Robert Lee and Vivian Hagre

[00:06] ROBERT LEE: Hi, my name is Rob Lee. I'm 32 years old. It is Wednesday, December 8, 2021. I'm based in Boston, Massachusetts in the United States. Today I am speaking with Vivian Hagre who is my one small step conversation partner.

[00:28] VIVIAN HAGRE: I'm Vivian Hagre and I'm 79 years old and I live in Minnesota and my one small step partner is Rob Lee.

[00:55] ROBERT LEE: I was really interested in doing this interview because my wife participated in a one Small step conversation and found it a really valuable experience. And as someone who has observed the growing political divide in the United States and whose friends and colleagues tend to be similar to myself, especially in terms of political views, I wanted an opportunity to have a extended conversation with someone who had maybe a different background or a different political view than myself.

[01:38] VIVIAN HAGRE: And my reason was similar. There's just been so much division in the last years. I just thought this sounds good that we should talk to each other. I love when it can expand my brain a little bit and hear new ideas and thoughts.

[02:01] ROBERT LEE: Do this interview sharing. Rob, I'm going to go ahead and ask that you read Vivian's bio. Great. I'm reading Vivian's bio now. I am a 79 year old grandmother. I have four children, three sons and one daughter and eight grandchildren. I believe my faith has shaped my life, my decisions and my values. I hold a positive attitude. My husband and I have been married 58 years. I have been involved in county Republican politics in the past. I currently consider myself a conservative, but I'm really disappointed with the national Republican Party. I have worked with our local pregnancy center. Rob Lee Sundays. I'm a 32 year old business professional husband and sports slash coffee slash yoga enthusiast based in Boston. I grew up in Toronto, Canada. I worked in business Strategy for the first five years of my career in Toronto and Singapore. In 2017 I moved to Philadelphia for grad school where I met my now wife. We moved to Boston after graduation for work. Living in multiple places has shaped my perspective on issues like democracy and health care as well as appreciate cultural differences. So those are your bios. I'm going to go ahead and ask what in the bio would you all like to know more about? Rob, you can go first. Vivian, do you have any questions for Rob? Vivian, you have such an amazing family. I'd love to hear is it more fun being a parent or a grandparent?

[03:39] VIVIAN HAGRE: I enjoy both, but being a grandparent is really quite the experience. It's just awesome.

[03:47] ROBERT LEE: That's great. Do you what have you. Are you going to get A chance to see and spend time with your different kids and their families this holiday season. Hopefully.

[03:59] VIVIAN HAGRE: We're fortunate that we only live about 15 minutes away from three of them and one's in Arizona and they just had us out for the weekend. I just got home from Arizona Monday and Tuesday. We had our first snow in Minnesota here.

[04:19] ROBERT LEE: Oh, wow, that's great.

[04:24] VIVIAN HAGRE: It's been interesting. And our kids are. We have two. One. We have two older, 55 and 53. And we have two younger 40, I think 41 and 38. But they're close to each other and we're all getting together on the 19th of this month for our Christmas a little early.

[04:52] ROBERT LEE: That's great. I hope you have a great time.

[04:57] VIVIAN HAGRE: Thank you. Well, tell me a little bit about your family. Do you have children yet?

[05:09] ROBERT LEE: So. Not yet. My wife and I are talking about that right now though. We're hoping to start trying probably in the next one to two years. We got married last April, but we're actually getting married again next April because the first wedding we weren't able to have very many guests because of the pandemic. So we're doing a second celebration with all of our friends and extended family and then once the second wedding is done, I think then we're going to shift our attention to starting a family. But I have a really close relationship with both of my parents who live in Toronto still, and I've become good friends with my sister in law who lives in Washington D.C. and my wife's parents and grandparents as well who live in San Francisco and in Texas. So no kids, but hopefully, hopefully soon, hopefully some pets in the near future as well.

[06:12] VIVIAN HAGRE: That's, that's really interesting.

