Mindreading Is Overrated
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Mindreading has become so overrated that even Donald Trump is using it as a strategy. In this episode, Bill Stierle and Tom continue their discussion on mindreading and why they consider it as a glorified thing in congress. They also discuss empathy and use Mitch McConell as an example of not empathizing with more vital things like the health funding of 9/11 first responders. Moreover, Bill and Tom talk about how media is no longer making things clean anymore, especially for the President himself, how he is so used to being empathized, and how people are no longer taking it. They believe that he is exercising freedom of speech, but what he’s not doing is exercising quality of thought.
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Bill, last time we talked about how mindreading is overrated. It’s probably human nature for people to mind read a little bit or to think in their mind, “The president is going to do this. Mitch McConnell is going to do that. Beto O’Rourke is going to say,” or whatever. It doesn’t matter who it is. Mindreading, I agree with you. It’s overrated because every time I’ve thought some politician was going to do one thing or another, more often than not, I’m wrong.
Tom, I appreciate us going over this part about how mindreading and a person’s worldview thinks that I know what the person is going to say or do next. Instead of staying at a place of observation, which is the most powerful place to stay when you’re listening to somebody. There is a rush to meaning making. Imagine what it would be like when we get past or through this current political experience that we’re going through and get to the other side where there is more stability and more certainty, and there’s more progress instead of the back and forth. There’s the hijacking of truth, the partial truth seems reasonable.
Mitch McConnell seems reasonable with the things he’s saying until you go, “He’s saying one thing but doing something different.” It doesn’t mean that other politicians don’t say one thing and then know they can’t do the thing they said because the votes are against them. What I’m going to be doing is I’m putting up on the floor and meanwhile the votes are not there to even get close to get tons. There is the honesty of what happens when a group of individuals occupy a space or set of beliefs. Stay after that set of beliefs and they’re going to stay after them in order to allow their truth to exist, their experience of truth to get imposed upon others instead of a range of truth.
There’s a narrowing that’s taking place. One of the troubles with black and white thinking and we’ve mentioned this before in the past, allows the brain not to re-question a belief that it currently has or currently has in place. Let’s get into this a little bit. We can talk about how to apply empathy and that exercise choice when we’re looking to cultivate a healthier narrative regarding truth. The president is one thing. The things the president says or does in one thing. The thing that Mitch McConnell does is another thing.
The third thing that’s unseen is these people are meeting their needs at the expense of others. It’s at the expense of the greater good. It’s at the expense of law. It’s at the expense of integrity. It’s at the expense of respect, mutual respect for what another human being has to say or do. If I see Mitch McConnell is standing at a microphone and I see five or seven other senators standing behind him, and those folks are saying something and mutually supporting what Mitch is saying, that doesn’t mean it’s true. It means it’s in their best interest to speak what they’re speaking. Does that make some sense?
It does make sense to me for sure.
If I empathize with what Mitch is saying, rather than get outraged by it, see the difference? As soon as I said it, it was like, “What? Empathize with it instead of get outraged with by it?” If he says the senators are really busy so they couldn’t be in a meeting. “They were choosing to do other things rather than the important thing I would like them to do?” I empathize with it. I didn’t become outraged by it. “You would have rather chose to meet your need for emotional safety or meet the need for protection by not being at a meeting so you couldn’t be held accountable for what was being said in that meeting?” “Yes, we weren’t there.” “You were choosing not to be there?” “Yes.” “You’re choosing to do other important things?” “Yes.” “What important things were you choosing to do ahead of the important thing I think is important?” Now I’m empathizing with it with no outrage. What happens is that when somebody is avoiding and somebody is withdrawing, when somebody is criticizing, they’re looking to get the other side to outrage. Therefore, the person that is calm is holding more truth, but are they really? No, they’re not.
It would seem to me too that getting to outrage is not going to do anything but continue to move the two parties further apart. Is that right, Bill?
