Truth And The Communication Apocalypse
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We have to be aware of our language choices all the time especially when we are aiming for respect from others. In this episode, Bill Stierle and Tom introduce the four horsemen of the communication apocalypse and go through them one by one. Emphasizing the need for being aware of our language choices, Bill and Tom show how undisciplined communication like tragic recognition can give anyone a bad name. With this, they go back to their views on how Donald Trump is dragging Democrats into the language narrative. Engage in the conversation with Bill and Tom as they tackle the doom and gloom of the American congress as labels and belittling are increasingly preoccupying the nation’s great leaders.
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We’re going to talk about Truth and The Communication Apocalypse. That sounds ominous, Bill.
It is ominous because there are certain strategies that language shows up in and causes a communication apocalypse, whether in your relationship, whether you’re in a business between a customer and employee, in a business or in government. We’re seeing it right now with all of the different players using these different strategies and techniques in a very unconscious and responsive way.
That’s the hard part about it. This is not predictable. This is, “I’m going to this strategy,” and then it activates another strategy that shows up.
When you say it’s unconscious, do you think that the people that employ these strategies are not conscious of the consequences that will arise once they go down that strategy, it forces someone to respond in a certain way?
Yes, that’s correct. They’re thinking that they’re going to get an advantage by doing it. It does get a temporary advantage, but it causes a long-term consequence of disconnection, a long-term consequence for truth, a long-term consequence for trust. “You said this thing about my team, therefore you’re my enemy forever.”
We probably saw some things play out in politics that might apply to this. Are you thinking about that?
I am. This violence that showed up, there are some ways that people need to have some awareness about, their language choices and the violence that comes with it. Also, the weird part about it is that if you don’t have awareness of it, you’ll take the bait and go in the opposite direction, causing it to get worse. You’re not even knowing that you’re walking into the violence with these different communication apocalypse points of view. They just start stacking on top of each other. It’s this point of view then this point of view. It blows up. That’s what we’re experiencing.
Let’s get into understanding the makings of a communications apocalypse and hopefully we can relate it to some real-world examples.
The first thing to know about communication apocalypse, we’ve got into this a little bit last time. There was this experience of the tension and the violence that shows up with language choices and language sentences that are being spoken. What I’m going to do is start with the four horsemen of the communication apocalypse and go through them one by one, generally speaking. What will happen is that we’ll be able to apply it.
Tom, let me introduce you to the four horsemen of the communication on apocalypse. The first horseman has to do with the intention or the experience of criticism. Criticism is one of those horsemen that come up and as soon as a criticism comes in, it’s what a person should or shouldn’t have done. That’s going to cause a conflict to show up. This criticism is going to be based on an incorrect fact or a pseudo fact or as we’re calling an alternative fact. The criticism will be not a fact. It’s a talking point, but it’s not a fact. It’s a point of view, but it’s not a fact. The criticism will show up and media is engaging in the process of that because they’ve never seen it so blatant before.
What happens is then they might bring in or experiencing the second horsemen, which is called defensiveness. Defensiveness is more a protection on you didn’t do this in order, and this is not the right way to follow it. This is not the system we have in place.
You’re scrambling the eggs and I don’t want scrambled eggs. I want you to cook an egg and give it to me. What they do language-wise is that when you get a disruptor-type person in the White House or in a position of leadership, they then start mixing things up, if it’s not talk through, causes this defensive strategy show up and then people will tend to overprotect or over-engage and the process of safety or other strategies.
The third one that shows up that’s called withdraw. Withdraws is when somebody backs away from things and doesn’t engage and says, “I’m not going to meet on that. I’m not doing it until you do what I want you to do.” What happens is that the withdrawal strategy then forces the other people to you either use criticism, “The president shouldn’t do that.” Defensiveness, “Then he’s not following the rules.” Finally, the fourth horseman, which is contempt. This is making the American public sick, “We’re sick about this. We don’t like that this is taking place. He’s not on our side. He’s not trying to be helpful. He’s not doing this. He’s trying to get his way, but at the expense of actually working within the system that he is playing it that he has signed up for.” It’s one thing to get elected.