[06:15] ROBERT LEE: Who has been the most influential person in your life and what did they teach you? Go ahead, Rob. The last question that I've got is could you briefly. I think my, the most influence I'm going to try to, you know, you warned me about this question and I still, I was trying to answer true to the question and give you only one person, but I think I'm just going to have to say kind of cop out and say both of my parents. But I think I've learned different things from each of them. You know, my, from my dad, I think I've learned the value of hard work and how, you know, you need to stand up for yourself and kind of what you're worth and that'll help you be able to provide for yourself and other people. But on the other hand, I think I've also learned from him that you need to think about what you enjoy. He spent his whole career focused on providing for others. And I think now that he's in retirement, he's trying to find meaning in his own life, or at least that's what I've observed. And then from my mother, I think I've learned a lot about being compassionate and taking care of others. But I've also observed that you, you need to make sure that you do that while still taking care of yourself and not always putting everyone else first, potentially at the cost of your own well being. So those are the people who have influenced me the most.

[07:48] VIVIAN HAGRE: And that would be for myself. I think I'd almost have the similar answer. My parents, both of them, my dad, as you said, your dad was a hard worker. And my dad was passing away and he would rest and sleep on the couch and next thing we hear the saws going in the garage. And my, he was so weak. But I just, I just couldn't get over that he was, he still was doing. And my mom took me to church when I was little. My dad was Catholic and my mom and was Lutheran and daddy let us. Mom raised us Lutheran. So I went to church with my mom, so. And watching her and as you said, your mom with compassion. Everything was for our family. If you'd bring mom a gift. She says this me and I just appreciated her so much. She just such a loving person. So I guess my, both my parents too.

[09:02] ROBERT LEE: Describe in your own words your personal political values. Sure. So my political values, I think everyone should be able to live like a safe, happy and meaningful life. And so I think in terms of what that means for politics, I think that we should do what it takes to make that the case for as many people as possible and kind of use our collective resources to make that true for as many people as possible. And I think it's important that we acknowledge that there have been, you know, mistakes made in the past, whether it be around gender or race or colonialism, and that, you know, we need to work together as a collective group to solve the problems for future generations so that they can have the kind of life I described and that we kind of collectively solve some of the injustices that might be carried forward in the society that we've already built from mistakes made in the past. That tends to align itself to kind of left of center politics, although I think it also aligns itself to, I think, a different, like a highly, a more organized form of democracy that is a little bit more efficient than what we would observe in The United States. And that's kind of political electoral reform and not necessarily left or right politics. No, I was just going to ask, what about you?

[11:02] VIVIAN HAGRE: Go ahead. Well, I really didn't pay much attention to politics to begin with. And then I went to a parent teacher meeting and they had shown a video of babies being aborted. And I thought, how can this be going on and nobody's doing anything about it. They're tearing apart these little babies. And I was just mortified and. Well, anyway, I just kind of grew in that a little bit and then heard that I should get involved in politics. And when I actually this is terrible, but when I went to my first caucus, I didn't know which building I should go to. And I went to the building where the Republican Party was and that was the party that seemed like it was supporting stopping abortion. So that's kind of where I started with it. And then I became a county. Eventually, over time, I got involved with a county level and I went to a state convention on. My youngest middle son was five months old. So that was President Reagan. And so it's just kind of gone like that. And so I just found myself more on the conservative side for sharing.

[12:45] ROBERT LEE: Those are the four main questions that I wanted to ask. So, yeah. Do you all have any questions for each other? I think I have a question for Vivian. You mentioned in your bio and just now as well that abortion is a topic that is important to you and that has been a motivating force for your involvement in politics. Are there other issues that you really. That you care about, whether it be, you know, economic policy or healthcare policy or social values or family values besides abortion that have influenced your politics? Or would you say that you kind of abortion is the lens through which you see politics?

