The Dangers of Americans’ Addiction to Fast Food Language

Human beings are easily affected by the fast food word salad that marketers, politicians and media use, and Americans are no different. We are addicted to cheap, "fast food" language in place of healthier language, and remain unaware that fast food language is designed to outrage and indoctrinate. Join in the conversation as Bill Stierle and Tom discuss how CNN, Fox News, and other media outlets litter the truth with their opinions until the listeners are left grappling in the dark because they can no longer distinguish what are facts and what are opinions. We need to pay attention to what our leaders are saying and how close it is to the truth. Tune in to recalibrate your thinking closer to the truth!

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The Dangers of Americans’ Addiction to Fast Food Language

There are so many things going on. I want to let our readers know that this is the beginning of a multi-episode discussion of this concept of what the American public is being fed in terms of language and messaging and how it is hijacking an awful lot of people.

I appreciate the messaging where our words are like fast food. Human beings like to think. We like to challenge and participate in everything from entrepreneurs creating a new idea and bringing it to the market. Even a person in a big company, as a part of manufacturing, look for efficiencies and how they can get their job to be more effective and make better decisions to get their teams to work more cooperatively. Foods are the words that feed our brains. It feeds our thinking. It gives us a chance to create tension and the intention to wake up in the morning.

If we're not working up in the morning with a good intention, it doesn't go well. You and I are tired, and we need some rest. We do this show early in the morning, and people don't know that, but they will pick it up once in a while that we feel tired, and we needed rest because this is our intention. We're waking up and trying to connect, contribute and provide new insight about how to provide empathy and compassion to tragic actions, words and phrases that people are using.

The weird part about this is that the news media is stuck in the same thing, which is they got to use the right words to capture viewership. If they don't use the right words to capture viewership, no one is going to watch them. It's not as challenging. It's too soft. They’ve got to have this unfiltered quality to it, which is the lead for the S.E. Cupp show that you shared with us, if you will be willing to share with everybody about that clip and some of the things you were bringing to me and watch it.

S.E. Cupp is a CNN employee. I don't know her title, but she got some segments in their show a lot. She has a weekly segment called S.E. Cupp Unfiltered, where she's giving her take on something and her opinion. It’s fairly its opinion. What she's doing is calling out what you have referred to as a fast-food diet of language.

What a large portion of the American people has been sold in terms of not just the big lie of the election in 2020, but the big lie of truth. They're selling these things as truth that are not true. What she's talking about in reference to the text messages that have come out by the January 6th 2021 committee and about how a lot of the Fox News personalities of Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, and others were texting the Chief of Staff in the White House during the insurrection and telling him what to tell the President that it needs to stop.

They're trying to encourage the Chief of Staff, Mark Randall Meadows, to convince the President needs to come out, make a statement, get this to stop, and this has gone too far. Those same personalities have been selling on television the opposites. The big lie of what she's talking about is the people that are so loyal to Former President Donald Trump are so indoctrinated in the big lie, going to realize that they have been had. That's what she says.

The hard part about this discussion is that it has to do with the word hope. Hope is a powerful word, phrase, concept, biological and stimulating word. I feel hope that my president, values and the things that I see as right with the world are going to be promoted in the world. Donald Trump presented hope through strength, “If somebody crosses me, I'm going to fire them. If somebody is not loyal, I'm going to fire them.”

There's the hope that that leader will do things in the best interest of the country. That's the hope that S.E. Cupp is asking for something that’s not available to the listeners of Donald Trump. It's not available. The reason why there's biochemistry that is blocking them from listening to anything other than the big lie is because the leader keeps saying that Michael Richard Pence needed to do the right thing, where there was no right thing for him to do. Michael Richard Pence did the right thing.

The former president has been selling that wrong thing. He's still selling it nowadays.

People are putting it up on media for everybody to see, "Michael Richard Pence should have done the right thing.” It's like, “Are you going to keep drawing a target on Michael Richard Pence now?” You would think that Michael Richard Pence would finally stand up, but he can't. He can't say, “The president is completely wrong on this. No matter how much you love him, and I know how much I care about him. He is a great leader. He's like my father.” Michael Richard Pence can't go into his own stuff. It's a weird thing, but he can't look at his own shadow. One of the hardest parts about this is that human beings get stuck on this.

