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As we prepare for the beginning of our new Legislature, I’m reminded of something that  said: “The advantages of democracy are liberty, equal, cautious, and salutary laws, public spirit, frugality, peace, opportunities of exciting and producing abilities of the best citizens. Its disadvantages are dissension, the delay and disclosure of public counsels, the imbecility of public measures retarded by the necessity of a numerous consent.”

It’s amazing that Wilson said those words at his state’s constitutional convention some 237 years ago, because it sounds like something someone today would say after testifying for weeks in vain over measures at our Legislature or Honolulu City Council. 

Wilson, one of President George Washington’s first four appointees to the Supreme Court, was a brilliant legal theorist. Like many scholars of the law and students of political science, Wilson reflects a frustrated attempt to square a circle in which he understood that monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy were necessary for the success of civilization, but had reprehensible aspects that in excess led to downfall.

His conclusion, like many others since then, the public had a responsibility to keep both their laws and their rulers in check. “In this constitution,” he asserted, “all authority is derived from the people.”

So what happened? Across our country, we see a restless, irate public distrusting of their government. Pew Research  found that just 22% of people said they trusted the government to do what is right always or most of the time. 

There is also a sense among Americans that corporations are exploiting the system to the disadvantage of citizens. Navigator Research  that revealed Americans across all ideological and income groups blamed corporations and greed for their economic woes.

In other words, people suspect the game is rigged, and most people think an out-of-touch government and corporations are destroying our way of life. You’d think that decreased public confidence would lead to better representation, but instead, we see the opposite — the less the people trust the government, the worse things seem to get. I didn’t make that up, the Founders said so.

“The more the people are discontented with the oppression of taxes,” Benjamin Franklin observed, “the greater need the prince has of money to distribute among his partisans, and pay the troops that are to suppress all resistance, and enable him to plunder at pleasure.”

Here in Hawaiʻi, we use the term “pay-to-play.” It suggests our government is run by those who can throw around the money necessary to win the ears of those in power or to put people into positions of influence who can hold their hands on the scales of justice.

To explore Franklin’s statement with an analogy, the modern “princes” here are private affluent individuals and corporations, with their “troops” being government elected officials and “partisans” being their core group of people they reliably mobilize to out-shout, out-protest, and out-testify the rest of us.

Hawaiʻi Is Too Small To Be Complacent

Now, we’ve suspected for a long time that the system is unfair, but we were willing to tolerate it because one could mostly keep to themselves and not care about what happens in Honolulu.

In the past, you could afford to be politically detached. Now every session of Congress, the Legislature, and our local city council must be monitored closely lest something happen that tips the scales too far in one direction or the other.

Because Hawaiʻi is such a small place, the decisions of our government can sometimes divide families who find themselves with members benefiting from favor against others who are out of favor. Want to know what hell is? A family where one close relative is a public school teacher, another is a real estate investor, and another is in the hotel industry. Then see how they treat each other and choose sides depending on who is in power in Honolulu. 

The decisions and experiences that impact our lives are increasingly being influenced not by the public, but by a class of individuals and organizations that use money to control the government. And since not all of us are wealthy enough to influence the outcome of primary elections and not all of us have the platforms or social reach to hold accountable our government, we find ourselves increasingly at the mercy of hoping those we newly elect will somehow “check” those who have been elected for decades.

But is this such an unreasonable ask? Is this such a heavy lift? The latest generation of elected officials are supposedly more idealistic of what can be accomplished and more distrusting of the establishment. Is the matter at hand fear of being alone in attempting to fight the powers that be, or fear of being the first to speak up? Or is it just a matter of conformity, where we will support others once they win, but not until then?

So here’s what we need to do in the days and months to come to “train” our new leaders. For one, Hawaiʻi’s locals need to make laser-like, directed use of their outrage and peer pressure against both private special interests and the public officials they control. When elected officials see us consistently applying pressure and relentlessly calling out their abuses of trust or power, it will make them hesitant to disappoint us in the future.

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Second, people are going to have to start using the legal system to challenge practices and traditions that have kept the public in the dark or rigged the rules unfairly against a minority. Our courts exist as a constitutional check for a reason, and we need to start using them more aggressively as members of the public and concerned citizens. The more we tolerate, the more we suffer. Just because someone in office says something must be a certain way does not mean they are legally correct. 

Last, we need to fight misinformation and empower democracy with clarity. Yes, in recent years we’ve come to realize that social media has become a problem, but legacy media is an even bigger problem when it sides by default with whatever the establishment’s opinion is. It’s important for those who are in positions of media prominence to demand explanations, question loyalties, investigate grievances and observe everything and admire nothing.

The latest generation of newly elected officials needs to see the discerning public acting courageously and fearlessly so they too can be discerning, courageous and fearless. If it comes to choosing between us and choosing to honor special interests, they’ll side with those who hold their careers and future at stake. And why shouldn’t that be us? They need to see the light, and when that fails, they need to feel the public’s fire.