[13:48] VIVIAN HAGRE: Well, since I got involved with that, then other issues have come to fore too.

[14:00] ROBERT LEE: What sorts of other issues?

[14:03] VIVIAN HAGRE: Well, I was just. Yeah. Economy. I just don't know about health, maybe the healthcare. Just a lot of things that are. Can't articulate it.

[14:26] ROBERT LEE: Right.

[14:28] VIVIAN HAGRE: A lot of the same issues that you did mention I do have concerns for.

[14:37] ROBERT LEE: Can I ask a follow up or. Actually, no. Vivian, maybe if you have a question for me. Well, you mentioned in your bio that you've become disappointed in the national Republican Party. What's driving that disappointment?

[14:56] VIVIAN HAGRE: Marching people that are supposed to be representing us going to Congress and they forget where they came from and why they were there. It's just disappointing to feel like I can't understand why there can't be one issues to vote on why everything has to be pork barreled, why they can't just veto other things and just vote on one issue. I just don't like that. And so that disappoints me because I see the Republican Party doesn't. So much goes by, I mean, I don't know kind of where I came from that I'm trying to decide what question for you.

[15:55] ROBERT LEE: Take your time.

[16:01] VIVIAN HAGRE: Well, tell me a little more about your political ideas or why you chose what you did.

[16:17] ROBERT LEE: Yeah, I think I would be lying if I didn't admit upfront that a lot of my politics is shaped by growing up in Canada. And I think I wondered. Yeah, and I think by most measures Canada is more, you know, left wing than in, than the United States. You know, there's universal health care, there's, you know, a different legislative system, there's, you know, a different policy towards, you know, first nations or as people would say in the US like American Indians. There's a different, very different policy around immigration. And I think living in the US I've observed a few things. I think on the one hand I think a few of the things I've observed, in no particular order, the US is a very big country that has a lot of regional differences. It's not to say that Canada isn't, doesn't have regional differences, but it's just not as big. And it has a strong, like the way it's organized is it has, the federal government has a lot more power. So we have a lot of our debate at a national level, whereas the US has a lot of debate at the national level, but then its policies are done at the state level. So you have a lot of difference between say Minnesota and California, whereas you can't. The provinces in Canada can only have so much difference because what they do is how they implement it is their own choice. But what they get to do is determined by the federal government in Canada. I think the second thing that I've noticed is that in the U.S. everything, and this is not like a original take, but the fact that everything is so binary is kind of baffling to me. Your point of view on abortion is tied up with your point of view on immigration is tied up in your point of view sometimes in Christianity is tied up in your point of view on inflation, which all of those things really, I don't feel like some of them have something to do with each other, but some of them have nothing to do with each other. And to your point as well, like all of these political debates, one thing is linked to another thing and that's because there's only two parties. And I think that's my biggest frustration with the US While I tend to have left of center beliefs because I think everyone should have a lot of opportunity, a lot of my critique has more to do with the political structure in the US and less to do with the specific parties. You know, there are many, many other governments in the world that are set up in a way that allow for the effective coexistence of five, six, seven parties or parties that can work together on some issues and then be in conflict in others. And I think the US Kind of puts the Constitution on a bit of a pedestal and oh, did we lose her? Okay, so just picking up where I left off. I think, you know, while I personally feel, you know, really I tend to align more with some sort of more progressive or liberal or left of center ideologies, I think my biggest frustration and the thing I feel most passionate about living in the US is how democracy itself is organized. There's so many other major governments around the world where different political parties can work together on some topics and in opposition on others. Where you can have multiple political parties that coexist, not just like one left wing party that combines pro choice, pro environmentalism and, you know, more secular views, and then another political party that combines, you know, anti abortion, Christianity and economic conservatism. Like some of those issues really don't have anything to do with each other. And I don't think we should have to debate them all together all at once all the time.

[21:17] VIVIAN HAGRE: I have. My middle son is just. We were talking and he's thinking that we should have a third party.

