Dissecting America’s Crisis on Upholding Integrity
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When the UK Parliament found out that PM Boris Johnson ignored lockdown rules by attending several parties, they were ready to kick him out of office. In just one pivotal event, the British government did something most US politicians would not even try: upholding integrity. Bill Stierle and Tom look into recent events that reveal America’s problem in seeking and standing up for the truth. They talk about how Donald Trump’s unceasing campaign for the Big Lie influences how people embrace integrity. Bill and Tom also emphasize why freedom of expression must never set aside accountability and fairness.
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Dissecting America’s Crisis on Upholding Integrity
There is some very interesting news that came out of Great Britain. We need to understand it to take a good look in contrast to what is happening in the United States. I am going to please read this news. The news is, “In Great Britain, Prime Minister Boris Johnson of the country's Conservative Party faced a serious challenge to his government when a report revealed ‘failures of leadership and judgment’ by Boris Johnson attending twelve parties that ignored the country's strict lockdown roles. Boris Johnson downplayed the events, but they have been confirmed and even much of his party appears ready to abandon him.”
This is the important part, “Appalled that he considered himself above the law, one member of parliament said, ‘Honesty and decency matters.’” I am reading this and I’m like, “That is refreshing, that honesty and decency still matter somewhere in a democracy.” Great Britain is at the point where they are ready to throw out their Prime Minister because he hasn’t been honest. That level of being held accountable for lack of integrity and not being in alignment with the law is something we are not seeing a whole lot in America.
How do you be compassionate to somebody who is trying to raise money to go to these events and do things? Also, on the other side, he is not in integrity with his words or what his government is standing for, called protecting each other through safety measures versus, “I am free to do whatever I want to do over here. These rules only apply to the masses. It does not apply to me or the elites.” We have our version of that here. The people at Fox can be 95% or 97% vaccinated inside their experience, yet they can go on air and talk badly about vaccinations. That is not congruent integrity-wise. The message is not congruent with what their behavior is.
Human beings promise things they can’t keep. Have you ever promised something to your kid that you could not do? “We will leave here in 5 minutes,” and then it is 1 hour later. “Dad, you said we are going to leave. I have been waiting here.” Human beings have to do something around integrity when we got stuff coming out of our mouths. Integrity is a unique need because it has two parts to it. The first part is that whatever comes out of our mouth, our feet do. If I say I am going to do it, I am going to do it. That is part one.
Part two is unless a greater need shows up that knocks the first need out. I could say, “I am going to drive over to my friends. I will be there at 5:00,” but my tire gets flat and then I got to spend a couple of hours fixing my tire. That is what a person would say is a reasonable reason why the need for integrity could not be met. There is a scale of what is reasonable and what is not. “I had to take care of these other things.” There is a scale here and a lying piece on one side of it. Here is the thing, “My dog ate my homework.” You are not in integrity because you said you would bring me the thing. That is not in alignment with truth.
The problem of America is that in our messaging, we are on the lower end of the integrity piece. We can change from moment to moment. There’s nobody to hold accountability throughout the field of time. Somebody can say, “I am not for gay marriage,” at the beginning and then two years later say, “After thinking about that, I am for gay marriage.” Barack Obama did that.
There is a difference. Integrity can be pushed too far at some point. It is when politicians are like, “I have always said this and believed that.” It is like, “I do not care if you have always believed that if there is a good reason why. You have done more research and learned more about the subject and now that you are more informed, your position has changed on it. I do not think that is a character flaw.”
When you are a Mitch McConnell leading the Senate and you will not allow Merrick Garland to have a hearing with President Barack Obama where he nominated him for the Supreme Court when a Supreme Court Justice died, it’s almost a year until there is another election and Mitch McConnell says, “There is a rule. We are not going to have a hearing on a Supreme Court Justice in an election year.” When it comes time under a Republican president, when Ruth Bader Ginsburg dies, he says, “We are going to fill that spot within six weeks.” There is a difference in integrity that is very situational and about winning and very much out of integrity where there was no good reason other than, “I want to do that and win.”
