's a Democratic experience. Inequity feels like there's something on top of you