Purchasing Truth: Cautioning Against Doubt and Skepticism

In this episode, Bill Stierle and Tom talk about why it’s important to caution ourselves regarding doubt and skepticism. Bill dives into industries planting the seeds of doubt and skepticism through micro-messaging and how it can quickly escalate to something worse. Learn about brand damage, the negative value it creates even in the long-term, and how it relates to the current status quo in the United States today. Bill and Tom then talk about the damages that President Donald Trump has made and its long-term effects on the next administrations.

---

Watch the episode here

We are in an unusual time in terms of the history of our country. You and I were talking about the word spin and it seems like spin has a whole new meaning, doesn’t it?

Yeah, it does. The biggest challenge that we have is to caution ourselves regarding doubt and skepticism. What winds up happening is that if I create doubt, I also create an experience of hesitancy and confusion. In order for the brain to cope with that, it picks the last moment of certainty or commitment that it made. If I voted for Donald Trump and I had a commitment, my integrity was this guy’s going to change things. I’m not going to believe the new truth. When someone sows much doubt and skepticism the way he does, it causes many human beings to move into a place of doubt, confusion or hesitancy, and the truth gets lost there and it gets purchased. There’s a book called Merchants of Doubt. These are promotional and ad agencies that sow the seeds of doubt.

In the tobacco industry, there’s another book called Thank You for Smoking. The person’s feeling grateful and gratitude for the other person for smoking. The PR firms for the tobacco industry are the same PR firms for the coal in fossil fuel industries because they don’t have to advocate for truth. They have to do their job well to plant the seeds that grow into doubt, skepticism and confusion.

Use micro-messages in order to do that. You have this great crop of plants, something that could feed us called the vibrant nation.

Whereas, a PR firm with the right amount of money puts a bunch of weeds around there. The weeds or even false corn looks similar because you don’t see what’s in it. All of a sudden, you’re trying to spray a bunch of pesticides to kill that. Finally, you kill the truth. At the same time, as you’re killing the weed, you’re killing the plant and the nation. The metaphor is getting unsettling and stuffs very quickly.

It does and the metaphor is even more emphasized because it made the news that Costco announced that they’re no longer going to carry Roundup, a literal weed killer because they do not believe that it’s safe. The micro-messaging, in that case, is the seeds of doubt and skepticism are no longer working there. Are we going to see the same type of thing play out in our current state of truth in our political climate?

There’s no way for the level of saturation as the current environment is experiencing. There’s no way that you can keep laying a lie on top of lie or untruth or partial truth on top of the next partial truth or the next first truth until it starts a thing like, “I cannot believe that person because they said this one way and they said this way. I am not interested in that product or service.” Ford had to go through this particular growing pain of doing a thing called planned obsolescence. We’re planning when the thing is going to break and then they’re going to come back for this part in 1, 2, 3 or 5 years. I’m going to plan this thing to be broken and then I can plan how many of the replacement parts I can resell this person that already bought my product.

As my parents experienced buying the Ford Fairmont, two years later, the car was not worth repairing. My parents had to pay for it for four years, even though they had to get rid of the car. There is a diminishing cost when you create the level of trust and it is truthful. It’s a new car and we’re going to get our value out of this. My parent’s belief structure was ended rightfully. These cars are 6 or 8 years then we got to repair. It’s falling apart at two. It started, “The thing broke and this thing broke. This thing didn’t go well and then this thing went out.” This is where the healing of the nation has to occur, Tom. The painful part of it is that my mom told the story about Ford for eight years after the Ford Fairmont broke down. The long-term cost and the long-term tragic response is, “You throw the need for trust and truth under the best with your product. I’m talking about that negative story to my kids and I have never bought a Ford.” I’m sitting here at my age and I don’t have anything logically against it, but I definitely have something emotionally against it.

Think of all that brand damage that occurred for Ford. This is interesting, Bill. I can see how that’s a metaphor for what we’re going through at the current administration. As we talked about all these things and every day, the level of purchasing of truth and spin at the top seems to increase to the point where some of us including myself at times, think that this can’t just go on. There has to be a consequence for it.