The very unsettling thing is that a group of people can do measured things that are not aligned with integrity. If I want to create brand damage or image damage on a person, I can take them to court over and over again. I could create all kinds of damage to their identity, brand, trust and then all of a sudden, after a while, it’s like, “Did the person do anything or was responsible for that person’s situation?” That is the Hillary Clinton-Benghazi smear campaign for a year and a half. It is like, “How is she responsible for that over there under her watch?”
She is concentrating on these other things and this thing like, “Would I as a visionary outsider see that that would be a problem?” I also can see that there are blind spots that people have that don’t see things coming. This is a good example of a blind spot, “It is 9/11. Were there any signals ahead of time that something different could have been happening at that embassy so this thing could not have taken place?”
The need for integrity also has its set of limits to it because of the scaling. There is indeed accountability, but it is not 70%. It was 10% or 20% accountability. When a politician flips on a major value that they made over the years, I can understand the morals of Bill Clinton being taken on by a younger Lindsey Graham.
All of a sudden, as soon as his guy is worse than the other guy was, it is not a big deal because, in the field of time between those two points in time, our society has changed a bunch. It makes sense that more freedom of expression is more available and moralistic and ethical things have fallen by the wayside a lot for several years. Even though I don’t agree with the change, the change is still in the range of perspectives. How do we get off of the crack cocaine of society and outrage and return to some of the core values that would make a big difference for us?
Tom, you and I like integrity and truth. We like the concept of mutual respect, not just respect for one person, one person's point of view or one person saying something. We would like mutual respect to show up. “I respect your opinion. Tell me more. How did you come to that? What was your foundation for that? What does that look like?” We discuss honesty after discussing what the information is or their truth perspective. You have to put the word perspective behind the word truth to work. You have got to do it.
This is our truth perspective. Ninety-seven percent of vaccines do this. Three percent of the perspective says there is some wiggle room because science is always evolving. That is why the number has this 3% because we do not know why this other 3 % happens. It is unknown, but these are the numbers we know. This is what we are measuring. Regrettably, truth has a long haul up the mountain than honesty does. Honesty is a little easier than truth is.
In America, truth does not seem to matter all that much in many ways or situations. We are nowhere in the neighborhood of honesty and integrity in general. There are notable exceptions. What is interesting to me about the Great Britain story is it strikes me how much easier it is in their system to throw out the Prime Minister. They can get a majority of members of parliament to have a vote of no confidence and then you get somebody out.
You have a new vote amongst your parliament and install a new Prime Minister. Their governance system is very different, whereas we had a president of the United States who lied about the pressure he was putting on Ukraine. We get the recording of the call and the transcript showing he was out of integrity with what he said and that he had lied.
He was not in alignment with the rule of law as to what he could do. Look at the high bar it takes to remove a president in the United States. You got to go through the impeachment process. That is about partisan politics. “Who is your guy? Who is not your guy?” Ultimately, in the Senate, there are not enough people. We moved off of loyalty to then say integrity, honesty and decency matter.
It is in the rule of law. With that identity partisan politics piece that plays out, I am not saying both sides don’t do partisan identity politics. That’s what is happening. They do that. It is where are our values and needs going to be set up. This is what integrity would look like. Donald Trump held a rally that said, “I am being honest with you. I did those things and look what happened. They are trying to pass a bill that proves that Mike Pence could have done XYZ.”
The answer is there is no rule or law about that because there was a belief in the past that Americans were going to trust what the vote counters were going to count and the legal system. We have many people in America that do not trust the legal system and that is where the damage is. The legal system has damage to it, so what do you do when the legal system has damage? You create new laws to make it so that the legal system does not have as much wiggle room in it because you’ve got to legislate things like integrity, truth and respect.