What are you getting elected to and what quarter are you going onto?
Do you have any skill in this area? Do you have an awareness about what happened? Is this actually how to run this system? This is bigger than anything that you’ve ever run ever in the past and your strategies about how to run things from that business empire that you were the head of. Some those strategies might not work here. The answer is they don’t because you can see these four horsemen are in play right now. We’re going to go deeper into this, but at least you can see the four horsemen right now and you can ask me a ton of questions about them because you can see it in play. It’s interesting, right?
It’s very interesting. I’m excited to talk about it in context. I definitely can see it. We’ve talked about some of these qualities before: criticism, withdrawal, defensiveness and contempt, but we haven’t talked about it in quite this way in terms of protective language strategies. In some ways, some of them are used I think as a weapon too offensively. Criticism, sure is.
What a better way to use protection than to be on offense with the sword of criticism. All of a sudden, as soon as somebody brings out a bigger sword, the person might say, “This is the end of my presidency.” He was right. The bigger sword is the sword of law. That’s the bigger sword. That’s a little problematic because now you’ve got this big system that you’ve engaged, this big giant that you woke up and they’re still trying to fight the giant that they woke up, which is called the Mueller Report. You woke up the giant, you weren’t paying attention and you are unconscious. Your team was inept in dealing with the giant that you woke up. We just documented all of the things that you did that crossed the line.
We saw probably all four of these play out. I don’t know exactly which piece, Bill, you would think relates to each of these four horsemen. What I saw was the Democrats had an early morning meeting in the basement of the Capitol to discuss whether they’re going to go down the road of impeachment. Coming out of that meeting, Nancy Pelosi made a statement that the president has clearly engaged or is engaged in a cover up. That language, you could probably call it criticism, landed on the president and did he have a major knee-jerk negative reaction to that. Got defensive, stormed out of a meeting after three minutes, which may be his withdrawal, but then he came out and had a meeting in the Rose Garden that expressed contempt.
Well done, Tom. You walked right through the thing that I watch on a daily basis, “Look at that, I wonder what’s going to show up next. How about that?” The participants regrettably don’t actually realize that they’re creating another horsemen of a communication apocalypse. Truth is going to be the casualty, mutual respect is a casualty. As soon as you get into this criticism labeling, which is a form of criticism and contempt, it’s like, “You want to label me? This was constructed by twelve angry Democrats? Really? I’m going to bring defensiveness and contempt. Let’s see what you can do with those two. I’m going to bring withdraw.” “I’m not playing, I’m taking my toys home.”
Is this realistic? This is part of what the public fears, is that if we as a country, and maybe that’s the wrong way to put it. I think because it is in control of the Democrats. The Democrats go down this road of opening an impeachment inquiry. What the president is now saying is, “I’m not going to have any meetings and talk about negotiating anything in the way of government until all of this.” Of course, he labels it as pointless investigations. I forget the word he used to qualify it, but he denigrated, tried to make the investigation seem like they’re illegitimate and how he labeled them. “Until these investigations are ended, we’re not going to negotiate on anything into any business,” which is unrealistic and dangerous. Don’t we have a budget that’s going to run out of money in September again? At some point they’re going to have to.
They’ve got to come back to the table. The realistic piece of this is that they’ve got to back a little bit and put some of these horsemen down, this scorched Earth communication style that the president is engaging in. Now, being drugged into it because of his language narrative, he is dragging them into the language narrative. We’re talking about doing business here and mutual respect and cover up is not a bad label for not showing up for subpoenaed legal point of laws discussion with the leadership that’s in place.
You might not like the leadership, but you’ve got to deal with the leadership.
The stonewalling tactic definitely is what I think they’re referring to as a cover up. If you’ve got nothing to hide, then put all your cards on the table. We’ll have our hearings and we’ll be done.
