David Pepper: Laboratories of Autocracy

The Herle Burly was created by Air Quotes Media with support from our presenting sponsor TELUS, as well as CN Rail.

Herle Burly-ites, our guest today can accurately be described as a political renaissance man. His name is David Pepper. David Pepper is a Yale educated lawyer.  He’s a former politician, serving on city council in Cincinnati, and as a member of Hamilton County, Ohio, Board of Commissioners. He’s the former Chairman of the Ohio Democratic Party, stepping down after the 2020 elections. And, get this, he’s also an author, hailed as “one of the best political-thriller writers on the scene” for his fiction. Bill Clinton … yes, Bill Clinton … gushed about his latest novel, “The Voter File”. We’ll explore a little about David’s backstory. But, all of that is not really why we wanted to talk to him here today. His latest book is a work of non-fiction called, “Laboratories of Autocracy”. In it, David argues that the greatest threat to American democracy is not the “Big Lie”, or January 6th and the limo-lunging behaviours of Donald Trump. It’s not the antics of federal politicians like Marjorie Taylor Green and Jim Jordan. Rather, his thesis is that it’s the anonymous, often corrupt politicians operating in statehouse after statehouse across the country, who pose the greatest dangers to democracy. Politicians who hack away daily at the core principles and place American democracy at its greatest peril since the Jim Crow era. We’ll talk about all of that and David’s thoughts in the book about how America can fight back.

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