Using The Right Words To Buy Your Truth Back
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There are a lot of people that have a way with words, who influence the way you think by carefully choosing the right words to say. Usually, we hear about these people on the news, but sometimes, we vote for them unknowingly. Bill Stierle and co-host Tom emphasize on the fact that simply hearing the right words can change our entire belief. They talk about the different methods politicians make the people believe their personal visions. This episode covers how our leaders’ visions mold how people behave and what they believe by simply speaking the right words.
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Bill, you’re in a different location than usual.
I am at my office location where I’m doing mediation. We’re going to be working through conflict and reducing the amount of arguments between two people and using language to facilitate that. That’s a big part of how to handle truth. You and I have been talking about how perspective and perception is easily changed by word choices. All you’ve got to do is have the wrong word in there and all of a sudden you go like, “How did it go sideways all of a sudden?” What happens is the goal post gets moved by word selection.
It does. There’re so many examples in our political culture in our country. Discussions in climate are going on where things keep happening that have never happened before and are breaking the norms. People have thought that it would have never happened in a civil society. It may be getting to the point where people are no longer shocked because there have been so many shocking things that have happened. The perspective you’re talking about is very true.
Here’s a great example, a very simple sentence. A person asks about, “Have you told this person about what’s going to take place?”
This other person says, “I talked to that person and I told them that nothing’s going to be changing.” The person immediately says, “Nothing’s going to change?” The other person says, “What I meant to say was that this one little thing wasn’t going to change but they were only asking about this little thing.” The other person says, “There are a lot of things that are going to change.” The other person goes, “I know there are a lot of things that are going to change.” The words nothing, always and never are very dangerous words in our society. They’re painted as absolutes and as global narratives of truth. The answer is they’re not.
It also becomes such an invitation to the fact-checkers, doesn’t it?
It does. The person said nothing was going to change. That wasn’t the truth. For example, if Obama says the sentence, “You don’t have to change your doctor.” Is he in control of not changing the person’s doctor? The doctors move in and out of different insurance qualifications all the time. Does this mean he’s a liar or is he generally speaking about you get a lot of choice inside this system? “Can I keep my doctor?” I don’t know about your doctor because your doctor can be moving to another state. Your doctor could be changing from this insurance plan to this insurance plan. Quite frankly, the government has no control over that one at this time. Do you really want that?” “No, I want choice. I want my old doctor.” You might not be allowed to have your old doctor.
That was the last thing he would have said there. He was setting the vision for the plan and trying to meet everybody’s need for safety and security in their insurance if they were happy with their insurance. He was trying to make it so that people who didn’t need the Affordable Care Act, who didn’t need new insurance, were happy with the system. They would have some security that the government wasn’t going to come and turn everything on its head.
I’m going to give you a tragic sentence. One person’s vision becomes another person’s lie.
I could relate to that because I hear a lot of visionary statements coming out of the President that are a lie.
We are getting to the point where people are no longer shocked because there have been so many shocking things that have happened.
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What happens is one person’s vision becomes another person’s lie. He’s lying to us. He’s setting a vision. He’s talking generally. I particularly like the Fox host that says, “He doesn’t lie. What he does is he exaggerates and then spins.” Exaggeration is different than not accurately doing a fact. The idea is how much margin of a fact you get to push as you’re trying to get somebody into a vision. At this point, if we wanted to fact-check some of the leaders then we would have never been able to adapt an automobile as a vehicle. Everybody knows that horses and buggies are the way that transportation was done. Let me pick the big failure of the railroad industry. “We’re doing railroad.” No, you are not in the railroad business. You are in the human transportation business. If you don’t get a hold of it, the cars are going to take over and they’re going to make your railroads obsolete, which is what happened.
I’ll take it back one step further. The Erie Canal which at the time it was built was pre the locomotive and the train. Those of you that live in New York State and your state slogan is the Empire State, do you know why it’s called the Empire State? I’m going to be a little bit of Cliff Clavin on you here from Cheers. I don’t have to do this but, it’s not called the Empire State because of the Empire State Building. In fact, the Empire State Building is named after the Empire State. The Empire State is named the way it was because in its day, early 1800s, the Erie Canal was built and it was the highway for transportation between the Atlantic Ocean, the Hudson River and into the Great Lakes, Lake Erie. It was a highway and it was called the gateway to the Empire of the West. That’s why it’s called the Empire State.