There’s nothing to hide. That’s the thing that they’re actually missing is they’ve got to come back to, “I think we’re asking for transparency here. I’m thinking we’re hearing this. This is not a got you. We would like a clarity so we can further exonerate the president. It seems like the president would like to be exonerated. We want to help him in that journey.” I’m not doing any of those.
That would be very helpful. Another thing that the president said in his Rose Garden tirade was, “I’ve been the most transparent of any president in the history of the country.” That made me laugh.
If you are, then your other people aren’t doing your other thing. You would go like transparency it’s like, “Not if you’re blocking things.” A blocking thing is a withdraw strategy. Criticism is I’m looking for a margin of argument that I can get a certain point of view in. In criticism and withdraw, you don’t need to win. You need to draw and gather the need for respect in a tragic and suicidal way. That’s what he’s going for, respect and recognition in a tragic and suicidal way. Why is it tragic? Because of the wreckage that it creates.
Why is it suicidal? It’s because they are taking his names off of his buildings because people won’t go to them. That’s actually happening now. That’s problematic because he doesn’t even see it that way.
To look at the flip side, where did what Nancy Pelosi said fall in this spectrum of the four horsemen when she said, “I pray for the president?” Did you hear that?
I did. The people on her side will say, “We need a little bit more than prayers. He needs to go to jail.” The people that are not on her side will say, “Don’t give me any pity.” They’ll actually bring contempt to that sentence. If she would take compassionate and empathy, that would have been a little bit better for her. Regrettably, she didn’t use that. It might’ve sound like, “I can see how the president’s feeling angry and he wants his choices and one of his choices is to stop the investigation. Regrettably, we feel torn. We can’t stop the investigation because in the pursuit of information and if we’re going to do our job or if we’re doing what the American people would like, we would like support so we can actually get closure to this. It seems like the president would like to drag this out a little bit further.”
Much more rational language and productive language that isn’t going to allow him to continue to spiral in his four horsemen.
You’ve got to get away from the four horsemen and actually bring an adult, compassionate narrative that is more needs-based, more value-based and connects with what the person is doing when they’re doing it. While the president would like everybody here that there’s no collusion and there’s no obstruction. I feel doubtful and skeptical about that because when you prevent people from seeing us and talking, isn’t that obstruction? Notice it’s questioning the person’s mind. They go like, “I guess that is obstruction.” He’s saying no obstructing while he’s obstructing. There’s an incongruency here. There is a protective language strategy in place here.
Let’s go down a little bit deeper down this rabbit hole and watch what happens, Tom. I want to create a conflict. I want to escalate things. I want to make things worse.
The reason why, as a mediator, I’ve got to actually know how to make things worse so I can know how to make things better. If I’m going to be in a place where people are screaming, if I’m going to sit at a city council meeting with 250 screaming people or in a board room, which I’ve done many of them, where people are furious with what has happened and what has taken place in with the mutual leadership, I’ve got to know where the violence is coming from. I’m good at writing this stuff down because I know I’ve seen the violence everywhere. Let’s look at what criticism and violence might look like. Here are three different tactics that is the tragic form of protection that a criticism mindset will bring. Here it comes. Continuous belittling, check, loser, lightweight, rocket man. Tragic recognition at the expense or the emission of others. “Look at all of what my administration has done in the short amount of time. I think it’s the most that anything in the first 50 days, in the first 100 days. The most it’s been ever done ever.”
Tragic recognition is a very interesting way to describe exaggeration.
Exaggeration’s the label and they’ll say, “No, I’m not.” “Yes, you are.”
Exaggeration is a label? That’s interesting. I was trying to choose my words carefully there.
This is why it’s such a delight to talk to you because you get to walk into your own thought traps of your own language thing. You and I have been on the journey for a while here to get a sense of, “If I get caught with the wrong word, the wrong place, I am going to get handcuffed. I am going to lose the sale. I am going to cause conflict inside of my kid without me knowing it. I’ve got to find out what’s inside the kid’s head before I say the sentence or otherwise, they take it the wrong way.”