What was eye-opening about S.E. Cupp’s Unfiltered piece as she points out that not only is the former president still selling all this and perpetuating the idea that the election was stolen from him. You often say the facts don't matter because people believe what they believe, but the facts support that Donald Trump lost the election, and Joe Biden won. What she's pointing out is it's clear from these text messages on January 6th, 2021 when these Fox News personalities to Mark Randall Meadows, the White House Chief of Staff, that they knew that this was a mob of Donald Trump supporters attacking the Capitol and was trying to get the president to stop it because they knew he incited them to do it.

What she also points out is these same Fox News personalities and the Fox News network in general, continue to support the idea that Mike Pence didn't do the right thing, that they sow seeds of doubt in the election integrity, that there was all voter fraud and all this stuff. What she points out, which is very sobering and some scary honesty, is for the people that are watching those personalities and network and believing all this messaging that those Fox News personalities don't even believe what they're selling, that they knew the difference and they're sowing seeds of doubt like, “The insurrection is member of Antifa.” Anything other than loyal Donald Trump supporters.

It's very difficult to say, “You're right on target with what you're saying, but it's not going to stick.” That's the hard part about this discussion. It’s very difficult when a group of people is stuck with delusions. I'm not saying that the left doesn't have its set of delusions because it most certainly does. This is not a right-left conversation, but this is a discussion on how does the brain gets hijacked. That's what the discussion is.

When the brain wants to believe something, it goes all in because it only has the language to go all in. It doesn't have time. As soon as fight, flight and free situation comes up, it goes in that direction and anchors it. It will deny all reality. There's a quote from Carl Jung that says, “It's greater than all physical dangers are tremendous effects of a delusionary idea will carry it. The delusionary idea carries it because it's going to go over reality. It's going to blind consciousness.” He's talking post-World War II.

You’ve got to think of it that way too. He's going like, “This is how we got stuck.” Our vaulted reasoning and undoubted rest will sometimes utterly be powerless in the face of unreal thoughts. This is Carl Jung talking about that same problem. The problem is our consciousness gobbles this stuff up through word salad. The word salad is what is Hannity is saying. Donald Trump knows what the target is. The target is eyeballs. That's the target. The target is, “Look at that guy's ratings. That guy's ratings are nothing. That guy's ratings is something.” All he's looking about is, “How can I change the ratings with the things that I'm sharing with people?”

All the news stations are guilty. These Fox News, CNN, NBC and Newsmax, all of them are guilty of stoking outrage because outrage keeps eyeballs engaged. That's what has been happening. In this example, Fox News has been doing is instead of broadcasting outrage at the fact that the president incited a mob to attack the Capitol, they express outrage that organizations like Antifa and others that they don't agree with would sponsor a false flag operation and pretend to be Donald Trump supporters attacking the Capitol.

They're looking for word salad to spin it in the direction. Whether right or left, the one is super dark and apocalyptic, and the other is utopian. Both of the fringes have both of those things. The anti-vaxxer has its super dark and an apocalyptic thing. It also has this utopian thing. The right also has the super dark and apocalyptic thing, and it also has the utopian thing called a Christian nation or one nation under God, which is a Christian nation. That's their utopian. The right has its utopian, and it's dark and apocalyptic, and the left has its dark and apocalyptic that, “You're taking away my freedom thing,” and the utopian, “If we get along and talk, it's going to be okay. If we just stay in this together, we'll be fine.”

What's missing is we need to face hard issues that are called facing the shadow. It sounds like this. We have been living for 40 years with an infrastructure that has crumbled over the last many years. That's a hard decision to face. In order to do that, we need to pay for it. In order to pay for it, we need to do it the same way we paid for it last time, which was to tax the rich extensively. That's how we did it many years ago. The tax rate was 90%, 70% and 60% on the wealthiest Americans. That's what it was. With that money, we built roads, the middle class, Medicare and things with the money from the rich. That's what we did. We chose to build things with money from the rich.

Opponents of this would call that socialism. 