That’s right. What ends up happening is there’s a hope that anger is going to be expressed and outrage is going to be expressed.
Black and white thinking allows the brain not to re-question a belief that it currently has in place.
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That makes it look like the person that lost their temper that expresses that outrage, I would think most often is seen as on the wrong side of the argument.
You shouldn’t be angry. You shouldn’t be outraged. In fact, let’s talk rationally now. It’s like, you would like me to talk rationally about something that is against a primary value of mind? Is that what you’d like? There is a pressure to take place to try to get an emotional reaction to take place. What winds up happening is that we’ve needed to exercise choice, apply empathy to walk ourselves back from the anger reactive mind and move ourselves into the grounded passionate place of things. I am going to be a solid passionate person about an injustice that you are acting upon for something that is way out of alignment with integrity, with the things we stand for.
Let’s take an example with Mitch McConnell. I like where you’re going with this because I think when you step into empathy and choice, you would force your opponent in the conversation to force their conscience to come out. Maybe not their conscience, but certainly they realize, “If I continue down this path, this is going to be a loser for me.” Mitch McConnell, who didn’t have time to address the issue of the 9/11 first responder’s health funding. You would say to Mitch when he says, “We haven’t had time to address that.” “You’ve had some more important things you’ve needed to deal with or something along the way?”
A part of you would have really liked to take action in this direction, but you’re choosing to put something else in front of this. Is that what you’re choosing? You’re hoping that there’s going to be an outrage on our side or an outrage by these people and you want to put some limitations on this spending. You want to spend it very little in this direction and you don’t see this as something you would like to use this piece of real estate called 9/11. You would like to use that and look like the good guy. That’s a judgment. I want to probably stay away from that sentence. Instead of empathizing with it, our brain wants to go, “Are you crazy? Are you doing it again? Why are you doing this thing again?”
I agree that’s what people easily get outraged and want to say, “What is wrong with you, Mitch McConnell?” Of course, this is also the legislation that will never go away because Congress has only authorized it to certain levels in the past. The people who are affected by these health effects continue to suffer and they need more support. Jon Stewart has to keep going back to Congress and lending his celebrity to it to try to get them help because he’s so passionate about it. I wonder if the fact that Jon Stewart was involved is one of the reasons that some of those congressmen didn’t show up to the hearing. Is it because they think Jon Stewart is so far to the left and they don’t want to be associated with something that he would represent? I don’t get that.
A great example of mindreading is overrated right there. What you did was the most wonderful thing possible which is that you are looking for an explanation of the good reason why someone did it. That’s the problem with mindreading. I’m going to try to explain the good reason instead of empathize with the current condition.
That’s a great example for this. That’s unfortunate because that wasn’t what I was trying to do. For me, it was in my own mind trying to figure out why on earth would someone be against providing support to people that are there to protect us. To me, the police and the fire department are the most political institutions in our country.
That’s what makes us one of the biggest difference between our country and other countries is the separation between the police and the military. That’s one of the best things that we do. The police are supposed to be around, protect and serve. The military are about being the international protection. Inside our country, we get to act kind and civil to each other. Outside our country, if we declare war, we don’t have to act civilly towards another person. We can depersonalize somebody else from another country. We could go to war and do a war by activating that and saying, “They’re going to do this bad thing to us. Therefore we get to overreact.” We overstepped in Iraq from the place of protection because they didn’t have the things that we went to war that they said that they did that. We didn’t have them. Even Saddam Hussein said, “What do you guys want? Do you want more oil? Do you want a better oil price? What do you guys want over there? Why are you coming after me?” The answer was, “We want some more oil. Thank you very much. We’ll take the oil.”
Under the pretext of, “We’re going to find the weapons of mass destruction.”
When we get there, we’ll find it. We got there, we didn’t find it. All you got to do is think about George Bush holding up his hand and saying, “All you need is this one handful of yellow cake,” scaring the crap out of people. The answer is true, that’s all you would need, but it doesn’t mean that’s available, that you can have a hand. Think about that. He’s holding a handful of uranium in his hand. It’s almost like, “If you have it in here, you could put it in your pocket. You can put it on a plane.” Do you know what it takes to manage that and no one dying along the way?