I like that tragic recognition at the expense or emission of others. What makes it tragic? The fact that it is a partial truth?
That’s right. It’s an exclusion of the work and the effort everybody else did to get the person to get the recognition. Tragic recognition, “It’s such an honor to serve under your presidency.” That’s tragic recognition and all they’re doing is feeding this criticism of jackals so it doesn’t bite them. That’s all they’re doing. They’re feeding this horse so they don’t get flamed. All those people in the room, “It’s such an honor to be here. I can’t believe I have the opportunity.” The judgmental thing is that they’re kissing up to them or kissing whatever. That’s not helpful either. What’s helpful is that they’re giving tragic recognition at the expense or the emissions of themselves or others. They’re staying clear of his chaos so they don’t get fired. Next, that’s it. That’s all happening.
Capitalism many times is not interested in a long-term problem. They’re into a short-term profit.
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Let’s take a look at the third bullet here, which is very disturbing. Placing dollars at the cost of human care and consideration. Placing money above human care and consideration. I am going to get this dollar sign at the expense of another human being. I’m not concerned with the human being. I’m concerned with my bottom line. If I can save money, it’s going to cost something. To me, I’d rather save the money. What happens if 500 people get paralyzed because of that? I saved money and there was no rule or regulation. I get to sell. This is a 30-year-old story at least. I’m crossing my fingers that the story isn’t still real, but it could be. If there’s not a rule in a country to have a car that has one of those neck things behind it?
The whiplash protector, which people always think of it as a headrest, but it’s not there for you to rest your head on when you’re driving.
It’s to prevent you from having neck injury. It’s a safety device. If I could get away with selling a car to a foreign country because they don’t have a rule for it and save hundreds of thousands of dollars and it’s going to cause 500 neck injuries, I’ll sell it. I won’t put the car rest then, I won’t put the safety device in. You see how tragic that is? That is placing costs ahead of human care and consideration.
I’ll give you a more recent example. I don’t know if you’ve seen it in the media in 2019. There have been a couple of recalls from the Consumer Product Safety Commission for some of these infant bouncy seats or they’re little rocking seats. Not something that’s to replace a crib, but something you’d stuck them in while you’re maybe preparing some food or maybe you place them in there to bounce and be happy while you’re getting a moment to eat. There have been a tragic number of infants that have died in these seats because they’re not stable. There have been a lot of criticism of the CPSC, which is a government agency that did not act fast enough to recall these devices because of business and political pressure at a corporate level. It only got to the point when something like 30 or more infants died that the calls for action got loud enough that the government finally took action.
We’re noticing companies willing to pay the fine because the fine is less than making it right. I’d rather play the fine for pollution rather than clean it up myself because if I cleaned it up myself while it’s happening, then I have to pay more. If I wait until the government makes me clean it up, then I could pay the fine and maybe get off of not completing and take some government money, a super fund money and pay it there rather than added into my cost of business. I could do it there because now it’s a long-term problem and I’m not interested in a long-term problem. Capitalism many times is not interested in a long-term problem. They’re into a short-term profit.
This is a very consistent thing in big business. I also have seen this with lawsuits against Bayer, who was the German pharmaceutical maker who now owns Monsanto. Monsanto makes Roundup, the weed killer. I couldn’t believe when I heard this stat, but they lost one lawsuit for somebody that claims they got cancer from Roundup. They lost the lawsuit earlier in 2019 and lost something like $78 million in that lawsuit. There’s a new lawsuit they’d lost. Same type of thing, a husband and wife who got cancer. They got a jury award of $2 billion from Monsanto because of this weed killer. The staggering thing stat that they reported was there are 13,000 other pending lawsuits regarding Roundup. Talk about this company must have done exactly what you said, Bill.
Always going after the short-term. What’s amazing to me is that product is still on the shelves at Walmart and Home Depot right now. Talk about your motives being out of alignment with human care and definitely being in alignment with your financial bottom line now.