The fantasy is that I can manage this short piece but the damage is long-term. For example, I don’t get my need for justice and truth met by a conservative judge and I’m in jail. I’ve had three kids and those kids are experiencing that. The kids aren’t thinking to themselves, “What’s wrong with my dad?” They’re thinking, “What’s wrong with the system?” The system is not just any way, so I’ll figure out a way around the system. Notice the damage is on the value of justice. The same thing that happened with President Donald Trump pulling out from the Kurds in Syria. The problem with Kurds is the damage is on integrity. How is any future administration going to resell integrity and respect? How is our bargaining chip of integrity and respect going to work with any negotiation with Iran? How is that going to work when the brand damage on the value has taken place?

The biggest challenge that we have as listeners is to caution ourselves regarding doubt and skepticism.

CLICK TO TWEET

This is where the Republicans are making the tragic error. They think and they’re going for the short term. They think that is that what they’re doing is they’re spinning towards the vote, “All I got to do is keep my people on the line.” Have they ever raised a child? It’s like the child will go around a violent parent. The child will go around and create wreckage in the future, even at their own expense. When a parent says or does something, they’ll figure it out a way around it. That’s one of the costs when the company and the business have gone across the line. They kept their industry open without doing scary honesty early, smoking tobacco and now, vaping and nicotine. Nicotine is a Class 1 drug and marijuana is not.

There’s a little irony there.

Alcohol is more of Class 1 and Class 2 drug, and marijuana is not. How are some of these drugs that are in the place of acceptance? Truth is not valued once you start pounding on whatever the need is that the thing is meeting and you lower that bar, things will not go well in the long-term. You can have a short-term win, behavioral movement and boost in a quarterly thing but the long-term damage is catastrophic.

It’s going to take a decade or more to rebuild the brand damage of the United States around the world. In some situations, it will take longer than others. When is this brand damage going to backfire on the current administration?

It won’t. It’s disconcerting because the brand damage is a long piece. Let’s put this in a climate problem here. Our current CO2 levels are the same as it was during blast great ice melt. They’re not looking at what happened or what was the planet’s climate when that was taking place. The answer is that the ocean levels were 80 meters higher than they are now. The planets are going to be slow in catching up to 80 meters. The challenge is that 77% of the world population would be underwater at 80 meters. That’s not a good thing. It’s not survival of the planet and it’s not global warming. Human protection is a message that needs to be solved. The new message is not about global warming as we need to take this to protect our cities.

Here are the steps that we’re going to take to protect our cities. Notice how your body is changing. It’s physiology. You’re going like, “Bill, that sounds good.” “Let’s start protecting our cities by putting some walls around some of the cities. Let’s go in some planning around putting some walls around Miami. Let’s look at that. Here are some parts of Florida that we’re going to sacrifice but since Miami’s a bigger city, here’s how we’re going to build up Miami. We’re going to build some cities that will put some sea walls up here to protect the city as what we’d like to do.”

Talk about a wall that we will desperately need.

It’s an interesting reality but the walls are not in the right place. I want to agree with President Donald Trump. I appreciate how he’s discussing a wall but the wall that we need to be discussing is the ability to protect our cities from the current rise in water and the current water that’s going to be landing with the current levels of hurricanes that are showing up. We need to work on levies things and that’s going to cost X amount. We need to balance between the immigration discretion and also the water drainage discussion in North Carolina and South Carolina in Georgia. “Let’s go ahead and discuss that. Florida, you’re much lower than that and your water system is going to be tough. There’s not enough money available because you don’t tax your people.” The taxes are minimal because they are. Florida has all these toll roads but there’s no toll that is going to be high enough to prevent water from being in your backyard. There’s a different truth that we need to talk about.

The main thing is this metaphor about when a skilled PR person starts planting the seeds of doubt and skepticism, what do you do next? This is what needs to be done. Bury the lead because I can do that. You repeat the seed back to them that they’re planting. I was watching a little bit of Mick Mulvaney going into the doubt and skepticism seeding. This is what he said, “The Trump administration is going to act differently than the Obama administration. When the new president comes in, they get to make a series of decisions to do things differently under their leadership.