It’s like you can’t put it in your hand. I’m being simplistic about it, but it’s one of the strongest visuals that still show up in my brain that was propagated, promoted into the minds of Americans as being dangerous. It creates fear or it creates anger. Let’s get back to this thing called how we apply empathy and its interaction with that. We can even include a piece on how anger and getting enraged is used to get it. When any of that shows up, then there’s like, “I’ve got to get some understanding.” “I need to mind read our way into this.”
You can imagine what is it going to be like to do something different than what’s being done here. Anyways, what would make your life a wonderful time if you think about mindreading as a path to enrollment and the engagement? It’s a path to enrollment and engagement. What it does is it holds the believer captive to the leader. That’s what mindreading does, is that I’m captive to respond to what Mitch McConnell or Donald Trump is saying. I’m captive to trying to figure out because my logical mind cannot make any understanding about this.
It seems you pointed out quite well that mindreading was overrated. I’m trying to process in my head and understand because I have a hard time believing that anybody would be against offering support to these 9/11 first responders. It seems the path to having a productive discourse about this and getting things done.
As I waved my finger at you. That’s exactly right. That’s the primary problem that media is getting hijacked by. They keep trying to understand, make sense of, trying to figure out. That’s where everybody is in my humble opinion, making a huge mistake. Don’t figure it out. Apply some simple language narratives that is power with the insanity. Don’t try to get power over the insanity. Go power with the insanity. Even I’ll turn the entire tool and buy skills in service to Trump. Watch how I turn it and service him. I’m going to help the president out. If I were on the president’s team, if I was in the room. Let’s take one of the examples, the cough inside the room.
The chief of staff coughed as a presence being interviewed by George Stephanopoulos. He’s there for two days with ABC interviewing the president.
The news media is not making things clean anymore. They would normally clean that up in service of the country, but in this case, they’re going raw B footage that I can use. We’re using it.
I think you’re right, Bill. Probably the fact that they’ve used it, the president is probably regretting these two days he spent with ABC.
Part of it reinforces fake news. In other words, because as somebody that’s been behind the camera, he knows what it’s like to edit out mistakes. As if Hillary Clinton or any other politician or Barack Obama didn’t make mistakes and it was politely left on the cutting room floor. “No, I don’t want to say it that way. Let me take another way. Let me say it again. Let’s take another way. Third take, that’s the one we’re using because it makes the president look the best as possible.”
It probably would have remained on the cutting room floor had the president not expressed some personal indignance over this conflict. He was personally offended and then perturbed, I guess. It probably would have stayed there.
It would’ve been left on the cutting room floor if the president showed mutual respect to everybody had been up to this point in the field of time, had some range of mutual respect. What happens now and what’s happening now is evidence of who he is, warts and all. Nobody’s letting go of now because he’s not doing standard truth-telling, even coming part of the way there. He’s not standing for primary values around truth. It’s like, “You want truth? Here.” Same as Kellyanne Conway. It’s like, “You want truth? Here.” They’re going to show it and let these things move out to the environment. Here’s what the evidence is looking like folks, and these folks were not putting any other stuff on the cutting room floor. We’re not going to do that. Why would we do that? You’re getting sanitized over there at Fox News. They leave it on the cutting. They edit and co-edit fake news together as if they haven’t done these multiple times. The infamous Pete Buttigieg splice. It’s like, “What a splice?”
Being outraged is not going to do anything but continue to move the two parties further apart.
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They didn’t tell the whole story. They conveniently cut a portion of it that supported their narrative.
They were literally the two sentences that they put together were five to seven minutes apart. I want this sentence and I want to use this sentence and I’m going to put that next to it and then I’m going to judge that.
Help the president now. What would you do in that cough situation?