I was watching TV and there was a Roundup commercial to sell it. I see, you need to sell more of this stuff so you can pay the lawsuits, the judgment. You’ve got to push it down a line and do a marketing push to get a whole bunch of other people on it.
That’s a scary thought. I’m sorry, I’ve grounded us a little too long here on criticism.
I appreciate it because it allows us to get to the second one, which is defensiveness. Defensiveness is close lipped, denial, refusal to take responsibility. This entire thing with the Mueller Report, it’s saying what Donald Trump needed to but he would never do. What he needed to do is he needed to do what Ronald Reagan did during the Iran-Contra affair.
I do not recall.
This is an easy one. You step into the mistake. You don’t go into denial, closed lip closed down because that’s what Richard Nixon did. Ronald Reagan didn’t do it because if Ronald Reagan would have picked the Donald Trump path, he wouldn’t be Saint Reagan right now. What he did though was he stepped into it. He goes, “People are telling me that these people did this stuff. I had no idea that this stuff was going on.” He took responsibility but laid the blame on Oliver North and all the people there. Did he know about it? Was he that naive? I’m guessing, yes. Because there were people doing stuff around him and all he had to do was be the actor talking piece. He did not have to do it. The problem is Donald Trump doesn’t have any skill at being the actor and being a talking piece. He doesn’t have any skill in doing that. Here’s the Ronald Reagan story that I think you’d like. Somebody had died and he was doing a bereavement piece where he was sad and stuff like that. What the camera saw above the podium was this sad person going through the bereavement piece.
What the people behind him saw was his legs of being very casual, almost like informally delivering the line. As inauthentic below the podium, authentic above the podium. He’s done that because as an actor, he could do that. He can show grief. I’m not saying he wasn’t as authentically grounded or feeling the thing deeply. He actually was applying his skills as a skilled narrator and wasn’t refusing to take responsibility. Donald Trump could have hung this on all the people that got indicted and stuff. They did some stuff that was outside the lines. I didn’t know so much about what they were doing as much. He tried to do a blame strategy on, “Nobody told me about Flynn.” Notice that is not refusal to take responsibility. That’s blaming Flynn and blaming others for him. Taking responsibility might have sounded like, “Flynn had been traveling around with me and he was one of my friends and was supportive to me. I guess I needed to listen to Barack Obama and so and so. I didn’t do that. It looks like Flynn’s got to pay for it now because they caught him doing it, but I didn’t know he was doing those things.”
What would it sound like if Donald Trump were to try to take that approach with the so-called evidence or accusation of obstruction in the Mueller Report where he gave Don McGahn orders to fire the attorney general or fire Rod Rosenstein but Don McGahn didn’t carry out the order? How could he take that position there?
There are ways for him to get out of it. Do I want to show them the ways to get out of it?
Maybe not. I don’t know.
Yes, I do. Of course, as a learning piece, they’ll never pick this up but they could.
I don’t think he’s going to listen to anybody else and give him advice anyway.
There’s a way to get the person to take accountability and responsibility from the democratic place. It might sound like this with closed lip, “It sounds like they’re working on protection there instead of transparency.” All of a sudden, they’ve got to pick. Are they picking? “I guess they’re continuing to take, go for the protection.” “It doesn’t seem like that they’re going for transparency or truth telling at this time.” “I wonder what truth telling would look like.” “I guess it would look like us seeing as if nothing’s there.” “Why don’t we let the truth help us out here? Let’s see if we can get out of the divisiveness and let’s get the truth about what’s going on here.”
What happens is you get past denial, you get past the refusal, you get past the responsibilities and there are ways that he could have done it and his team could have done it, but they’re not scared of this.
If you want to escalate the conflict, you would close your lips, deny it, don’t take responsibility.
The wreckage is coming because it’s going to continue to get worse. As soon as we’re over to contempt, then there’s emotional bribery. This is when I’m going to play people against each other. I am going to embody doom and gloom. There’s a caravan coming.