The Erie Canal took so long to build. All these lock systems and these barges moved very slow. Oxen would pull them. They are walking on the land pulling these barges on the water and that was fast. That was like state-of-the-art technology of the day in the early 1800s. Here comes the railroad and it blows that out of the water. The canal system absolutely eclipses it and the Erie Canal became this very expensive monument, a tribute to the past. We don’t often go down a tangent like that on Purchasing Truth.
Do you know why I like this tangent? Technology is doing the same thing to us. It’s messing with communications so badly that it’s hard to know what the truth is and quite frankly it’s terrifying people. When people get scared and terrified, it’s not because there is a real danger. What they’re terrified with is that their certainty about their beliefs is changing. If I want to scare somebody, I shift their belief to something I knew was true. If I did this, I would then get that and then I change that rule. It terrifies somebody because it destabilizes the person.
People fear uncertainty.
It affects the physiology of the body. I’ve got a skilled marketing person or a skilled snake oil salesperson or a skilled person that sells used cars. I’ve got a skilled person that sells real estate or a skilled person that messages things on social media, a skilled government that propagates social media with messages that hook or play into my beliefs regarding stability and certainty. “I don’t want Hillary Clinton to be president because she’s sick all the time. Did you see the pictures on the internet? She had the flu and didn’t look so good. Remember during the election? She didn’t look so good. Why didn’t she look good?” Those pictures affected the need for certainty and stability about her health and well-being. Was it true? No. Did she get the flu? Yes. Did she get overworked?
Yes.
Was she exhausted one particular day and might have tripped a little bit getting into a vehicle? Yes. Unfortunately, the camera saw it and that’s all anybody could talk about. The candidate Donald Trump at the time labels her. To me this was such a sexist label. He said, “She doesn’t have the stamina to be president.” That was how he labeled it and without saying other things. He probably believed and personally would have said if it was in private, that’s what he said publicly.
It’s a great moment in the field of time because in the debate, you don’t have the stamina. Notice her come back to that stamina thing was a monologue about testifying for eleven hours about flying to different countries, about doing X, Y, Z and notice none of that stuck.
No. It was an explanation, wasn’t it?
Correct. Her best response would have been, “Stamina? Do you mean like sticking with things? Do you mean when you work through something with a group of people and lead them? Do you mean the times that I worked through and got a group of people to move to do things? The thing that you don’t have, the thing that you don’t do is what you don’t have because you don’t work well with people. You don’t lead and therefore you don’t have the stamina.” She didn’t even know that it was a turnaround. It was not like, “I’m going to prove you wrong.” The number one thing that candidates make a problem of is they keep trying to prove the accusation false. The things that we’re learning by this President is he never tries to prove something false or true. He just says the same thing over and over again until it sticks.
Until it’s all anybody knows and hears. The representative for Michigan is not a fan of the President. One of his constituents is being interviewed after he pulled back the curtain on the reality of how the President has committed crimes according to the Mueller report. This woman said, “I had no idea there was anything bad in the Mueller report,” because that’s all she hears. Whether it’s from the President or from the Fox News cheerleaders, that’s all she hears. You’re right, if it’s all she hears, that’s what sticks.
That’s correct. The town hall meeting, when done well, is a dissemination of knowledge and trying to broaden the person’s perspective and perception. When we do that well, what winds up happening is the information is done in such a way that we’re not trying to explain something. What you’re trying to do is set the vision for. The wonderful thing Justin Amash did is very clearly, “This is the vision of what integrity looks like and he’s not doing integrity. This is what the law looks like in Grand Rapids. We want integrity with the law and he’s not doing it. No matter what anybody else says, are we going to believe our law enforcement or are we going to believe the messaging that’s coming in our direction?” It’s a wonderful job because he’s now off there and he’s building his narrative around integrity and then it goes better.