There are three different sentences that can be used by three different people in the room. First, Mick Mulvaney, “Mr. President, I felt disappointment in messing up your take. My bad. You’re requesting me to walk out of the room. Is that what you’re requesting, Mr. President?” Mr. President would have then said, “Yes.” That’s a line of empathy that Mick Mulvaney is unskilled to deliver, unaware and unskilled to do. He did a very typical shame-based response. “I’m sorry, Mr. President.”
If he had done what you suggested, he would have prevented the president from stepping on his own landmine.
Saying the next sentence, “Mr. President, I’m not feeling well. Let me make sure I leave the room if it comes up again.” Trump would have come down and then wouldn’t have stayed in that agitated state and worked himself into defensiveness, contempt and criticism like he does. The president was working himself up into the language narrative of, “Can’t you see that I’m trying to make a point here? I have to do the take again. Let’s shoot it again.” They moved the cameras and he got pissed at that.
You saw the camera moved away from him and it was like, “I’ve got to start again.”
I have to cultivate the right clip here. The president doesn’t know that he’s on such bad footing with himself and his integrity is so low that this footage is going to get out, leaks are going to get out, reactions are going to get out. I think it was Laura Ingraham said it as like, “Who allowed the president to be videotaped by them?” It’s like, “We’ve been sanitizing him for the last two years.” As you and I take a breath and become empathetic for the president, it might sound also like this. George Stephanopoulos, if he wanted to choose to do that again, unskilled and unaware. His best sentence is, “Mr. President, I’m guessing you’re feeling aggravated right now and you would like a clean take?” The president would look at him and said, “Yes.” Frustrated. The clean take is the request. The need is respect.
Which of course his presence of a number one or number two need on earth.
He’s got five of them in a row. The media makes the mistake and the intelligence agencies of other countries make the mistake of, “All you’ve got to do is flatter him. All you’ve got to do is praise him.” That’s not what he fully needs. He needs empathy for the pain that he carries about not getting the level of respect he would like as a human being all the way from childhood up, not getting the level of acknowledgment he would like, not having strong self-worth. Those are the things he needs empathy for. What winds up happening? He carries a lot of anger and a lot of furiousness that he then uses to make people submit around him to get false respect. That’s what he does.
Unpack that one. That was really profound, Bill. Thank you.
He’s getting false respect. Coming back to the theme here, if I apply choice and I apply empathy to win back truth, I need a better relationship to anger then my current understanding of anger. I might get angry inside, but I better know how anger is created.
Notice that I’ve got anger, irritated, annoyed, disappointment, sad and helpless. The reason why he uses the word sad, it’s the safest word because he wants to say, “Those people are really angry.” Projection, “I feel sad because I’m not getting the respect I want from them.” That’s what he’s saying. Let’s peel back anger. I’m hoping a bunch of people read this thing because most people don’t understand how anger works.
Number one, there are three different things that can activate the brain. The first thing that can activate is black and white thinking. I’m right, you’re wrong. That’s the first thing. If I don’t want to be angry, then I’ve got to keep judgment out of my head. The president is angry most of the time because he wakes up angry. He wakes up with judgments and he tweets the judgment. Now all of a sudden, everybody else’s in reaction because as a person that is in the country, that freedom of speech is one of the most valuable things that we have. He’s exercising freedom of speech, but what he’s not doing is exercising quality of thought. He’s not using thoughtful speech. He’s using speech based in judgment. The second thing that you can do to get angry is to exercise criticism.
I think he knows how to do that too.
He does a great job with that. He has lots of shoulds in his head. He has lots of have-tos in his head. What should happen is he should fire Robert Mueller. The reason why Donald McGahn is not testifying is because as soon as somebody is using freedom of speech at the expense of laws and processing openly and not being thoughtful about the consequences of the person’s actions because he grew up in a household of limited consequences. How do I know that to be true? Limited consequences is if you’re rich enough to do whatever you want to do and your emotions have been suppressed as a form of discipline/love. Don’t get me started here.