You are legislating stuff that we used to go like, “We are doing the peaceful transfer of power and extending trust. We are going to be honest about election laws. We are not going to be prohibitive with election laws.” That is what is happening. There is a movement of prohibiting, limiting or making it only these certain ways and the states get to decide on what those certain ways are. In other words, “That means that state gets to discriminate against their people.” I do not think that is the United States.
It remains to be seen what will happen there, but Congress is looking at the Electoral Count Act, which is the law that they are looking to put some more guard rails up there to prevent what they realized could have so easily happened. Had Mike Pence put loyalty to Donald Trump above loyalty to democracy, America and our rule of law, it could have happened. Donald Trump spoke and he said, “They found out that Mike Pence could have done it.”
He could have doesn’t mean he should have and it’s the right thing to do. It does not mean that would have been in alignment with honesty, integrity and the law. Could he have done it? He could have. The other thing that is mind-boggling that came out of that speech from Donald Trump is he is talking about how if he runs, which you got to love the uncertainty there, Bill.
He is the best sales marketing person ever. He can sell anything he wants, whether it is vodka or steaks. It is unsettling that he needs the next thing to sell. He doesn’t have any bandwidth to sell anything, so he keeps selling the thing that is in front of him, which is the big lie.
He is selling himself to remain on the front page of every newspaper and journalist website in the country as often. He is like, “If I run and win, all these people who attacked Capitol, who were treated very unfairly,” and here is where he brings fairness into it, all these 750 people that have been charged with a crime for January 6, 2021, need fairness, he says, “I might pardon them all. We will have a lot of pardons.” He is undercutting the rule of law saying, “They have been treated unfairly.” There is an accountability piece for people's actions. The need is not being met there if you do that.
Let’s talk about that specifically. This is very important regarding the First Amendment, the right to freedom of speech. Freedom of speech means you get to say whatever you want because we want the ideas out in front of us. We do not want people to push them inside and go around the rule of law. We would like it in front, know where people stand, and express themselves fully. When they are expressing themselves, we want to weigh in on that value in that field of time. You go back in the field of time, years and years ago, there are a lot of horrific things that were legal, the low-hanging fruit of slavery until they weren’t.
That means society is saying, “We have freedom of speech and you have the freedom to do what you want, but you don’t necessarily get to take another person's right away while you are doing that freedom of speech.” If there is a law that is in place that says, “You can say what you want, but if what you want is running up against the law, you could be in trouble.” That is what took place within his speech. He walked into the bear trap and stepped on it. He says, “This is justified. I believe I can get out of this bear trap.” The defiance and the open admission have been something that sits in the freedom of speech category and running up against the rule of law, which is problematic.
He is setting himself up as being above the law.
The counter-message has got to not go after the truth of what you said. The counter language message is to dampen the accusation. We want freedom of speech. We don’t want the guy to shut up. It is better not to censor but have some wisdom to say with our modern way that you can access every human being through a Twitter account. There is a little bit of challenge about getting the message out, which is called a modern problem.
You had to go through newspapers and editorial boards before. You had to do all these other things to get your need for expression. People would do that. They would set up their printing presses and print whatever they wanted to. They advertise and promote if it was inside the law. “Somebody bought your snake oil. Great. You sold some snake oil.” If snake oil kills people, then there is a law for that. It is problematic. If you know it is going to kill somebody, there is also a law for that. Ask Big Pharma. They are having some trouble with this one. What do I mean that we got to dampen the accusation? Say any one of the sentences that Donald Trump said at his rally. Give me one of those.
He says, “All these people that have been charged with a crime for January 6, 2021, are being treated very unfairly.”
I am going to be a broadcaster that is on an opinion show or a politician that has an open mic that is listening to that sentence. Here is my dampening compassionate message to what he said. “It seems like the ex-President is feeling confused and needs clarity on whether or not the election was counted fairly. The people in the insurrection are going to be treated fairly. He is not liking the rule of law that there is to be the counting of votes. He does not like that rule. Americans need to speak up when they do not like things.”