[21:27] ROBERT LEE: Yeah.

[21:27] VIVIAN HAGRE: And then I agree that's what he thought. I haven't really thought of it myself too much, but I mean, it's just there was Ross Perot that ran and that was interesting at that time. Go ahead.

[21:47] ROBERT LEE: No, it's. Your son is spot on. The problem, Vivian, is that you need to change the way. One needs to change the way that the voting is done. So right now, Democrats and Republicans, depending on the year, each get about, you know, 50% of the vote. Right. And then some years it swings one way and some years it swings the other. At least at the Senate, House and presidential level. Right, Correct. So. So if, if there was a third party that was a little bit more Republican. Right. Then you might maybe that year it would have been 55% Republican and 45% Democrat, and so the Republicans would have won. But if there's a third party who's a little bit more Republican, maybe that person gets 15% of the vote. And then what would happen? You would get 40% of the vote going to the Republicans, 15% going to the third party, and then 45% going to the Democrats. And then the Democrats would win Even though 65, 55% of the people are more Republican in that year. That's not fair. And so there's different ways you can organize how the votes are allocated, where, you know, instead of it just being a Democrat or a Republican president, you know, you, the votes get moved around or you go to a first choice candidate and then to a second choice candidate or you do some sort of proportional allocation. You know, they've, they were experimenting with this for the New York mayor's race a few months ago. This is what they do in Germany to a certain extent. Parliamentary systems in the United Kingdom, in Canada do this. They have a really great system in New Zealand. So I just think that we need a third party candidate. But the only way to create a third party without it just making everyone feel like, oh, like the third party was a spoiler for the Republicans this year or the third party was a spoiler for the Democrats this year. You need to set up the voting so that it doesn't ruin one party because otherwise it just collapses to binary two party systems like we have today.

[24:18] VIVIAN HAGRE: Mm. Something I hadn't ever considered or really thought about. Yeah, but I don't know, like I said, I don't feel represented by people in the Congress now. And it's just like, was there ever a day where people went and they represented people and really did what they said they were going to do when they got there. It seems like they get into Congress and they're co opted somehow with money and they forget who they represent. And that's just so, so disheartening.

[25:11] ROBERT LEE: I, no, I couldn't agree more. I think, you know, a lot of other countries would consider the way that political lobbying and campaign fundraising are set up in the United States to be, you know, would be some version of corruption, you know, with the, with Citizens United. You know, corporations are allowed to give money and there can't be any restriction against it because it's a form of, considered a form of speech. But you know, in many other countries, including Canada, there's really, really strict limits on how much money companies can give to campaigns. Individuals can only give a maximum, I think of $1,000 to any, to any candidate, or it's a few thousand dollars, something like that. And the Total money that a campaign spends is capped and the election cycle is only six weeks long. So, like, we just had a. So we just had a prime minister, like a federal election in Canada. They announced it and then it was over six weeks later.

[26:29] VIVIAN HAGRE: Refreshing.

[26:30] ROBERT LEE: Yeah. Whereas we're already talking about, you know, you know, Trump or someone else versus Biden 20, 24, which is crazy. I feel like it just ended.

[26:48] VIVIAN HAGRE: And then the other thing is people being in office for 40, 50 years, I, I think there should be term limits on. Yeah, well, the president's, what, two terms or something? I think everybody should be something like that.

[27:06] ROBERT LEE: I think they get in there and.

[27:08] VIVIAN HAGRE: They just really lose sight of everything. Go ahead.

[27:14] ROBERT LEE: No, no, you go. I've been speaking more. What? Elaborate on that thought a bit more, please.

[27:21] VIVIAN HAGRE: Well, it's just. Well, and I don't know, Mitch McConnell and Nancy Pelosi and all these people that have been there eons. Oh, why would they want to retire and enjoy their life? Oh, I just, I just don't understand how it got to be that way, I guess. And that doesn't seem to get changed and. No, doesn't matter who we send in there. So how do we do that?