The brain only populates with judgments and criticisms about who’s right and who’s wrong. I have the ability to apply the third way to get angry is to start using labels and diagnoses on top of my criticisms, on top of my judgments. Every tweet is based on those narratives. The president says, “I’m not angry.” It’s like, I’m not sure you know the difference between aggravated and irritated or aggravated and disappointment. You can’t use disappointment as an emotion because you’re already sitting in a judgmental place.
You have no room for anything other than my way is the highway. That’s all he’s got. Why is that true? He’s not in touch with what’s causing his emotions. All of his emotions in his world are being activated from the external world. They’re not being accountable from the internal world. They aren’t. The weird part about it is Mitch McConnell is the same way and Kellyanne Conway is the same way. They’re all in the same boat. They’re all pretty angry folks. They’re intentionally, not all of them. Mitch McConnell is the one that’s intentional. Kellyanne Conway’s about halfway there.
The president is a mosquito that can’t stay away from the light, isn’t he?
He’s reacting to the judgment, the criticism and the labels. Mitch McConnell would like him to shut up more. Kellyanne Conway would like him to shut up more but they can’t. They don’t know how to manage it. They’re all underskilled. They’re all unaware of how to language empathy towards this guy. The media is unaware and unskilled about how to language empathy towards this guy.
Doesn’t the media, because of that lack of skill and knowledge, play right into his hands as the fake news media into his narrative?
The problem with mindreading is people try to explain the good reason instead of empathizing with the current condition.
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All of a sudden, as soon as they pick the opposite side and cut, push back with facts, Kellyanne Conway gets to say, “We have alternative facts.” The media looks at her and goes like, “Alternative facts? You mean a narrative that you would like people to believe is true?” Notice how I responded in a compassionate way. I can’t remember, I think it was Jake Tapper being interviewed. “Alternative facts? No, a fact is something that’s a fact.” There are no alternative facts. His best sentence would’ve been of empathy sentence.
“The point of view and the opinion you would like people to believe is?” That would have been his best compassionate response.
Bill, there was a similar thing that I was really frustrated over in an episode of Real Time with Bill Maher. You probably saw this too where Eliot Spitzer is on the panel and he’s talking about how the Democrats are going to battle Trump and he said exactly what a few times you have said, “Will not work.” We have the facts. We’re going to battle them with the facts. I’m like, “No.” I’m screaming at the TV. “This will not work.”
He’s underskilled and unaware of how language hijacks the body. Tom, you and I both have kids that we’re raising. Do facts work with kids?
No. That ice cream at 9:30 at night before going to bed is not going to be good for you. “How about one ice cream?”
No, you cannot use it. Do facts work with children? No. Empathy works with children, but facts don’t work with children. Empathy for your kid that wants ice cream at 9:00 PM is, “I’m guessing you’re feeling excited and you’d like to taste some ice cream?” They have to say yes. “Yes, I am excited.” “Yes, I would like ice cream.” “You’d like to choose some ice cream right now because you remember how ice cream tastes good.” “Yes.” They’re not going to say the fact, “Yes, dad, I’m addicted to ice cream. I really would like this because I like my hit before I go to bed.” They’re not going to say the fact. They’re not going to have an adult mind with an adult vocabulary.
How is that any different from the president?
It’s the same as the president. It’s the same as Mitch McConnell. You have to go after it with empathy for the tragic belief, the tragic judgment, the tragic criticism, the tragic label and diagnosis that they’re having. You’ve got to get to empathy for it. You’ve got to find out what’s that core need that they’re going for. “Mr. President, you would like me not to cough and you want me to hear how important it is for you to get a good take so you could be well-represented for the United States.” “Yes.” That’s an empathy line. You’re de-escalating the president even though he is underskilled and unaware of how his own language is hacking his physiology. He’s unaware of that.