The next president is going to come in and goes, “It’s much different.” He kept using the Obama decision-making back there which is different than the Trump decision-making now creating the false narrative that Donald Trump is making a decision. That’s what he’s covering. He’s saying it’s a partial truth because yes, he’s making a decision. It’s not a well-thought-out decision, but he’s making a decision. Yes, he is being in integrity with what he promised on the campaign but he is not in alignment with the truth of our best interests as Americans and as what we are fighting for our military.

Meeting the need for integrity because this is what you said you would do and endless wars but it is not in alignment to, “If I end or make this decision about Syria, I am now jeopardizing,” let alone not warning anybody that he was making a decision and that there was no planning there. It’s like, “Do it and then get it done and deal with the wreckage. Maybe 200 or 500 of them are going to die and I’m not invested in them because we don’t have any interest and stakes there.” The head-shaker is that there are nuclear weapons in the area in Turkey. There is our global adversaries, Russia and Iran. Do you want to let them take over this mess?

Not to mention hundreds, if not thousands of ISIS detainees, are being released back into the world to exact revenge on the United States. At some point, they’re going to be angry.

If he said the sentence, “I’d want to honor the nation’s Integrity for the Kurds. What I’d like to do is offer them amnesty in the US because the Kurds have fought along Americans. The troops did blood transfusions and gave blood for there are Kurdish counterparts. Our blood is in their blood and we welcome them with open arms.” Then you got a shot at it.

Of course, he’s going to have issues with the integrity piece of this mass migration of people into the United States.

“We’ll take the Kurds but we’re not taking the Mexicans.” It’s craziness. “How do you know if they’re good? There are some bad people there.” That’s exactly what he did with, “They’re giving us our worst murderers and rapists.” “Yeah, but there’s a few of them that are good people.” The limited black and white thinking is in the age range of the way an 11-year-old or 12-year-old thinks. It’s like, “I got to make a decision and our parents get to clean up the mess. No one’s calling me on the bad decision, so I get to make another bad decision. My parents get to buy their way out, pay their way out or talk their way out of the mess that I’m creating around me.” The casualty is integrity and a long-term challenge that pays for global warming. Whoever plays for that puts the protection of American coastal cities. “I don’t have to pay for that today. There’s no cost for me and they might re-elect me because I’ve sowed enough seeds of doubt and confusion.” Does that make some sense of how the dynamic of languages being used?



It does. To comment on what you said about there might be enough doubt to get him re-elected is a scary thought but I have a part A and part B to that thought. I was reading an article that Moody’s has forecast based on three key economic indicators. They have a long history of being accurate on this except they did get it wrong in 2016 because they predicted Hillary Clinton would win. They admittedly were wrong then so take what they’re saying now with a grain of salt. They’re saying that they’re predicting Donald Trump will win the election in a landslide. They went state by state and this is an Electoral College analysis based on economic conditions in every state.

They admitted that there are things that could throw a monkey wrench into their whole analysis. Many things could crop up and change this but based on what they see on the economic conditions, they’re predicting Donald Trump will win re-election in a landslide. That’s Part A and Part B to tie into this conversation we’re having is that the longer Donald Trump is President and continues to purchase truth from the Republican Party. If Donald Trump gets re-elected, how much longer in years or decades will it take for the Republican Party to reclaim truth and value as a party?

They can’t do. Even a former Republican in the State of Florida wrote a book called The End of the Republican Party. He then switched parties and went from Republican to Democrat and they still don’t believe it. They have a hard time seeing that they’re driving their car into the wall because there’s been many strategies of doing doubt, skepticism, confusion, torn, doubt and choosing. All you got to do is have a couple of well-placed labels and diagnoses he has on people. “Joe Biden’s corrupt,” and he’s going like, “There’s no evidence.” “Yeah. We haven’t found the evidence yet.” I’m going to say this and it’s upsetting, “This is the size of yellowcake uranium and it looks like that the Iraqis have gotten this from North Africa.”

When you create doubt, you create an experience of hesitancy and confusion.

