The Three Card Monte Of Truth
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The three most important pillars where a candidate needs to drive his/her message of truth home are the nation, the community, and the individual. In this episode, Bill Stierle and Tom discuss how these can be used to one’s advantage. They discuss border security and control and how the wall is going to affect America, as well as how Donald Trump has spun these truths in a way to discredit his competition. They use the Three Card Monte in gambling as a metaphor on how it relates to the political climate.
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I was intrigued at the end of our last episode talking about community rights versus individual rights. We’re going to talk about the Three-Card Monte of truth. We’re talking about national rights versus community rights versus individual rights.
Those are the things called the rights, the national rights. It’s the national messaging, community messaging and individual messaging. Those messages used to be what parties used to build their political messaging underneath. They would build, “I have a message about what I like the nation to do. I have a message about what’s going to happen inside Main Street, whatever’s going to happen in the community. I have a message about what’s going to happen to the individual.” How this is going to impact? What are you going to pay your taxes for? How that’s going to contribute to the other two? The problem though is that what has happened in the current environment, it’s the old American identity, Make America great again, versus look at how good the economy is doing, how big business is doing. That’s just, “Look at the stock market, the best numbers ever.” Individual freedom has messages like, “You’re going to lose your 401(k). They’re going to take your guns.”
These kinds of things, Tom, are the things that are being shifted between this dopamine Three-Card Monte. When you’re playing a game like, “Pay attention to where the queen is. Here’s the queen. This is what the queen looks like.” Meanwhile, the queen is maybe no longer on the table or he has done something to literally affect your visual perception of where the queen is. The chances of you getting where it’s going unless you know how he’s doing the trick, you’re not going to get where he’s going because your brain has a blind spot.
That’s how the truth gets purchased with messaging, is it messages into the blind spot. It’s getting purchased because the messaging is not one that’s congruent with the truth. It’s congruent with the need of the trickster, of the card player. It’s them allowing you to win one or two times in order to say, “You’re good at this. I don’t know if I want to play with you anymore. One more time. How about if we double it?” What the person doesn’t know is that they’re going to lose whatever they gained plus a whole bunch more, because the trickster, the card player is in touch with where the brain’s blind spot is.
Republicans do have a much better job of playing into their bases, blind spots, and conservative America’s blind spot. They play into it. It’s in a disheartening way when somebody votes against their own interest. That is particularly unsettling if this thing that took place. It’s sad and disheartening because when somebody identifies as the, “I’m the good guy in the Western. Here’s the bad guy in the Western.” On the rugged-free individual person that doesn’t show his emotions even though they’re like, “I’ve been shot with an arrow five times.” It’s like they’re seeing that as the rugged individual, “I’m a rugged individual because I’m an American.” “I’ve got to do a message that’s similar to that.” This is what makes America great again does. A Republican message that does that can sway what takes place.
I noticed in your example of the card trickster, card dealer in the Three Card Monte where you injected that doubt in there. It’s like, “You’re good at this. I don’t know if I want to play with you anymore.” That made the person want to play more. It was the anticipation he was building of them winning and taking more of his money, which of course they were being taken in because he knew he was going to win. There’s no way he was going to let them win and he’s going to increase the stakes and you lose even more than you won in the first place.
With the tax break, that’s what took place. It pushed the healing of our economy ten years out. It pushed it out and made it unstable.
We’re starting to see cracks in the economy. We had the Federal Reserve increased interest rates for the first time in a long time. They’ve started to slightly decrease them again. There are other economic indicators that this big economic expansion may be on the rocks, certainly not going to continue being as big and positive as strong as it has been in recent years. You’re saying that it was almost like getting high on a drug quickly and we’re going to come down from it.
Let’s detox you. You’ll go to the hospital for 3 to 7 days of detox, then you’re going to go to a drug rehab center and then you’re going to go to sober living. Do you see what I am doing? It’s like a dopamine healing process, but it’s based on language messaging and our nation rather than, “Why don’t we stop using the drug? Why don’t we do some scary honesty about what real good fun is, what real good gambling is? Gamble from excess. Don’t gamble from lack.” How about that as an idea? If you wanted to play and you would have bet on a game, if you’re in a place of abundance, then play from that space.