This is certainly unplanned, Bill. There was this day where Nancy Pelosi had this meeting early in the morning with her caucus about whether to impeach or not. She makes a statement in that meeting that the president has been engaged in a cover-up and that set the president off and threw off a meeting. She and Chuck Schumer started to have in the White House about infrastructure, something that is in a big need in this country that we need to address our infrastructure, roads, bridges, crumbling, all the stuff. He was offended at the whole cover-up thing. How could Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer and them step into that use empathy and gotten, because the president is unskilled and unaware? What could they have done to then keep that meeting happening and do some productive work? Maybe the first thing she shouldn’t have done is said in the media that is engaged in a cover-up. Let’s say that cat was out of the bag. What could they have done?
“Mr. President, I’m guessing you’re feeling angry and furious and you’d like us to hear how you’re not covering up anything, is that correct?” He would probably push back. He would probably say, “I’m not angry.” “Mr. President, maybe you’re really aggravated and you’d like us not to use the word cover-up for what’s taking place?” “Yes, it’s not true what’s happening.” “Mr. President, you would like us to hear that it’s not true you have the thought by not giving us information that this is going to go away. Is that what your thought is, Mr. President?” “Yes.” “I’m guessing that you feel irritated and you would like us to cooperate more with you?” “Yes. I want this whole thing to go away. It’s ruining my presidency.” “Your need for respect isn’t being met the way you would like?” “Yes.”
Now I’m back. Now all of a sudden I’ve got them where I would like him. “Mr. President, I’m curious, I wonder how we can get you the respect that you would like and also get some deal to take place for doing some infrastructure. Should we do some infrastructure or would you like to communicate differently to the American people about infrastructure? How would you like to do that?” “I like to do infrastructure.” “I’m all about infrastructure. Building things is what I do.” He would have to take the bait for infrastructure. It would completely distract him from going outside and doing the next thing. By the way, if he tries to go outside and does the next part, which he did.
Do you mean the Rose Garden rant?
The Rose Garden rant. He would not have the same rant energy to him. A part of it is that he’s also not fully wanting to do infrastructure because they know that infrastructure is something they can use to run on as a party. I am interested in infrastructure. The same reason why they don’t want to solve immigration. There’s no Republican that wants to solve immigration. None of them want to solve it. Ronald Reagan solved it one time and put some laws in place and the next group of Republicans couldn’t run on anything because they couldn’t rant, “Didn’t President Reagan solve that?”
He did solve it. He did it do agreement. He did do the asylum piece. He did do that and that didn’t work. Why didn’t it work? That let a whole bunch of people in, but it didn’t work. What didn’t work? Has it worked from stopping immigrants from coming? They keep showing up here. Anyways, we want to realize something very simple here. Anger is a flame thrower. Passion is a laser. If you are not in touch with anger, it makes it difficult to be passionate about something. Most of the Democrat candidates don’t have a very good hold on their anger. They lash out in judgments, in criticisms and labels. Joe Biden is actually making this mistake right now. Joe Biden is making the mistake of judging, criticizing and labeling the president.
Which is probably very popular with the core Democratic base right now.
Instead of what Obama used to do.
Which was?
He would say, “I get that the Republicans won this and this, but what we stand for as an American is that and that.” He was able to pull 10%, 20% of their votes onto his side and get elected for a second time. He stepped into their narrative, didn’t try to fight flame thrower with flame thrower. He took the flame thrower, focused it into a laser that turned out to being a passionate narrative that engaged hope. That’s what’s missing in all of the candidates. The ones that are doing the best are the ones that are passionate about. Bernie Sanders is passionate about healthcare for all, single-payer. He’s been passionate about it for years. He is angry about the 1%. “I am really passionate about fairness and I am so interested in getting fairness to be restored. Let’s concentrate on what fairness would look like.” Don’t bash the 1% that much. It’s just enough, then you got it.
We had this example about Bernie Sanders at the Walmart board meeting. How he could have handled that a lot differently? If you missed that, go back and read that. We don’t need to reiterate it here, but it does point out that all of these, the president, his staff or the candidates that are trying to run against him. They all do get to this point where they let anger get in the way, don’t they?