CLICK TO TWEET

Meanwhile, the truth is it wasn’t there and all they needed was the soundbite of Colin Powell or George W. Bush holding up their hands talking about the problem with yellowcake uranium. Draw the false line between that truth, “This is the amount to make a dirty bomb,” creates the doubt and belief and scare the people that this is what took place in Iraq. All of a sudden, we’re in a war that was based on an initial partial truth about the amount it takes to do a dirty bomb or to create mushroom clouds that would be lost on an American city. Frame things to scare people can purchase more truth or reinforce that there’s nothing to look here and that also can purchase truth. It’s difficult.

Bill, when you were saying that they don’t realize that they’re driving their car into a wall, were you referring to the Republican Party?

Yes.

The more that the current administration that most of the Republicans serving in Congress, were not in alignment with 2016, the more that the Donald Trump administration purchases truth. You’re saying that he is forever altering the reality of the Republican Party. The Republican Party members don’t even realize that they’re on this car that is driving down the road in the dark with no headlights, it’s heading to crash into a wall and there’s nothing they can do. They may not even realize it until they crashed into the wall. Is that right?

Yeah, it’s not until the key leaders do the tantrum they need to do. Lindsey Graham is not doing the tantrum that he needs to do in regard to Donald Trump and Donald Trump’s experience. Lindsey Graham still needs to gather his magic seven people if he would like to get this done. If you get seven strong Republicans, Mitch McConnell’s in big trouble because he’s falling behind on his vote.

He’s two points down in his re-election bid. She’s gaining and he keeps sounding like and is being more associated with the doubt and skepticism about the integrity of his leadership. She’s problematic and she’s running against a military pilot. She’s got some strength to her. She’s got to do some scary honesty.

She says, “Let me give it to you straight. Personally, I don’t believe in marijuana. Other states don’t believe the same way that we do here in Kentucky. I’m not necessarily good but we do have an opioid crisis and we probably better get take a look at that, too.” She has not got into the argument about gay rights or this. You got to be in the argument that’s value-based. Does that make sense about the purchasing truth by creating a value-based argument is you stand there? People are okay with disagreements just so that you’re clear on what the value you are standing for. This is a religious belief of mine and some people are going to disagree with me.

 It’s a politician that could pick this narrative. “My religious belief is this because in this book, it says this thing and it might be in a disagreement of things, but the least, you know where I stand.”

You’re talking about Amy McGrath running against Mitch McConnell?

That’s correct.

Framing things to scare people can purchase more truth or reinforce that there's nothing to look here.

CLICK TO TWEET

That’s what they’re doing. They’re collapsing. When you collapse something like that, what happens is you allow somebody. It’s allowing the President, too, as an authoritarian to make a unilateral decision without consulting the Congress about pulling out the war without building a coalition to get something done and to have what’s a best practice is in this. If President Donald Trump had some wisdom, knowledge and experience, he would say to the Republicans, “Here are the five campaign promises that I’ve made. 

How can we get me to say with enough truth that I got this done? What are the ways that I can do that? What troops can we pull back to say that I am starting the process of ending wars? How can I get this done? How can we get the Democrats to get this done with us because they’re a little vulnerable, too? They went along with the war on the yellowcake thing, too. They didn’t want to look soft on the military. They don’t want to do that.”

Bill, that would presume that the President is a politician that would be willing to use the word we. We were an operative word. He doesn’t want to build a coalition. He doesn’t want to have this be a win that they or we can get. He’s an authoritarian. He wants the win to be his. It’s all me, me, I.

This is the truth because once you do the “I,” so the “me,” without judging it, even though all that you said was true. If I want to do an ethical narrative to what you said, it would be like, “The President is meeting his need for respect, recognition and acknowledgment at the expense of truth.” When he says the sentence, “General so and so said that it would take two years to defeat. I defeated ISIS in one month.” What he’s doing with that sentence is meeting the need for respect, recognition and acknowledgment by claiming a small news narrative called, “ISIS has been defeated.” Instead of, “We have combatants of ISIS in a jail.”

That is a different way of narrative. We’ve been doing a great job of collecting all the ISIS people. What do you do with somebody in jail? This is when it gets upsetting. The idea of a jail process, if you want to do it, is a rehabilitation narrative, which we don’t do well in the United States. We focus on, “How can we make this profitable?” “By locking them up.” That’s all we’re interested in that narrative because that’s called respect for human life and balancing the need for expression with the near future. It takes an adult to do that. It takes a wise parent to be okay with the kid being upset because they’re a kid.