The SEC has all kinds of guidelines for people to become an investor. You cannot invest in your house in a company. It’s a risky stock. If this thing goes down, it takes your house out then you don’t have shelter and you become a burden on society. We are not going to let you gamble unless you have these standards. The only problem is that so many people are down there at the low end. There are only the big guys that get to throw money into the system and they’re playing with these various different numbers. They’re not helping the ground game. They’re not helping Main Street. Main Street hasn’t seen a blip at all.
If one of the candidates would learn a healthy style of Three-Card Monte, then truth can move back on the Democratic side of the fence. The healthy side of Three Card Monte is not looking at the crook or the liar the way they’re labeling lie or crook. Don’t use labels and diagnoses. The person’s playing a game. Play the game better. It might sound like, “The foundation of America is built around small business at Main Street. We’re happy about the wealthy being able to play on Wall Street. Most Americans don’t play that game. We are going to represent most Americans. They get to play their game too.”
What I did was, “Here’s the queen. I know how to play this game too.” As far as your health care goes and as far as immigration goes, stand for a clear compelling truth about it. It’s not, “I’m going to work with the other side. They’re not playing your game. They’re playing the hordes that the masses are coming after the individual rights. Your individual rights, your community rights are going to get run over.” It doesn’t matter if it’s true or not. It’s a card. It’s a languaging card that’s being played. That’s the thing.
The Federal interest rates are just another card. What card? Their card. Not the Republican card or that other card. That is, “If we adjust this, it’ll trickle down to you poor slobs down there.” It’s not trickling anywhere. They’re not even in that game. Why? The SEC doesn’t allow them to get in there because if they get in the game, they’ll get sucker punched. They’ll lose their house. They’ll lose their family. They’ll destabilize America. They can’t let them in the game with whatever bet they can.
It pushes them off into spending your money on entertainment, on substances to numb the pain or spend your money on the latest retail technical device that we can get you to buy. This is a different way to think about truth being purchased through language, is that, “I’m going to leverage this message about the American gunslinger. I’m going to message this thing about the Fed rates going up and down and how that’s good or not a good thing.” I’ll pretend I’m a Republican, “The economy is going so good. It’s so hot that the Fed is going to adjust the interest rates to slow it down so it can last longer, so President Donald Trump can continue to see it.”New Paragraph
You spun it as a positive thing, but the way that the President has been talking about it, he demonizes the head of the Federal Reserve saying, “He’s making the wrong choice. He’s doing a bad job. He’s going to hurt the economy by doing this.” Instead, Donald Trump could have owned it and spun it with the heads I win, tails you lose type of thing. Is that right?
That’s correct. He could have. He’s playing more on the fear side or the loss side of the Three Card Monte piece. This is the gambler that’s going to bet again. It’s where most of the bets are made at a racetrack. Most of the bets are made in the last fifteen minutes before the bell rings to cut off the bets. Most of them are second bets of the person doubling down.
Putting more money on who already were behind.
That is what the media has to get a hold of as well as the Democrats got to get a hold of, is that this person is not voting for, they’re voting to reinforce a decision.
I bet for a lot of those people, it’s hard for them to reconcile, “I made a mistake,” or “I voted for this guy and he’s disappointed me. I’m not going to do it again.” It must be harder for people to do that than to double down on the bet and say, “No, I was right. I’m going to hope for the best.” Maybe it’s subconsciously, “I don’t want to be wrong. He just needs more time,” whatever it is.
It’s one of the struggles. We got to be careful about this rabbit hole because you and I can fall down on this rabbit hole. This is what happens when a shame-based narrative takes over. It’s called the shame-based narrative. It’s dropping down the rabbit hole of, “I am going to shame, blame, and judge you into voting for me.” Authoritarians do it all the way across the board. Mussolini did this all the time, “If you don’t go with me, look at who I am.” He used to stand there and go, “I own this,” and everyone will go, “You do own this.”
It’s exasperating. It’s like a child waiting for their parents to come home. Their parents promised them and they’re hoping they’re going to. Mom doesn’t come home. Dad doesn’t come home. The child is wondering, “Is my dad going to be angry today? Is my mom going to be angry today? I better walk on eggshells.” It’s a little bit of, “It’s going to work out. They’re going to come around and love me.” Instead of, “That person has a lot of pain. This is the luck of the draw and I did not get it. I’ve got to cut my losses and be independent. I have to resolve love and connection later in my marriage.”