[27:59] ROBERT LEE: I think, I think that's a great point because if you send in a new person, they show up in Washington, D.C. and there's a lot of other.

[28:10] VIVIAN HAGRE: Yeah, go ahead.

[28:13] ROBERT LEE: I was going to say they show up and they rely on all the people who are already there. Right. Like if, if a, if a brand new Democrat shows up, they need Nancy Pelosi's help to get on the good committees or to get fundraising. And so whatever ideals they espoused during their campaign eventually are going to become second and third priority to, you know, whatever priorities Nancy Pelosi tells them that they need to follow. Because then they say, okay, if I just do what Nancy Pelosi tells me, then I'm going to be on the committee and I'll get reelected and then I'll be able to actually do the thing my constituents ask for and then they wake up and it's 40 years later and they may, they. Maybe they've done some of those things that they said they were going to do, or maybe they just like, just kind of went along with what the Democratic establishment was doing and probably the same thing goes for the Republican side.

[29:20] VIVIAN HAGRE: Oh, I'm sure. Yeah. It's just so some of those things. I was just looking over our little questions that they said we could.

[29:40] ROBERT LEE: Do.

[29:40] VIVIAN HAGRE: You ever feel misunderstood by people with different views from the other Side.

[29:52] ROBERT LEE: Are you, are you asking me, Vivian?

[29:54] VIVIAN HAGRE: Yeah, why don't, Yeah, I was just looking at the question.

[29:59] ROBERT LEE: Yeah, I, you know, if I'm being very candid, Vivian, I, you know, I, living in Boston, I think, and going and at the graduate school that I attended, I think almost everybody I know was probably, if, if they're a registered voter, they probably voted Democrat. Now the one exception to that is probably my mother in law. She was born in India, but she, she moved to Texas when she was in her mid-20s. And I think she, she, I think has voted for a mix of Republicans and Democrats. And then a lot of people in Texas are, as you probably know, tend to lean Republican. And, but when I've been down there, you know, politics doesn't seem to come up very much. I don't know if that's me actively avoiding it or they am avoiding it or all of us just being like, you know, Southerners can be very friendly. So, yeah, I find I don't actually, I don't know if I've been in a situation where I feel misunderstood because I don't, I'm not engaging with political topics with people from across the aisle, though. Now the one thing I would say though is I do talk about politics a lot with my family and something that I, people sometimes say to me is that they think that I'm being very negative about Americans. And that's where I feel misunderstood because I'm actually, I have a lot of compassion and respect for Americans. I just have a lot of critiques, some of the same critiques that you have about how the political structure is organized. And so I kind of like levy these critiques and sometimes people, I find I feel misunderstood because people misconstrue my critiques of the American system for a critique of the American people. And it is very much the former and very much not the latter. What about you, Vivian? Do you ever feel misunderstood by people from across the aisle?

[32:20] VIVIAN HAGRE: Well, I voted for President Trump, so I have a lot of, we have friends we camp with and it's just pretty awesome. They voted for Biden and we, you know, we can talk a little bit. We pretty much don't talk about politics a lot, but we both know, both of us, the other couple and my husband, we understand where we each come from, but still we have so many things in common that we don't talk about it, I guess. And otherwise probably the majority of my family thinks like my husband and I do, except for my son in Arizona. That's a little different thoughts. But we have some great conversations, so not too much, I guess.

[33:25] ROBERT LEE: Okay, that's great.

[33:27] VIVIAN HAGRE: Yeah, I love the conversations and go through scenarios and it's interesting. I don't know where we are with our.

[33:45] ROBERT LEE: Yeah. So we have about 15ish minutes left. Could you suggest another question? Yeah. One of my favorites to ask is what is your earliest memory of politics? Would you like to start, Vivian?