We’ve got the teenager or the middle schooler running the house.

That’s a big part of it. He’s scaring the crap out of all the adults inside the environment. The adults are complaining but they are not complaining in a way that a wise and compassionate parent would be. Let me go ahead and be Chuck Schumer because he blew it last time.

After they left the White House meeting?

That’s right. Here’s what he needed to say, “The President did not meet the need for respect in a healthy conversation between adults. What he did was he talked to in a disrespectful way to the speaker of the house. He did not honor the Constitution by speaking with her that way.” Honoring the Constitution would have sounded like, “Speaker, you are in charge of the co-branch of government and I, as the executive branch, would like it this way and you would like it in a different way than I would like it.” If Chuck Schumer does that narrative that I just gave and if Nancy Pelosi has that narrative, it’s like parents complaining about their kids to other parents at a PTA meeting.

It’s like, “Don’t complain about your kids. Be compassionate to what your kids were going through. Also, point out the fallacy that there are working off of.” The President said the sentence, “Some of the Kurds were communist. I, as the Speaker of the House, might have like that.” I felt disheartened that the person had said that because it doesn’t fully meet the need for truth that might be true. I felt doubtful and skeptical about the President’s leadership at this moment because he’s not leading in a balanced or thoughtful way. Who is planting the seeds of doubt and skepticism?

The President is meeting his need for respect, recognition, and acknowledgment at the expense of truth.

CLICK TO TWEET

You can’t label and diagnose. You can’t call him sick. You can’t call him disturbed. You can’t call him a tantrum. All of those are losing narratives. I hear that you have thought that they should learn from this but I’m going to give you the worst answer. They don’t have the skill of language through a high conflict traumatized person that’s in front of them. They don’t have any skill and abilities. They keep thinking his logical and his adult mind is going to come on to a place. I got some bad news for everybody. The bad news is that narrative is not changing inside his brain. He will be just as bitter and viable and pollute the environment when he leaves the office.

We, as adults need to figure out how to language to him in a different place. When we do it, all of a sudden, things go better for us.

Not as Democrats, that’s not what I’m interested in. I’m interested in the values of America and the values of Americans. We had a lot of healing to do after this.

I agree. I would argue that Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi do not think that he is going to change or wanting or hoping that he’s going to change. In reality, they are hoping that by pointing out the facts and by labeling and diagnosing him, that more Americans are going to wake up to what the President is doing and no longer support him. I would agree with you that that is not the right way to accomplish what they want to achieve.

Let’s go after Moody’s thing because I don’t want to leave this session without getting ahold of that. The biggest way to numb the population is to keep the economics of the voter between, “I’m scared to lose my job and I’m happy enough to tolerate this suffering.”

That seems like a low bar but let’s go with that.

The reason why it’s such a low bar because the thirds of Americans are living in that spot, paycheck to paycheck, that’s exactly what that means. If I’m living that, I am not in a place of an accelerating economy. I am not in the place of growth. I am in the place of triggering scarcity regarding the stability of jobs. “I am happy to get my job and Donald Trump talks a good game, so I’ll stay with him.” That’s exactly the scary honesty that all of us got a face to say, “You don’t know what’s coming to place but in the next few years, if you want to see how the whole thing the economy’s going to ravel then elect him.”

You can’t keep artificially pumping up the economy the way it’s doing to keep that happy medium between, “Scaring the crap out of the voters and just delighted enough that you still have a job so you can live paycheck to paycheck.” That’s upsetting part of the narrative. It’s cannibalistic but regrettably, that’s the way our brain works. It’s stuck in that place. There’s a way out and that’s why we’re doing this show is to repurchase truth. The next time, I want to go back into this, how can the flames changed to a focus passionate laser that truth can be reclaimed and healing can take place in the shortest amount of time possible? We need to have a discussion about truth and healing and truth and restoration so that things can go better. After the wound, there’s no sense of poking it with a stick. Is that right, Tom?

I agree. That’s not going to serve anybody well.

Tom, this has been a lot of fun.

Yes, I’ve enjoyed it. Thank you, Bill.

Until next time.