We’ve got to watch how we language things and watch our behavior as adults have a lot of compassion for the person that voted against their best interest. “In the past, you voted against your best interest. That didn’t go so well. We get the good reason why you voted against your best interest. If you were to be willing to give your vote for me, here’s the way that would work. Here’s what I think would work best for us to restore the vote that you cast in the past.”
That’s an interesting thing to do. If you’re a Democrat, invite those people that voted for Donald Trump based on the promise of this vision that he set out there.
A Democrat could hijack Donald Trump’s, “Make America Great Again.” It can hijack it like the Three-Card Monte, pull it on to their side.
I would love to hear what that would sound like, Bill, because honestly, that would be brilliant. I’m sure none of them are thinking anything in the neighborhood of doing that.
Talk to the Donald Trump voter, specifically the 15% of them that are willing to swing. Talk to all of them all at the same time. “You voted for him to meet the need. Take all of his cards away from him and a debate. Go this way.” I value President Donald Trump’s choices to try to meet the need for protection from the people coming into our country legally. I think it’s a value to provide safety for Americans in that way. I do not agree with the way he’s doing it, but what needs to happen is called a turn.
You took all those people that thought, “You have to vote for Donald Trump in order to be for border security.” You’ve gotten them to realize, “I can vote for you and be for border security, also.”
Instead of couching it like, “We want it to be proportional. We want to follow what the experts are saying,” don’t do that. Take all his cards. It’s not like his cards are transparent or something.
They’re not that deep, right?
No. You take the cards. They’re all there. You can only plan. It’s like, “That’s because what you’re saying is something that’s valuable to Americans. Americans want to have border security, but not the way that you do. The way you do is exorbitant. The way I’d like to do it is one that will still keep money in their pocket.” I turned again to say, “I don’t want Americans to spend money on their taxes to overspend on the wall. I’d like a big wall, but not to overspend on a wall.”
You could easily have pivoted that one to say, “A wall may be needed, but not at the expense of schools on our military bases that are meeting the needs of educating those children.” There are these other stories that have come out. You could pivot that easily.
I would probably go with respect. I would probably pivot to respect. I still want to respect and give fairness to the military children and what they are going through. What respect and fairness would look like is keep the money where we allocated it, not to move it over here, where it’s more like a gold-plated wall that has Donald Trump’s name on it. I don’t think that’s what we’re going for.
Maybe we should put President Donald Trump’s name every 500 feet on the wall. Let’s go and do that. How about if we put his name on every 500 feet? Maybe we should put a gold-plated name and call it Donald Trump’s border wall. Let’s do that for every mile that he’s going to do it and put Donald Trump’s name on it.
It will both excite him and then piss him off because what you’re doing is you’re taking his Three Card Monte play and you’re pulling it, and go like, “You could play that game. That game seems like that has some value to it.” Donald Trump is a billionaire and a real estate mogul and maybe we should put his name on the wall. Let’s put his name on the wall. It starts to create the ridiculous fallacy of how much money are you going to spend on this. The coyote will enjoy looking at it. The desert lizards would like to look at Donald Trump’s name on a wall that nobody crosses because it’s not necessary. It could be surveyed by drones instead of having a wall. Interesting.
It’s a different way because I think most democratic challengers, when they get into that debate with Donald Trump, would always try to contrast what Donald Trump is doing with what they would do through an explanation. You may as well wave the white flag when you do that.
There are seven different language patterns. If you stay in those seven language patterns, they escalate to the worst kind which is blame and shame. What Democrats keep walking into is the first floor. We’re going to problem-solver fix. We’re going to explain or give advice. We’re going to rewards, deals and punishment. We’re going to rules, duties and obligations. It’s capturing those four things. You cannot win in that narrative because it can always be eclipsed by labels and diagnoses, criticisms, defensiveness, withdraws. There’s a lot of withdraws going on. There’s a lot of stonewalling going on, and blaming and shaming. The blaming and shaming narrative is when you get somebody in the corner like he is and they are, the Republicans are in the corner, they’re only left with three language styles, blame-shame, criticism, labels, diagnoses, withdraws and contempt for the other side. Look at all the talking pieces: contempt, blame, criticism, labels, diagnoses.