They don’t. They’re unaware and have no skill with language. Notice I keep coming back to my two talking points. Awareness is a need. Skill is a need. Respect is a need. Fairness is a need. Choice is a need. Truth is a need. The reason why it gets hijacked is because people are not in touch with the other needs. Mindreading causes us to look for an explanation, try to get understanding, try to explain, try to problem solve, try to put a rule on there. A rule never stands up to a motion. Ask your kid the last time they snuck in and got ice cream out of the refrigerator without telling you.
The rule is not relevant to them. If you catch them, they’ll feel either embarrassed or angry. The younger they are, they’ll apply anger. That’s called a tantrum. An adult tantrum, a mini-explosion is somebody coughs and the adult sitting behind the chair does a mini tantrum of, “I’ve got to shoot this over again. I’m trying to get respect here.” “I really feel scared about the germs. You’re putting germs in here. I can’t get away from this now. I can’t get away from the germs because I would normally walk out of the room right now,” because he would. He’d walk out of the room if anybody coughed.
The President is exercising freedom of speech, but what he's not doing is exercising quality of thought.
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The tantrum becomes the big story and overshadows everything that he was trying to portray.
He’s trying to white-knuckle respect, white-knuckle acknowledgment and accomplishment. He’s white-knuckling it because there’s no evidence for it. As many marketers, salespeople and branders do, they white-knuckle their brand. Monsanto has been trying to white-knuckle their brand for years, but their brand is so bad that they had to actually sell it because of the truth. The truth is that your brand stinks and the things you’re doing with your brand are profitable for you and your people, but damaging to everyone else and the planet. There are substances showing up in the food sources. Brand damage, brand slaughter.
It’s an awful stuff, the anger and outrage. Tom, when we’re in touch with anger, we do a better job to be passionate. You’ll notice how passionate I am about this communication piece. I want people to have skill. I want people to have awareness. I want people to stop explaining and trying to understand. We can understand over dinner party. Tom, you and I have done this. We’ve had a round table discussion about things. It’s an understanding, explain. There’s a moment where there’s got to get to a resolve. Once we get to a resolve then notice here are the needs that were in play and here’s how it could go better. Here are the needs that are in play.
Here’s how we could get more of our needs met.
Our infrastructure since we brought that up has lasted this long on the backs of the taxes paid by wealthy Americans 40, 50, 60 years ago. That’s what has happened. Our infrastructure has lasted that long. The repair of it and the tax structures being shifted over time has not allowed that same level of civic commitment to take place by taking affluence and turning it back to serve America. It’s time for affluence to serve America. The people that are affluent, we feel grateful and appreciative of their money servicing America so that America can be competitive again because when we look around the world, other countries are doing a better job of having their affluent people serve their countries. That feels pretty good too. I start sounding like I’m presidential now, Tom?
That’s for sure.
Do I sound passionate? Did I have to get angry about it? No, but I’m in touch with anger. I sure am. It’s rooted in fairness and awareness and I have some skill to deliver the message. The closest people to that are Bernie Sanders, Pete Buttigieg and Elizabeth Warren. We’re in a great place about wrapping up because I think we can move this anger and this passion piece. I realize that we haven’t covered this yet. This is all new ground. Tom, one of the main things to really get a hold of is the front runners that are going to and the ones that are going to be left at the end of the mix. They are the ones that are going to do a better job of converting and holding onto anger on one side and with that anger, they’re holding on to it and they’re able to convert it to a passionate message.
Not keep going like my hand is burning because the president colluded and he’s the worse person ever. Two, here’s what respect would look like as a president. Here’s what mutual respect for others. Here’s what American respect stands for. Here’s what it looks like on the campaign trail. Here’s what it looks like. The ones that need to get into the game, that if they have a little bit of it would be Cory Booker. Kamala Harris has assessment, an attachment to the anger part of it because she knows what justice looks like. She knows what truth looks like, but she hasn’t converted it to a passionate message. She’s got some compassion for teachers but you could tell that there’s not anger about fairness.