That is respectable regardless of your political ideology or beliefs. It’s refreshing to me anyway, if I could say that. What’s very disheartening is that we’ve seen much more these hearings of the House Judiciary Committee. Corey Lewandowski is interviewed. He ran the campaign manager for the Donald Trump campaign at one point. He’s been brought in by subpoena to testify before the House Judiciary Committee. There are these laws on the books about executive privilege. Executive privilege would apply to communication the President of the United States has with some of his staff or any of the upper Executives and government. They need to be able to have free conversations and not worry that somebody can come and testify.
Here’s somebody who was not a member of the cabinet and never had conversations with the President of the United States. He had conversations with a candidate for president of the United States. He was brought in and asked questions about it. The White House is citing executive privilege and he’s refusing to answer questions. The Justice Department of course is backing up the President and telling Corey Lewandowski that he shouldn’t talk about certain things. There seems to be no authority here that can keep this goal post from being moved.
Would you like to hear how I would have done it?
I would love to hear if you were Jerry Nadler, The Chairman of the Committee.
The way I would have done it if I was in charge of it is that I already knew what he had said and what he was under oath. I don’t need him to say what was under oath. What I do need him to say is to own the good reasons why he is not being honest. That’s what I want him to do. I want him to own that. That’s a different approach. That approach would be completely different.
Regrettably, politicians are not talented investigators and they’re not talented lawyers unless they were a previous lawyer. They’re not talented at question-asking. They’re not particularly good. They are good at promoting a vision, enough to get elected. They aren’t good at repeating a message consistently in order to get elected. They’re not particularly good when it comes to speaking truth or even questioning about truth. If I was Jerry Nadler, I would have probably started about this way on the hearings with the following sentence, “Mr. Corey Lewandowski, I’m guessing that you feel irritated. A part of you doesn’t want to be here testifying, is that correct?”
He would say, “Yes.” I’m sure, somehow, we responded in the affirmative.
“I’m guessing you might be feeling annoyed and aggravated. You have a need for privacy with the President. Therefore, it’s going to be very difficult for you to answer some of our questions. Am I guessing that right? I’m also guessing that you might be feeling angry because your need for respect for the President has not been met by the way the media has treated it as well as the pursuit that Congress is after in order to investigate the issues that you’re being invited on, is that correct? You want privacy and respect for the president. Mr. Lewandowski, we’re going to do the best we can so you can keep the privacy you would like with the President. At the same time as looking for the truth that we would like so the American public can have your viewpoint being spoken fully. Would that be okay with you?”
He’d have to say yes, wouldn’t he?
He does because I put both of the things on the hook. Notice the limitations of communication that are unavailable to these practitioners, these elected officials. They’re not strong. It’s the same on the campaign trail. Bernie Sanders has his limitations, as well as Joe Biden has his limitations on how they speak about honesty and how they tell stories, how they create and build enrollment about what they would like to see. Whereas Elizabeth Warren is coming and moving to more of the head of the pack because she’s going like, “There’s this word called corruption. That has its roots in integrity. We’re not getting that right now. You may want to vote for me if you would like to get that.” It’s a very simple message and then you can build your narrative around that.
It sounds like a step in the right direction.
It’s not a flashpoint moment. It’s a congruent moment, which is something similar to what Barack Obama did. He kept setting positive narratives of leadership. We’re right next to each other where he was cultivating trust all along the way. Everyone else is following him. John McCain was following. Mitt Romney was following him. They didn’t know what to do because he kept cultivating the next message of trust. He kept cultivating the next message of truth behind the vision that he could lead, not the vision that he had a policy. It’s good that Elizabeth Warren got all the policies stuff. I have a plan for that out of the way. All she’s got to do is talk about vision from here on out. Everyone else is talking about, “My policy is a little different than hers.” It’s like, “Who gives a crap? I want to know if you can lead or not.”
I want to know if you can have a conversation with Donald Trump and not get your truth purchased. Seriously, this concerns me. These people all need communication skills and to learn how to not take the bait and argue on the facts. A lot of them are lawyers and they’re very black and white thinkers. I was thinking about this as I was driving and hearing some quotes from one of the politicians and realizing, “They are like lawyers. They’re black and white thinkers.” In some ways, what’s shocking is that the lawyers are black and white thinkers and it’s either against the law or in alignment with the law. At the same time, they seem to be able to argue any side of any argument they want and in this roundabout creative way. That to me was a little ironic.