It is difficult. I agree with you, the impeachment inquiry is not going to be a winning path in it of itself. The Democrats in many ways have got themselves backed into a corner where they have no choice but to do this impeachment inquiry. It would be interesting to see what comes out of it. It almost may be better to do the whole inquiry, shine light on all the evidence and not vote on it and let the American people vote on it in 2020.
One of the things I wanted to ask you may be related to this Three-Card Monte thing that’s current like the, “Heads I win, tails you lose,” scenario. It struck me with this whole whistleblower complaint, all of the loose transcript, the notes that have come out about at the White House release which probably was ill-advised if you’re somebody who works for the White House. Regardless, it seems to me though that Donald Trump is getting caught in the most obvious hypocrisy ever where he has done exactly what he was asking the Ukrainians to help him find about Joe Biden. There’s no evidence that Joe Biden influenced anybody to try to win favor for his son or get this prosecutor in Ukraine fired. His evidence is right there that Donald Trump did exactly what he was hoping he would find Joe Biden did.
This particular play is interesting. It is going to affect people voting for Joe Biden. By picking off the front-runner, Donald Trump is doing much the same thing that he did with the other Republicans. “I’m picking off one at a time,” then he’ll either go after Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren. My guess is he’s going to go after Elizabeth Warren next. As soon as Elizabeth Warren gets five points ahead of Joe Biden, he’ll start beating on her. “She’s smart. She’s got this. She’s a professor. She’s never made as much money as I did. I know more than she did. I have been into those smart schools. They don’t know anything there.” He’s going to start beating on her.
It’s like a bad dentist on a prolonged dental appointment. America is going along with this and suffering from this. It’s a root canal with no Novocain. It’s like there’s no numbing of this. It’s pain after pain until finally the body goes unconscious and goes helpless. Rudy Giuliani has demonstrated this. He’s saying, “Get out in front of it, lie, take it back and redirect.” Lie, admit, take it back, redirect. It’s those four specific steps. It’s, “I didn’t do it.” “Yes, I did.” “I didn’t say that.” “Joe Biden did it.” All the pain is shifting from the thing they did to the person they’re landing on. The brain can’t tell the difference. The logical brain can’t keep track of that. It can’t proportionalize it because the pain brain makes it all the same. It’s all painful.
Are you saying that this is what Donald Trump is going to do to try to make this whole whistleblower complaint thing go away?
By the end of it, people are exhausted and Joe Biden is dirty. That’s what’s going to be at the end.
He may well-succeed in tanking Joe Biden’s candidacy which is similar to how he picked off Jeb Bush and the Republican primaries, and one person after another until they were doomed and he was the only man left standing and ends up getting the primary votes.
He’s the only one standing because everyone else is looking like chumps. All he’s doing is what any good marketing and salesperson is doing, not one of integrity. A marketing salesperson that’s in integrity offers a product or service, asks for money for it and delivers value for it and the customer is happy at the end going like, “I’ve got further ahead with the money I spent. I’d spend another $10,000 with this person. I’m coming back and shopping here.” All he’s doing is marketing and selling. He doesn’t have anybody else to run the thing that he sold other than people that are doing what he tells them to do, which is to deliver an inferior product and charge a premium price. That’s what he has in place, premium price. That’s what America is paying at a modest or low delivery impact to only the most important people. The 1% gets it. He’s going to deliver to the people that have the money. He’s not going to deliver to the people that don’t have the money.
He wants to make them believe they’re getting things that they need.
I’ll tell them, “This used car is the best-used car ever.” Its tires are falling off. I’m not going to tell you about the radiator. The brakes are going to be out in about three months. You might as well be buying this other thing instead of this. It’s unsettling, hard and challenging.
It’s interesting to see the dynamic going forward of this impeachment inquiry playing out and how much damage does that do to the president. At the same time, there’s this parallel process going forward with the Democrats who are fighting to be the nominee. I was having a talk with my wife about the candidates and it was interesting. I was of the opinion on how the candidate sets the vision, especially in the wake of this impeachment inquiry which has taken hold of the process.
