Matt Mahan

We need care court to actually work.

We need to get people into treatment.

We need to follow through and build the 10,000 treatment beds that Prop 1 promised us.

So I think part of it, there's different levels of disagreement around, is it the policy itself or the lack of implementation?

Well, Prop 36 did change that.

Well, let me agree with part of what you said and then maybe gently push back on another part.

I think to the gentle pushback, I don't know that it's realistic that we can have a functioning, a high functioning democracy without a robust civic life.

I think that...

We, I don't know if the story is apocryphal or not, but the, you know, you have a, you have a Republic if you can keep it was I think Ben Franklin's response.

And I do think that, you know, as Americans, we've maybe fallen into this false assumption that we can just focus on our personal lives, our families and friends, our social lives and our professional lives and build a career.

and figure out how to make money or survive in this world and have a career and then not have to invest in this third sphere of life that is our public and civic life.

And so I do think there's a role.

I think all of us have a responsibility for

having some understanding of the issues of the day, the trade-offs that are being made, how our tax dollars are being spent.

We've made it really complicated.

I'm not saying we've optimized the system at all.

I think it's in need of serious reform.

The average American is represented by dozens of elected officials.

That makes it really hard to be an informed and engaged citizen.

But there are some substantive demands of citizenship in a democracy that we should all, I think, be willing to sign up for if we want to have a healthy democracy.