What you’re working on is the plasticity of language and the plasticity of vocabulary. If I’m talking about the word plan, there are four different active definitions for the word plan. If I say, “Let’s have a planning meeting,” what happens is I never know in your mind what definition you’re assigning to the word planning. There are four different choices. If I want to make sure it sticks, then I might want to say, “This is going to be an implementation tactical plan.” Now you know we’re doing some systems work. “This is going to be a financial plan.” Now you know we’re looking at the spreadsheets. “We’re going to look at how to grow your company with employees.” Now you know it’s a people plan.
We need to hire the right talent. It’s not operational. It’s not financial, but it is an org chart and we better fill the slots in order to upgrade the number of customers you can take. Finally, we need to do a 3 to a 5-year strategic plan, which is a visionary plan. Notice how your brain lit up like that? That’s because that’s the definition that’s most familiar to you. I purposely saved it to the end so that your body would physiologically go up. When a politician knows where those buttons are and then craft a well-rounded message, they move 5%, 10%, 15% up in the polls. They know how to recapture the vision.
That’s what we keep talking about. You pointed out how Elizabeth Warren is now able to focus more on vision and that’s good. That’s going to help her do her credit. We’ve laid out some things in this podcast and past episodes like, “When is somebody going to talk about this? When are they going to talk about that?” It’s like serving up to them on a silver platter to set the vision. If they would just do it, they would jump ahead in the polls and everybody else would be catching up. Playing catch up, being, “Me too.”
One of the biggest turns that happened in the McCain-Obama was when Obama turned it back, “We’ve got to get back to Afghanistan. That’s where the war started. We need to get back there.” Meanwhile, we were in the Iraq quagmire at that time.
Everybody was fighting about how to do Iraq. We were in a land mine, IUD, kids are getting killed, soldiers are getting killed by driving down a road In Iraq. It pivoted the narrative back to Afghanistan and the Republicans never caught back up. As soon as he started moving there and all the debt stuff and the housing crisis, he was the first one to say, “It looks like it’s going to take $700 billion to get this done. $700 billion is where we need to start with this.” He set the vision and all of them knew it was $1 trillion by the way but no one wanted to message $1 trillion.
If they challenged that, they’re arguing facts and they’re not visionaries. They’re not looking like they’re going to solve the problem and they lose.
They lose because they’re trying to prove that they know more. You took an unknown person and you set them next to a decorated war hero, John McCain, and he has a shot. John McCain didn’t have a shot because he wouldn’t be able to follow that or set a vision as compelling. One of the things Donald Trump gets away with is he sets a compelling vision. It’s dark and has limitations to it and it’s very much in alignment with fifteen-year-old stock but it’s not helpful to say that.
He sets a vision and he takes it back, injecting uncertainty saying, “We’ll see what happens.” It’s such a cliché statement of his, “We’ll see what happens.” It’s annoyingly vague.
It causes the listener to feel hesitant, nervous and scared. It causes them to trust him by him being vague. Meanwhile, he doesn’t have an answer other than making people do things at the expense of systems, of all kinds of challenges, respect for the nation, world’s relationships. There are certain market places that we won’t get back for 10, 15, 20 years. Those relationships were burned based on a policy that was thought up of as problematic and it’s like, “Nope. That’s not what happened.”
Can uncertainty be used as a tool going back the other way? Whatever candidate eventually ends up debating President Donald Trump. He’s setting these dark visions. He’s trying to inject the uncertainty to make people trust him. Can you flip that and get him trapped in an uncertainty that people would be afraid that he has no vision or it has the wrong vision or doesn’t know what he’s doing?
“We have a new healthcare plan that’s going to be much better. We weren’t able to pass the other one. This newer one that we have is going to work.” “It sounds like the President is feeling confident in the new plan that he has for healthcare. I feel curious. I feel interested to hear how that new healthcare plan would work compared to the other plans that are currently on there, even in comparison to what we have in place. A part of me feels excited to see the plan that he has. Hopefully before the election, he’ll have that plan available. If he doesn’t have a plan, I feel doubtful and skeptical he can lead if he doesn’t have a plan. I’d be interested in debating his plan when I see it.”