All of a sudden, there’s a contempt piece. “You’re right. The Democrats aren’t protecting the border.” There’s no doom and gloom there. They’re a thousand miles away. That is truth telling, emotional bribery is, one of the many reasons, why they haven’t filed for impeachment as of this moment. There’s some emotional bribery going on. It’s emotionally unsafe to get it to the Congress. The Congress will vote to impeach. He will be impeached from the Congress. It goes to the Senate and there are not enough votes there.
If there were enough votes there, the Republicans would quietly go to his office and say, “Mr. President, we cannot protect you at this moment. You need to resign right now.” That’s what Nixon did, “We cannot protect you anymore. We’ve been protecting you up to this point, but we cannot protect you up to this point.”
What’s happening is that the Republicans and Mitch McConnell, actually know they’ve got to stay a tight rank because the one congressman, Justin Amash, went across. Notice that there’s the playing people against each other. There’s the doom and gloom.
We’ve got the labels and belittling that’s showing up, the denial and close lip stuff. There are a lot of things going on there. All the categories are being checked. I’ll be like Toto in the Wizard of Oz. I’ll keep pulling the curtain back to show you the wizard behind pulling the levers. There’s a way to get the wizard out of the box and to be honest, there’s a way to do that. We’re going to talk about that next. The main thing is this emotional bribery playing people have gone see each other and it’s so important for Nancy Pelosi to keep her people together. Don’t allow them to play us against each other. The Democratic candidates have got to do the same thing.
They’ve got to figure out their messaging on their own. That’s not going in a circular fire. Firing squad is a perfect thing that Barack Obama could have said. Great metaphor, great symbology of playing people against each other. Don’t do it that way. There’s another way to do that. Don’t doom and gloom it. Don’t go to emotional bribery. Does that make sense up to this point as we go into withdrawal?
It does.
Let’s make it worse. In order to make it worse, we’ve got to bring the protective strategy called withdraw. Withdraw is not calling or showing up. A person that doesn’t call you back on a phone call is in a place of withdraw. Distraction, I’m going to distract and I’m going to redirect. I’m going to disappear and then reappear. That would be certain people in media that are doing that. Who are the people that are disappearing and reappearing? Rudy Giuliani is one. He disappears and then reappears. That’s a withdrawal strategy. Kellyanne Conway disappears and then reappears with the talking point and then disappears again and then reappears.
Not completing on a promise. They will not bring a promise to completion. If they’re not bringing a person to completion, what winds up happening is that nothing gets finished or move into closure. They keep the promise alive.
This happened, “Nobody once infrastructure more than I do, but I can’t do infrastructure talk until.” Why are they not doing an infrastructure deal? The Republicans at least have something to run on because they don’t have anything to run on right now. They can’t run on their record. They can’t run on progress. They can’t run on compromise. If he signs that deal, that is one less thing that they have to run on. If they complete something regarding immigration reform, they don’t have any new ideas. They have nothing to run on. There are no new ideas. They can’t even run on the old ideas. Fiscal responsibility? They can’t run on that. You can see all that’s working. It makes some sense. As we take a look at this last group, not calling, not showing up, that’s not showing up for the trials or the subpoenas. I’m going to distract and redirect. Have we had the greatest distractor and redirector ever?
Of course, we have. It’s called Iran.
That’s the new distractor. Iran hasn’t done anything. Limited things. Upset a carrier group into the thing with full things? You’re going to wait for them to make mistake?
To me, it’s the threatening language of, “Don’t ever threaten the United States or you will seriously regret it,” type of thing.
It’s not too hard to actually see what the military unfoldment and the military narrative of engagement. It started with President Bush too saying axis of evil and listed the group. Number one, Iraq. Number two, Iran. Number three, Korea. That is what the war narrative will continue to be over our lifetime, Tom. We’ve got to figure out a way to get all of this money that we spent on military to be used because if you use it, then you have to replace it. If you shoot around a rifle, you have to replace the bullet. If you shoot a missile, you’ve got to replace the missile. You’ve got people that can make stuff now. You’ve got all the infrastructure to make all that stuff. We’re built around those scary narratives. All you’ve got to do is hijack a person’s amygdala a little bit, “You won’t believe what happened in Iran.” “What happened?” Aren’t they a part of the axis of evil? North Korea didn’t even have electricity and their infrastructure is miserable. They’ve never built an economy. They don’t have an economy. They have poverty. All their people are in poverty. They have no food. They have some missile testing. They have some threatening things that they’re doing. It’s not great but that’s what they’re doing.
