Purchasing Truth And Triage
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There are some things going on in the US political climate that illuminate the different ways truth can be purchased. One such example is the recent closed impeachment trial for Donald Trump. The said hearings are being doubted by some for being too private, and the issue has been hyped by the media. Join hosts Bill Stierle and Tom as they take a closer look at the Donald Trump impeachment events, the real quest for truth, and how those who voted for Trump cling loyalty to their vote despite the evidences that have been presented.
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Bill, there are some things going on in our political climate that illuminated the different kinds of purchasing truth to me. I’m curious to learn your thoughts on it. The Democrats are conducting impeachment closed-door hearings. They’re taking deposition testimony from witnesses, which I say the Democrats are doing it well. They’re in the leadership position but in these closed-door hearings are Republicans and Democrats from these committees.
The ones that are voted in, the ones that are on that committee are allowed inside the room and the other people are not.
On both sides of the aisle, only the committee and people are allowed in the room. We saw a large number of Republicans, around twenty or so that have a press conference. They invited the media to follow them. They left the press conference and barged into one of these hearings and delayed the deposition for more than five hours. They were unhappy with the process and trying to paint the picture that it was unfair.
I’m glad you got to the word, fairness. Tom, have you ever had an argument with a twelve-year-old around the word, fairness?
Notice how their version of fairness is the only version of fairness that counts?
That they can’t see or hear anything else. Nothing else lands with them.
It doesn’t because their physiology and emotion are invested in a point of view called my way and I’m in pain about not having my way. The challenge is that when a demonstration like this comes, the warning is not to engage it like an angry or a helpless parent.
The media and some Democrats engage like they’re either an angry or disgusted or helpless parent, “I can’t believe these kids are doing this. I can’t believe this kid did this again.” They’re arguing about fairness, but they don’t have any perspective about fairness and they’re arguing about fairness. Meanwhile, as a parent, how much work you do for your child? We clearly have scored a much higher score for fairness about what we’ve done for them versus what they’ve done for us over that period of time when we were to measure it. I know there are other motives to be a parent.
The joy and all the other things, the connection time and the delight in watching our kids doing, learning and growing. Those are different sets of needs. For fairness, when somebody narrows, their perception is so tight, it’s not fair and as a twelve-year-old, they don’t have an answer about the good reason why it’s not fair other than this is not fair because we say it’s not fair. That’s called setting the case study. This episode is about purchasing truth and triage. How do we put some medical bandages around this? How do we language around this so that we are the compassionate parent or the compassionate adult when somebody is emotionally freaking out? When somebody is emotionally freaking out, the worst thing we can do is emotionally freak out back in their direction.
Have you ever got angry at a kid that was angry?
Yes, it doesn’t work very well.
Not so much or point across the table or called names, instead of saying, “This is what integrity looks like. This is what truth looks like.” “Here is the way we can collaborate or cooperate together. Here’s what fairness is,” or if the child needs it, give them a moment of either respect or recognition or even state back the untrue thing that they’ve said. That’s the start of triage. It’s when somebody says something that is not in alignment with truth, do not call them a liar. That’s the first step.
Don’t point out the truth that their statement is not in alignment with truth or don’t say that you’re wrong, lying or whatever.
It might sound like this as a step one of the triages is that it sounds like, “It seems like Senator Lindsey Graham has the thought that there was no collusion here. I feel doubtful and skeptical about why he has this thought because what we have found is this thing showed up.” If you’re focusing to me, he’s yelling and becoming defensive. I am saying, “I can hear your perspective, but it is not in alignment with what the truth is and the way the truth has written.” This would be an example of several hundreds of thousands of the mistakes that have been made in communication in regards to the Mueller Report, in regards to investigators, in regards to lawyers asking questions as well as media people asking questions that make the truth harder to find rather than easier to find.
A lot of times the media amplifies the message that the closed-door hearing process on the judiciary committee or whatever committee it was is unfair. Because only certain people in the room, why aren’t we all in the room? Why can’t they public see this hearing?
The challenging part of that is if the public were to hear something that was security-sensitive, cooperation with another witness, exposure, tainting or closing another witness. Those are two things that nobody wants. That truth is not helpful.
Nor is the truth, which I think is what Adam Schiff and some of the other Democrats or even the media will highlight. There are Republicans on the committee in the room and they’re allowed to ask the witness or questions to. To paint the picture that it’s an unfair process is not entirely accurate, but that truth isn’t helpful.
It bounces off the person’s consciousness because we haven’t triaged or stop the bleeding first. You got to stop the bleeding first. You’ve got to do a tourniquet on it. The first tourniquet on it is to reframe it as a thought or as an idea or as a concept and minimalize the perception so you can broaden the perspective on the other side. You can’t use this tool that I’m teaching everybody if you’re a person that’s not an integrity. In other words, this is not a manipulation tool. This is a tool as if you’re on the side of truth, this tool works all the time. That’s the nice part about it.