They’ve even come out and said, “It is an impeachment inquiry,” which they haven’t been saying for months. They were like, “We haven’t decided if we’re going to impeach yet.” They’re saying, “Yes, that’s what it is. We’re moving forward with it.” It is about foreign interference in a US election. You and I have talked a few times in the past how if a Democratic candidate would set the vision that, “I am going to put an end to this, make sure no one will interfere in our elections ever again.”
I’ve been saying, “If one of the candidates would come out and do this, they would absolutely become the front-runner, get the nomination, and probably have a better chance at beating Donald Trump down the road.” She has a different opinion that it’s too early to set the vision. When these candidates are trying to set themselves apart from each other, it’s too soon. If they set the vision, Donald Trump would find a way to purchase that vision truth over to himself, that they should wait to do it until later. I’m curious about what you think about it.
In reflection of what an African-American did to become a president, is that he did vision, then new vision, and then the new vision. He tracked and became the leader in those visions. We are refocusing on Afghanistan. We’re doing $700 billion to bail out. That’s the number that we’re choosing. That’s the best number. The Republicans were scrambling because he kept yanking the narrative away from them because they were trying to say, “No, that won’t work.” They were always playing catchup.
Therefore, John McCain had his problems with it and Mitt Romney had his problems with it. “I’d rather go with that guy. That guy is stable. He’s appearing to know what he’s doing. He’s delivering.” The other side is lobbying all kinds of things, cannons, grenades, missiles at his presidency. The stuff that John Boehner did and the stuff that Mitch McConnell did, when they did that, he got a lot of stuff done. Donald Trump came in as the anti-person of that and Hillary did not capture a compelling vision plus vision, it became difficult for that to take place.
You think continuing to set vision after vision is a winning strategy and that maybe it doesn’t matter how Donald Trump’s going to react to that down the road.
Play your version of Three-Card Monte in your messaging, your version, not his version. You could point out his version as being bankrupt. You can steal one of his cards if you want, but his version is immigration, economy.
You point out very well how somebody could purchase his border security truth from him and turn it into one of their winning messages.
Donald Trump could say, “Elizabeth Warren is coming around to see how important border security is.” She gets to say the magical sentence. He’ll say, “Even Elizabeth Warren agrees with me,” and she gets to say, “Yes, I agree. We need to put your name on this wall so Americans can remember how you spent and wasted their money.”
No one would ever be able to think of anything else, the memes that would come out on social media about the wall with the Donald Trump sign. It’s all anybody would be able to think about and then it makes that wall look so self-serving, doesn’t it?
That’s right. Cartoonists in newspapers used to have a field day in this space, but the problem is that we don’t do newspapers anymore, we do memes. What needs to happen is that if a meme goes viral which is the new public discourse regarding the way information is dispensed, it’s not dispensed through this thing called the newspaper. It’s dispensed through this thing called the computer. You and I are trying to get the needle to move towards truth, get it to move towards the truth. How do we get that to move and what do we have? Our words, number one. Our persistence, number two. Our wisdom, knowledge, and experience, number three. That’s what we’re doing here.
It’s so much fun. This has been great, Bill. Thank you so much. I certainly have a better understanding and I appreciate the Three Card Monte metaphor. Thank you for sharing it.
Next time, let’s work on this micro-messaging of the Three-Card Monte. I think that would be a good way so that the audience can get a hold of, “Here’s a micro-message that gets the brain to think in a way that we would like it to think.” That’s more in alignment with truth. Here’s the message that is messaged into the blind spot of the brain, so the brain can’t see that is true. There are micro messages that activate the brain to say, “Yeah, probably so.” I feel doubt and skepticism about that because there is a physiological shift between.
Words are vibrations. When they hit our ears, they’re being added through the filter that is already in the person’s brain. What we’re interested in doing is making sure those messages that activate truth, respect and integrity to follow the rule of law, land to go, “We’re not doing this anymore because if we give this guy a pass, we’re giving everybody else a pass.” They get to say, “What if? Why do it for that guy?” Hence, the multiple double standards. Tom, this has been great, a lot of fun and looking forward to our next one.
Me too, Bill. See you next time.
Thanks.
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