[34:07] VIVIAN HAGRE: Well, mine wasn't too early, like I said. Actually though probably in my 40s, late 30s, I guess. And as I went to my first precinct caucus, which I mentioned and you know, my vote, my motivation for going, so probably I don't recall anything earlier. What about yourself?

[34:51] ROBERT LEE: I. I remember, I have. They're both from university. Like I remember a member of Parliament, which is the equivalent of like a House of Representative, came to my middle school. And I don't remember being that interested at the time. I don't think I really understood much about it. And then when I was in university, we had a. In my first or second year we had a federal election. So I was. That was my first time voting. And I remember waiting in line and I had to show my utility bill to vote. My roommate and I waiting and then I remember. But I think my first, like real political moment was there was. I was the House speaker for the student government at my university. And I think I did this more as a way to meet people, not because I cared about politics. And then we had a bit of a scandal that kind of broke out. So at my university there was a student who was elected to the third most senior position in the university, like including the faculty, they were called the rector. So, yeah, it's like a very, it's like a weird British, I think, legacy kind of thing where you have like these senior, really senior student positions. They serve like a three year term, they get free tuition, it's like a very prestigious role. So Nick Day had been elected as the rector and during. He had. There had been a little bit of controversy surrounding him that I wasn't aware of. He had very liberal views, especially on the conflict between Israel and Palestine. And he wrote a letter to a senior Canadian government official. He might have even written a letter actually to the prime minister. And he essentially said he was lobbying that the Canadian government stop supporting the Israeli government because the Israeli government has made conditions for the Palestinians really bad. He used the term Israeli apartheid or Palestinian, like apartheid, like which I think in an allusion to the apartheid in South Africa. So. And then he signed it as Nick Day, Rector of Queen's University and there was a big hoopla because, yes, he had been elected to be our rector, but that he shouldn't have, you know, been using his position as the office of the rector to advocate his personal political views, which he was not elected on. He was elected to help run the university, not to, you know, lobby this, like, left of center, you know, foreign policy vision. And so we actually, a group of people from, like, a lot of different groups came together to try to impeach him. And so we ran like an impeachment campaign. And it had never happened in the history of the university before that they tried to impeach the rector. And then as the chief electoral officer and the speaker, I was responsible for, like, running the impeachment vote, which I was like, oh, my goodness. Yeah. And it was like, it became. It was like a bit like a minor national story in Canada. Canada for, like, you know, one week. Um, and that. So I just remember people were just so incensed about it, and I was a little, to be honest, I was just like a little bit confused about why people were so, so passionate about it. And it's only now, like, you know, decades later, that I think I understand exactly what people were trying to, why they cared. And I think it was that, you know, they didn't want to feel like they were being misrepresented, which is a little bit what you were saying earlier, you know, that they voted for one person to do one job and then they, this guy was in fact, doing something different instead. And that frustrated the libertarian group on campus because they felt like they wanted, you know, I think they had more right of center views that were pro Israel, so they were frustrated at him for that. But then there was also people on campus who just didn't want to be misrepresented by this student elected official. So that was. Yeah, that was very. That's really burned in the back of my mind.

[39:42] VIVIAN HAGRE: That sounds interesting, I guess. We did have a mock convention in my senior year at high school, so that was a long time ago, but I do remember that now. But I, I don't think it affected me as far as getting politically involved, but it was interesting. I remember that.

[40:05] ROBERT LEE: Huh. If you, if you don't mind me asking, Vivian, why did you decide to vote for Trump even though you're, you know, frustrated by the Republican Party?

[40:20] VIVIAN HAGRE: Well, I felt, I really felt that he loved the country. And I saw snips of video from him on talk shows back when he was a younger man. And he always talked lovingly about this country. And I knew that it was in his heart for this country. And he was brash in the way he talked and some of the things you think, oh my gosh, that. But I just heard a discussion where they were saying that if the other countries, when he became president, when he'd say stuff, well, he might just be crazy enough to do some things. And so they kind of didn't know how to take him. And so they, you know, so I think he had, and I don't know, I enjoyed his speeches when he was talking to other nations and speaking up for women's rights and speaking up for people having their, to be able to express their faith, whatever it was. And I just always felt he really loved the country.