They're calling it socialism, but it is collective participation and the greater good, not socialism where everything gets wiped out. America has a hybrid. Part of our system is capitalist and socialist. It's capitalists and the socialist part props up the capitalist part. How do we know this? We bailed out bankers as if bankers needed money. We're going to give money to bankers so they will lend it to the people. Did they lend to the people? No. They redid their ATMs and got themselves more bonuses.

Our worldview has got to embrace the things that we do wrong and are unjust. The incarceration rate, rehabilitation system, and workforce development, what are we doing? Nothing. We have a very limited workforce development. Other countries have layers of workforce development. We don't have more workforce development. Those are some problematic and big things that we need to face.

The tough part is facing it. To circle back to how she kept closed, her segment is, “When are the people going to realize they have been had?” To me, that is a tough question.

The thing is, you can't tell them they have been had. Their pride, respect, recognition and self-worth will not admit that they have been had. What you will do is replace it with a new and more valuable thought. You've got to replace it. You can't overwrite it because they have too much investment. Through time, they will experience the backlash of truth. Do you remember that time when you were 30 or 25 years old, and you did that thing that was junky, but you felt it was good that you did that thing that you did? Do you remember that thing that you did? I'm making up a story. I don't know what the thing is, but in his brain, he's thinking about that. Have you noticed that you've given yourself a pass on that thing that you did that was a junky thing that you thought, “That wasn't a good thing that I did, but I'm glad I didn't do that thing again?”

The other thing that is a good example is married couples go through this a lot when their spouse does something junky, but you are married, and you're going to be loyal and supportive of your spouse. Even if you wouldn't have done or wished that your spouse didn't do that thing, you're going to back them up because that's what people do. That's the tough part. People feel that they invested their vote and themselves in a choice to support a political leader candidate. They're not going to wake up because they have invested so much. If they flip 180 degrees, they have to admit that they made a bad choice and they were wrong. They need an off-ramp.

We’ve got to give them an off-ramp. S.E. Cupp is missing this. When will the followers of the big lie going to realize that they're being had, that the people they trusted and adored don't even believe what they are saying or selling? They're not even believing it. There are mouthpieces of media. There are people that are advocates.

Whether they have a direct feed right to the top is problematic because that is a type of propaganda we don't want. We want investigative journalism to say, “Here's the pros and cons of the Build Back Better plan.” That's what I would like the media to do. Stay in your lane. Here are the pros and cons of it. Don't say bad and good. One side takes one, and one side on the other. I don't want the media to do that.

Don't judge and give an opinion. Just report. The news cycle is so full of opinion.

I'm telling you what is not there. If you want to land on the fact, you've got to land on the fact. It's very difficult. What media has cultivated is they can make money at weaving in opinion. We didn't do that in the past. We kept it separate. The big part of it is we need to face that, as human beings, we are affected by word salad. We have a fast food diet of words and a fast food type from our restaurants. It's upsetting me to say this, but it's better to use $0.05, $0.10 or $0.25 words, rather than some of the words that S.E. Cupp used, which were $50, $250 and $5 words. He can't use those words because the person's brain will not believe it or even understand it.

It doesn't land and receive as easily as the more simple language. 

The type of words you’ve got to use is salt and sugar. Nobody wants to eat vegetables. Our next show is vegetable language. Can we get a healthier diet? The problem is that a healthy diet is expensive. You’ve got to pay a little bit more for healthy food. What winds up happening is that words, people who inspire like football coaches, when we hear a great monologue in a movie, we listen to a great poem or a corporate leader inspires us. We say, “I'm going to work for this person. I would like to work in this company culture. I would like to be in this experience right here. This is what I would like to do and have the experience.”

When a corporate leader turns to a politician, the politician has to use the same set of words. As we have mentioned on this show many times, “Make America great again.” Great is the $0.25 word. Again is a $0.10 word. Again to what? To the 1950s? When was America great again? It was 1950 through 1963. Is that the time period we’re going to go back to? The world has changed since then. We're not the same people dealing with the same problems. We have a different set of problems. We didn't even have a catalytic converter on a car back then to take out the pollutants.

We didn't know that it was a thing until it became a real thing called Los Angeles smog, people choking, and getting sick from it. Our way to approach this from a language perspective is to realize that we're going to have corporate leaders that inspire but also lie. We're going to have politicians that inspire that also lie. We also got to realize that part of it is a sales pitch to raise our dopamine, cortisol and adrenaline, get us to fight, be loyal and dedicated.