What he would tend to do is try to gloss it over saying, “Believe me, we’re going to have the best plan. You’re going to have the best health insurance.”
“I am so excited about the President’s enthusiasm about the best plan that he’s going to have for us. I am curious about the details about the best plan that he’s giving us, that he’s talking about at this moment during the debate. A part of me feels doubtful and skeptical, but maybe he has found some talented people in the healthcare industry that could support him with this wonderful plan he’s talking about at this moment.”
Technology is messing with communication so badly that it is hard to know what the truth is.
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What you, the opposing candidate have done is illuminated to everybody listening or watching that he has no plan, without saying he doesn’t have a plan. You’ve injected all doubt and skepticism into his plan, or lack of.
Without saying, “You’re a liar and you’re full of crap.” He’s enthusiastic about it. He’s the President. He gets to sell anyway he wants. The only challenges is I’m going to put a spotlight on it and I want to take his enthusiasm. I want to use his enthusiasm about the imaginary thing he has. I’ll put a spotlight on how wonderful the enthusiastic child is, that he has something in his head about something that’s going to be great in the future. “That’s going to be great. I’m interested in that. I’m interested in seeing that.”
I can see a parallel between this example that you’re giving and I could see an opposing candidate, the Democratic candidate trying to draw a parallel between the President not delivering on an actual plan for healthcare. The fact that he has said for years. “I’d love to release my taxes, but I’m under audit so I can’t do it until the audit is done.”
You would like your attorneys to say, “Don’t do it because the audit is there. You’d like to meet the need for privacy while the audit is being done. Privacy is more important than disclosure at this moment. Is that correct?”
I can’t do it because it’s under audit.
“It sounds like you feel helpless and you’re going to give your power over to somebody else. Is that correct?”
I don’t know how to answer that. Do you expect him to say yes? He would be tripping and trying to probably repeat the same thing he said before.
That’s correct and all of a sudden, he’s going, “It sounds like that you’re not able to lead and you’re not able to get something to move forward. You might not love the level of truth that comes from the disclosure. It sounds like the attorneys are telling you not to do it. It sounds like you’re giving more power to the attorneys. When you’re in leadership, are you going to take responsibility or you’re going to make it somebody else’s? Is that the way you’re going to do leadership?” “No, I make the decision.” “Which one is it? Are you going to give your power over to your attorneys or the power over to the IRS? Are you going to meet the need for truth and lead and take your lumps with truth? Which one are you going to do?”
That would be so brilliant because it makes him look weak.
He makes himself look weak. It shows the false binds he puts himself in. He does this all the time, he tweets. He tweets another way, then he tweets one way to another way. What we’re doing Tom is we’re not trying to expose a flawed human being. What we’re doing here on our podcast is how does language use to hijack or purchase truth and teach people how to get awareness about it. I want a healthier adult conversation like you do.
To me, that’s the refreshing part of this. I have to say the last episode and this one, it started to get a little disheartening at times. It was like, “We are in a bad way in this country in many ways.” With our dialogue and with how truth is getting purchased, the goal post keeps getting moved to a new level of acceptability or a new normal. Whatever it is, I worry there’s so much stretching of the truth, complete assaulting of the truth, falsehoods, whatever you want to call them. Being put out there on a daily basis that the average American doesn’t even know where truth exists. What I like about what we’re saying is there is a way language can be used to purchase truth back or to prevent truth from being purchased. To me, that’s the light at the end of the tunnel. We all should be striving for a healthier dialogue.
We all know that we need to manage change. We need to manage change in immigration, infrastructure and healthcare. As soon as we move healthcare to something that is more affordable and more effective and healthier, it’s healthcare rather than sickness care. What we’re going to be doing is stabilizing a large part of a country, about 1/6 of the economy. That’s a good thing because as soon as you stabilize health, stress goes down and health improves. You stabilized healthcare because it became stabilized. Therefore, there’s no stress because the need for stability, trust and certainty will be met. If you would like more trust and more certainty, there will be a layer of other insurance companies that will insure you above and beyond the current stability piece.