It’s very unsettling. People don’t get that language choice and the ability to understand how to diffuse the criticism, the defensiveness, the contempt, the withdrawal. All these things are in play. This is one of the things that we’re going to get to next time is what are the things that you say or do? What happens is it leaves people in a place that is basically two language structures fighting against each other. I’ll take one minute and show you how this works and then we can get to closure. Watch how weird this gets. I want to create an escalating conflict. What I got to do is set to opposite voices inside the ears of a person that is listening to me. Once I do that, I can hijack their decision-making. This is literally what happened that the Russians did as a part of their social media push. They will put one over here, one over here. All we’ve got to do is take advantage of our free speech. That’s all they did. Let’s take advantage of it through social media. Everybody has the freedom to speak what you want, then we’ll see whose voting.
What happens if you get the person in a state of confusion or torn or overwhelmed? They don’t vote if you put them here.
All you’ve got to do is start the first language. All the language has to do is start with some angel obligation showing up here. This is what people should do but the other side is not doing and it’s a shame that they’re not doing it the way we’re doing it. If they were a Patriot, they’re to blame for not doing it. All you’ve got to do is take race and do that with it. Take finances and do that with it and you still are setting up the polarity. When we look at it closer and the evaluation, on the other side, they should feel guilty for what they’ve been doing. I’m watching well-crafted newscasters getting drugged into this. I’m going like, “You’re helping to create the confusion and the polarity. Stop doing that. It’s not helpful and it’s not healthy to America.”
All the major newscasters need education in this.
They don’t know that they’re getting hijacked because they think that they’re promoting a fact, “We’re doing the truth. Everybody wants the truth, don’t they?” Not exactly. I’d rather have an expectation be at odds with criticism. I want the things fighting this person because then that person will vote. I’ve got a picture of a confused individual with a devil on one shoulder and an angel on the other shoulder and the devil and the angel are whispering in the ear of this poor, confused person.
Honestly, if people reading are old enough, there is a scene in Animal House that does exactly this. Do you remember that one though? Where somebody was wrestling with, “Should I do the right thing or should I get myself in a safe space and out of trouble?”
The next is here’s a reward, if you do one. Here’s a punishment. The narrative doesn’t have to get the person to actually speak the truth. We’re interested in confusing the crap out of a person and forcing them into a black or white judgment in order to create odds inside their consciousness. I’ve got to get them to be at odds with themselves, inside themselves, and then I’ve got to get their families to be at odds with each other over the holidays. I’ve got to break up their social groups. I’ve got to deconstruct their family.
I’ve got to get them so they’re dysfunctional, torn, confused, overwhelmed and numb. Isn’t that what we’re feeling, most people, Tom?
Yes, no question.
If I want to start thinking and saying these things, I will definitely escalate internal and external conflict. We’ll pick this up here next time. We’ll take a look at the deconstruction of criticism, defensiveness, contempt and withdraw. How to be compassionate to that next time? We’ll take that out for a spin because truth in a compassionate way. Compassion does not mean nice. It means scary honesty, is what compassion means. It’s seeing the person’s struggle and getting that struggle and asking them what it would be like if they didn’t struggle? That’s compassion. I’m not going to give up my value or point of view. I wonder what it’s going to look like for this, and then go from there.
I can’t wait for that one, Bill. I’m sure our readers can’t either. There’s a lot to unpack here. I’ll definitely come back next time. We will do that. Thanks so much, Bill. That was a great journey. I enjoyed it.
Thanks, Tom. I appreciate it.
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