It’s not fair that the next generation and teachers get treated this way. People have really troublesome stories about teachers and they go, they remember the worse teacher. They don’t remember the best ones or the ones that made the difference because there’s usually one that makes a difference in the rest of them, regrettably, have other kinds of troubles. With all of that said, the main thing is the candidates that are moving up in the poll are having moments where they’re converting this piece of cortisol, adrenaline, acetylcholine, anger experience into a powerful, passionate message that sticks and gets legs.
Those people doing that mostly right now in the Democratic field are?
The one that’s the cleanest. The ones whose passion burns cleanest is Pete Buttigieg. The one that has passion with anger mixed is Bernie Sanders who is pretty angry about the injustices and rightfully so. There’s a lot of judgment and criticism to be had and labels and diagnosis of what those people do and how those people vote and the free pass that we give them. Even the richest person, one of the worst people in the world, Warren Buffett goes, “Stop coddling the rich. Stop coddling them. I’m a rich person and I don’t want to be coddled. Here’s a book about why not to coddle me. We can handle 70%. My secretary is paying more in taxes than I am.
That’s not a good fit for America. Stop it. Stop doing that.”
Do you see that Elizabeth Warren has an element of this too?
I’m glad you brought her back up. Yes, she is engaged in things that she’s passionate about is fairness and justice about the working person. She has been an advocate for the people in the bankruptcy. You’ve been sticking it to them, the institutes and sticks it to them for these fees. They stick it to them and these ways, and then you’re going to stick it to them at bankruptcy, too? It’s like stop sticking it to these. Stop sticking it to the lower middle class because those are the ones that get in the most trouble, let alone the middle class. Tom, what I’d like for us to do next time is talk about specifically what candidates can do to convert anger into passion.
To be compassionate to Republicans who are stuck in their own form of anger and have been hijacked by an angry president and they’re mixing his anger for a passionate warrior. They think he’s fighting for them, and right now they’re going to double down on their vote.
That seems fascinating, Bill. I can’t wait to talk about that.
You can imagine what it’s going to be like as we start peeling this one off because having sentences that they can use so that they can get into the game. The ones that are below 1%, 2%, they’re not going to get the traction unless they get this anger conversion to passion done. They won’t rise. Joe Biden is going to continue to drop because he’s using anger to anger. He’s using, “I’m going to fight facts with it and I have no new ideas other than I’m going to be nicer when I get there.” It’s like your niceness is not going to work against Mitch McConnell.
By the way, the three of them are in the same bed together. Mitch McConnell, Donald Trump and Kellyanne Conway are all in the same bed together. The Democrats have got to talk to the public about them being on the same thing. Mitch McConnell is doing the same thing and Lindsey Graham, you put them all in the same bed together. Stick them all in the same bed together narrative-wise.
It sounds like that they’re being rational, but really what they’re to being as an advocate for their version of truth and their version of truth regrettably won’t serve America. I don’t think that’s going to serve America going forward. Not showing up for a trial is not going to meet the need for truth.
We want some truth here. Let’s go and take a look at that, Tom, next time. That’s going to help. If any of you are reading from the thing, please take a look at this anger graphic that I have. Start utilizing it because you don’t have to be angry as a human being. I’m not saying that this is easy but convert judgments, criticisms, labels and diagnoses into observation. The 70% of your anger will drop off once you convert those things, 80% of your anger will drop off. For those of you who are living with an angry person, once you learn how to convert those, the person can’t be angry around you anymore because you’ll actually wipe out their anger. It’s not that hard but it takes practice.
Think about the harmony that could be.
That’s a good thing. It’s harmony that’s based in passion, passionate and grounded truth, not opinionated truth.
Thank you, Bill.
Tom, thanks a million. Take care.
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