If you want a higher level of care, there are plenty of people to sell that, look at any luxury vehicle. The luxury vehicle, there are plenty of people that can afford a Lamborghini and healthcare. That’s what the Lamborghini salesperson sells. They don’t charge the price of a Lamborghini to the delivery of a used car on a lot to the delivery system and say, “It’s this high price for this modest value.” That’s the current healthcare system. See how it’s framed differently now? The rich people are going to spend money on their healthcare system. They do not need the healthcare system because they have the money to buy and travel to any healthcare person on the planet. What we are talking about here is meeting the need for stability and certainty. Here’s the way Donald Trump hijacks that. “You know if they get in touch with it, you’re going to lose this. They’re going to take away your healthcare system.” That’s not what’s happening.
The other thing they do is to say, “The government is going to take control of it. You know how bad that is. Do you want your government telling you what doctor you can see?” They tried to spin that. I found it very interesting on Real Time with Bill Maher. It was not on the show. It was after on the overtime on YouTube. Michael Moore was on it, there were a bunch of people on it, and they said, “We don’t want the government in charge of healthcare the way they are the police department and the fire department,” and the military and other things. It was illuminating how the government is in charge of many aspects of our society. It’s necessary and they do a pretty good job. They make sure that everybody gets protection from the police or the FBI, and not just those that can afford it. Talk about perspective and looking at things differently so they demonize it make like, “The government is bad.” Aren’t you trying to be the leader of the government?
I’m glad that we’re doing this dialogue. When we look at truth and purchasing truth and the things that the candidates that are starting to narrow into the field, Joe Biden needs to know how to communicate better. Elizabeth Warren needs to improve. Bernie Sanders needs to improve his messaging. They also need to have those comebacks and those statements that are going to add to the cultivation of trust. Add to the cultivation of, “I can trust this because I’m getting more truth and more clarity from this person.” One of the candidates and even Kamala Harris or Cory Booker can start saying, “We need stability in our leadership to show up in a new way.” It doesn’t seem like we’re getting the stability that we would like. It seems like it’s not as stable as we’d like it to be and can run on the line of stability. They have no come back. “We’re stable.” It’s like, “No, you’re not.”
You’re not stable, look there’s another school shooting every day in this country. If you were stable, you would be doing something on background checks. They could take that a number of ways.
Does stable leadership look like non-action? I don’t think that looks like stable leadership.
That’s how you go after Mitch McConnell too.
Does progress look like no discussion? Does that look like progress? We need to grow as a nation. Is that helpful to get progress by not talking or making decisions? We’re not talking or making decisions when people are thinking that that’s going to be okay.
You’re reminding me of another interview I saw with Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor. She made a very interesting comment that eliminated a fact. She was asked, “Do you think there should be cameras in the Supreme Court?” Video cameras and all that. She said, “Absolutely not.” She pointed out how before there were TV cameras allowed on the floor of the Senate and the House, all of the members of the Senate for instance would be in the room for one of the people that talked. There would be more engagement, dialogue and debate because it’s all on C-SPAN. When one person talks, none of them are in the room. The whole camera system, our modern technology has changed this so that when anybody speaks on the Senate floor the vast majority of the time, no one’s there to hear it. None of the other senators are there. There is much less communication, dialogue and engagement between the individual representatives and government because of the cameras in the room. That was illuminating to me.
They can’t build a community and they can’t appreciate each other. They can’t build a collaboration anymore. That caused them to isolate more. Let’s pick up our next podcast on that, how truth gets lost and without community, you can’t have truth.
I’d love to take a deeper dive into that one, Bill. Let’s do that.
Once you lose community, you start to lose truth. That’s called the workplace community. Even though you and I are doing this technology remotely, because we’re interested in meeting each other’s needs for understanding and learning, the vibration is high and it’s transcending the technology. If you have technology and you’re not pursuing a common narrative like you and I are pursuing, the vibration will drop and then the loss of the relationship will separate. That’ll make it worse.
I’d love to talk about that more. I’d also like to see when we talk about modern technology the role that Twitter maybe is playing, other social media or other technologies are playing in this loss of community. That’d be a great episode.
More to come on this, Tom. I’m looking forward to our next thing on truth in the community, the community dynamic because it’s so valuable.
Thank you, Bill. Until then.
Take care.
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