[41:35] ROBERT LEE: And you don't feel like Biden loves the country.

[41:41] VIVIAN HAGRE: I think he's, I don't know right now. I don't think he really knows. He just had a conversation with Putin. I didn't hear what it was, but I guess I don't know if it was recorded or not, but I think he has and in his own way. And, but this Afghanistan thing just broke my heart when all these people were getting killed there and not allowed to get out. The way it was done, I didn't agree with. It was good to be done, but not the way it was ended. I think they should have gotten everyone out first and then took the military and maybe moved our planes and equipment as well rather than leaving it. But I don't know. I'm, that's just me. I'm not, I don't understand military stuff that much. But it just, I know that there were planes waiting to take people out and our State Department wouldn't let the planes fly into the countries that they were going to take the people or something like that. So some people didn't had to deep plane and then they had to go hide and that kind of thing. I just don't think was handled well.

[43:21] ROBERT LEE: No, I, well, I don't think anybody thought that it, it went well. I think unfortunately it's, I think it's, it's more the, it's definitely worth spending time to feel, feel compassion for the people who got left there. But I think from a political point of view, you have to just think, I guess about the alternatives, you know, over the last decades, you know, we, it was very sad to see the people who died or got left there all of a sudden. But there have been people who have been, who have been killed throughout the last 20 years. And you know, that didn't make the front page because There wasn't necessarily a really shocking image of someone hanging from a plane, but, you know, they were at a wedding in rural Afghanistan getting, you know, either killed by the Taliban, killed by the Afghan military that the US Supported or accidentally bombed by a US drone. So I agree with you that it's absolutely tragic the way that it ended. I think that there's, but from a, there was a lot, there weren't a lot of other good alternatives and maintaining the conflict was a bad alternative. And, you know, taking everybody with us, I don't even, I don't even know was a viable option given the political climate in the US Respect to refugees.

[44:53] VIVIAN HAGRE: And is there an angle of it that is keeping military in these other countries with contractors and building things? And is there some money issues with all of that, with private contractors? I don't understand quite, but I, it sounds like if we, if they, you know, was sort of keeping these people over their fighting so somebody was making money because of all the equipment that was being made. I don't know, it just, Yeah, I don't understand. That's kind of the gist of what I was hearing.

[45:40] ROBERT LEE: No, you're, I think what you're, I don't understand these things in any deep level, but I think what you, what you're saying, I agree with, like, you know, you talked earlier about money in politics. You know, there, the aerospace industry, like the military defense industry, has a vested interest in the US Getting in more conflicts or having the ability to sell weapons to American allies or other countries in the world. So like, you know, planes and that really. No, it's like planes that are built by Lockheed Martin in Texas are being used to bomb civilians in Yemen, as used by the Saudi Arabian government, sold to them by the US Going back Bush, Obama, Trump, and now Biden. Actually, maybe not Biden, but because it's been too soon, but definitely Obama. I hate to interrupt at this time, but you all have about three minutes left. I don't know if there's any last minute questions that you all want to ask before you wrap up. Vivian, I think if it's all right, if we have time for a question, great. But I just want, in case we run out of time, I just wanted to say thank you very much. It was really nice to hear about your family and your history and politics and your beliefs. And I think, you know, you and I both have an appetite for a different sort of system, and I think that seems like it's probably our first priority. And then maybe once that new system is in place, we can have a healthy debate about the specifics of either abortion or something else. But in the meantime, hopefully we can work together on the system itself.

[47:48] VIVIAN HAGRE: Well, thank you for your time too. It's nice to know that we can come from different angles and yet we can see a way forward working together with the different ideas. It's awesome.

[48:05] ROBERT LEE: Yeah.