“I am feeling a little bit unsettled because, in honesty, we have looked at the accusations and the things that were brought to court. We weren’t able to find the level of truth that the ex-President is talking about. We found some truth, but we found very small amounts of truth, not enough to rise to the level of the accusation. A person needs to express themselves, but also important for the listener to know that that person is not in alignment with what the truth of the count was.”
Notice how this conversation got flat. It got a little boring almost, but that’s what has to happen with an accusation. You can’t say, “He is lying. He is a grifter. He is going to ruin the nation.” You can't go there. You have to dampen the accusation with compassionate language so that you can honor the person's need to express themselves because that is the First Amendment. You want to be able to be compassionate. They are opening their mouth but also, to be honest. Honesty is ahead of the truth.
Do the same thing with the idea that those people that are charged with a crime for January 6, 2021, for storming the Capitol were treated unfairly.
“The ex-president has thought and is making a statement that they are being treated unfairly. He feels enthusiastic about the point of view and tries to encourage people to fight for their nation, to be loyal to him and the nation the way he sees it. There is a disappointment that is showing up here because the rule of law stated that the votes were to be counted and the legal remedies to stop the votes from being counted had been exhausted.”
“When he encouraged people to go to the Capitol and fight like hell and they went over the line of fighting like hell with their voices and they turned it physical does not meet the need for protection, safety and peaceful transfer of power. Even if the person believes that an election was stolen and sold that the election was stolen, it doesn’t mean that they can physically take that action during a peaceful transfer of power.” Notice it dampened. Fairness under the law looks like this.
It looks like people that commit violence and break other laws. Even if you think laws weren’t broken, votes weren’t properly counted, and there needs to be accountability, you are excused from breaking other laws trying to have your voice heard.
You can get your voice heard, stand outside the Capitol building and yell as much as you want. You can demonstrate even as horrific as you’d like. You can put a gallow out there and wave a flag all you can. The only thing that you can't do is hurt people or damage property. If we watch you do that, there are some laws for that. That is what fairness looks like. There are some laws, both federal and state laws, that you can't cross and do certain things at the expense of others.
If you do, there are consequences for your actions.
By him promising that he will pardon them is meeting the need for loyalty and the need to protect them. We may notice that he had a lot of chances to pardon a lot of people on the way out and he only gave it to a few. Only the ones he pardoned were the ones that gave him the most exposure, coverage and had the next level of loyalty. All these different court cases could come up and he gets reelected.
From the rule of law, he can use the law to his advantage and absolve himself and others. “Who is going to make me do it?” All of a sudden, we are on a course to that authoritarian and oligarchy experience where rich people run all the things. Everyone else has to eat crow because of it. We are in a precarious place because we have a messenger who knows how to sell and market to people at the expense of truth. That is problematic.
To return to where we started, it’s in stark contrast to what we are seeing play out in parliament and Great Britain. There is more concern for integrity, honesty and decency. We are lacking a lot of that in America. That is disheartening.
There is a way out and that is the good part. The way out is how to stand up, message and counter-message a person with a strength of voice, the one that gets their messages to stick through accusation. It becomes a believable thing because an accusation is a possibility. It is not the truth.
That is a profound realization that I don’t think enough people have.
The accusation can be taken as truth. “Hillary Clinton’s server.” As soon as I said that, people shifted into that mindset. What does the need for privacy and protection look like? Were there some laws broken? Some things have some gray areas and wiggly spots to them. Was it a “lock her up” moment? No, but it did cause damage. It did skew the truth of what it takes to communicate and keep these different parts of her life separate.
“Here is your public service life and political life. You got to keep those separate. Here is your fundraising. You got to keep that separate from that one. If you do not keep that separate, there is a law against that.” There is more to come on this. The next time that we are together, Tom, the thing that we could take a look at is what is the way out? How do we message our way out of this situation and get back to the healthy narratives that we need to take place in the environment?
That would be nice. We need more of that. Bill, thanks so much.
Thanks, everybody, for reading.