One of the biggest things that are happening now is the souring of loyalty. Those people that were loyal to Donald Trump, and he sent them from where all the safety features were and sent them to the thing. There were no permits and protection for that area, and he sent those people down there. He came up with that. Part of it is unconscious and spontaneous. Go down there and make your voices known. It's like, “There's no sense of consequence.”

Followed by, “You've got to fight like hell. If you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore.” That's a pretty extraordinary message.

You are not going to have a country no more.

The country was the biggest word in that.

What happens is like, “There's a set of Big Mac sandwiches down there. They're for free.” It's funny. All of a sudden, there’s the image in my head of Donald Trump. Maybe we should put this picture of all the cheeseburgers in front like that. That's him. Those are the words that he uses. He's only using those words because those words are going to be consumed more easily by the listeners. This is a communication show. Look at how you shook your head there. If I'm empathizing with you, it's disheartening because look at how the truth landed on you going surprised. Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, and Tucker Carlson do it. They're all using words in the form of outrage with the same sandwiches.

Fast food language is designed to outrage and indoctrinate.

They want the eyeball with them because they're getting paid by their viewership. If you think about it, it's like the latest guy on Fox that left, Chris Wallace. He's going like, “I can't stay here. I can't listen to these people who are the last rat off the ship.” It's not the belief structure. The way it is being promoted is the problem.

I enjoy having a break in my car because it allows me to stop. My break is the conservative part of my car. The gas is the liberal part of the car. It gets us to go someplace. The foot on the brake gets us to be cautious and safe and not overspend. Gas gets us to go someplace, do big things, figure out where the innovation is, create new markets, and become a world leader through thoughts and innovation.

Are we saying that organizations like Fox News and CNN are all guilty of this? They're all built of cars with accelerators and almost no breaks.

If you think about what has happened from the voting perspective, money is the problem here too. If you didn't fund the politicians through Citizens United and gave everybody running an office the same amount of money to spend, a lot of this will go away. They have to vote for what the people voted them for to get elected in their districts, and then they would have to be responsible, not to the donor, but the voter. That's a broken part of the system. It's tough for us to talk about it because we're using more money to buy more fast food.

If you think about Mitchell McConnell and the Republicans, when Barack Obama was in office, it was all about, “No.” It's all foot on the brake, “You cannot make any decisions without us.” They sat, reached across, and put their foot on the brake of what was voted for. We voted for that guy even though you were saying no to him. We still voted for him because he had his words, inspiration and the direction we were looking for him to get. This is where we are in business, sales and marketing, to pay attention to it.

In politics, we need to pay attention to what our leaders are saying, how close to the truth it is, and take ownership of how we are buying things. There are things about the people that we love we don't like, but we're still loyal to them. We’ve got to get these folks back in the American car before it gets wrecked and realize what the role we play. This is the advocacy that we do. We vote this way, and there shouldn't be an outrage about it.

Also, to hopefully realize that we have these things called elections. We've already set up pretty darn good systems to do that. After all, we've been doing it for so many years. The result of the election, if it doesn't go your way, it doesn't mean it was stolen. That's the tough thing.

It's hard to trust the system when one of the mistakes that the Republicans made was to try to make the system wrong and bad. They made the system and the Democrats wrong and bad. What they didn't know by doing that language strategy is they were going to lose their own freedoms along the way. They had no idea about that.

It's very unconscious because the dopamine, cortisol and the belief that is generated by those molecules create a conviction towards a limited mindset. As soon as you do that, all the folks that have that limited mindset are going to come out, march, and carry torches. That’s what they do. It inspires them to say, “You're a part of my limited mindset, and I am going in your direction,” instead of staying in the shadows or, “We're addressing the shadow.” We need to address our own shadow more. I hope we get to it.

It's hard to look in the mirror, isn't it?

It is. This has been a great time. It’s a good discussion.

Thank you. I appreciate it. Folks, we'll be back next time. Thanks so much.

Thanks, everybody. 

Important Links

• S.E. Cupp Unfiltered

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