If you’re not on the side of the tool and you try to use this, you’re going to get crammed. You’re walking your own plank into and diving into the sharks with your hands tied. You didn’t even know you tied your own hands. Step one is to state whatever the falsehood, the belief is, the concept, the floated balloon, the fallacy, the straw man, you treat it like it’s a thought or an idea which then minimalizes its impact on bleeding truth. We’re trying to triage here. It might sound like this. Let’s say your daughter had three cookies and your other daughter comes into the kitchen and she sees that there are five cookies. She’s not going to go for fairness.
She can take all five cookies. Your sister only had three, so it’s not fair. I want all the cookies because her physiology is already on the cookies. I’m bigger than her, do I get more cookies? The mind will rationalize the tragic behavior. Do it this way. Republicans regrettably and Democrats have done this thing too. The Republicans are acting as if they are going to go on a diet after the next election. They’re acting as if I’m going to go, “We’re going to be better back then. We’ll be better now.”
We’re bingeing on all the stuff that’s bad for us?
It’s like you’ve done at a New Year’s party. You walk through the kitchen, the cookies in your mouth before you even know it, they’re bingeing and say, “Don’t look at us bingeing on tax cuts and trying to get re-elected on the spin that we’re doing. Don’t look at us, we were bingeing.” There are other people, non-adults that need the news coverage. They need media exposure. They need to catch the eyeballs. They need the social media impact and they’re letting them binge or amplifying the binge if you are a Russian or Chinese influencer.
They’re trying to solve the discontent and the division or the politician of America.
Discontent is not as powerful as doubt and skepticism. They’re sowing doubt and skepticism in two things. The system that they want to run and takedown and the Democrats who are their adversaries. Did the Democrats have agreed to things that were terrible agreements? Let’s try the Iraq War or Vietnam War for existence. It’s like, “We’ve got a lot of problems about people voting for stuff that I would not vote for.” It wasn’t in alignment with truth. They figured out a clever message to purchase truth.
To me, this was pretty a clever tactic to purchase truth. The president has been very unhappy because he’s the most vocal over his Twitter feed. He’s been very unhappy about the news coming out of these closed-door hearings on somewhat of a daily basis where there’s a transcript of the deposition published. It made public so the rest of the house members can see it and eventually the media gets hold of it. He doesn’t like the testimony where somebody testified that he was holding up military aid to a foreign power until they agreed to help him investigate his political opponent. There’s been testimony, sworn depositions of this and he doesn’t like what’s coming out of it.
The day before this barging in of roughly twenty Republican house members into the closed-door hearing room, he has a meeting with a lot of these same Republicans at the White House saying, “You guys aren’t doing enough to fight back on this impeachment inquiry.” The day after this meeting with the president, they hold this press conference and clearly this was staged. The media being maybe an unwilling accomplice in this hijacking of the hearing, which is what happened. They barge into this hearing, which is supposed to be a secured hearing and there’s no electronics in the room and all these Republicans had their cell phones on them.
The hearing grinds to a halt for five hours. They don’t have this deposition.
Can you imagine if the media stepped up its integrity?
How could the media not be hijacked and made an accomplice to this because they have some awareness?
They would need awareness, training and consciousness to do this. It might sound like this, “Before we start filming this, are you bringing us new evidence that is important towards the trial?” The answer is they’ll start to speak, but they’ll shut all the lights and shut all the cameras. We’re not recording it. Tell us what the new thing is before we turn our cameras on. What’s the new thing that you’re going to help that’s going to exonerate the president? Would you be willing to give us some new evidence that exonerates the president?
They keep attacking the process because they don’t have anything new.
It sounds like you’re pointing out that you’re not enjoying the process and you have the thought that the process is broken. Do you have the thought that the process is broken before we turn our cameras on? How would you like to improve the process? Notice that there’s no answer on how to improve the process for it to be open. Do you have the thought that the process would be better open?
Would you be willing to tell me what the problems might be for that if it was open?
The media is asking the politicians what’s the problem with being open, “There’s no problem, we want it to be open.” Wouldn’t they say that because that’s what you’re asking for? They’re trying to barge into this hearing.
Look at how they’re going to walk down the plank with the next sentence. Do you find it might be valuable that the information stays accurate? Would you like the truth to be told in that room? Yes. Might it be good to keep it private so other people can’t change their stories? Do you want to give other people the opportunity to change their stories based on what they hear? This group of twenty people think they’re in the power of position. That’s what their belief is. The press for their part, if they are going to act as the four-state, they’re allowed to ask tough questions that are not just fact-based questions. You’re allowed to ask questions that engage truth not to point out some logical fallacy that they can run around because that’s where the problem is. They’re not trained in a way to ask a question that draws truth towards them. The press is only trained to ask questions to chase the truth.
That’s a very important distinction.
It’s so upsetting. They’re not even aware that they could change their narrative in order to get better answers.
I agree that the media by and large and mostly across the board. The journalists and the people asking the questions in the media are not as skilled at asking the right questions in the way to get toward truth. I also think quite honestly, Bill what you first suggested that the media turn off the cameras. They refuse to turn them on until they ask them if they have anything new information to share or any new evidence to give us. That’s unrealistic. They’d get fired if they turned off the camera. They’re all trained to have the camera on first before anybody walks up to the mic and report whatever is there because the 24-hour news cycle needs food to feed it.
A big part of this is the good news and bad news. The news is that some of the media outlets are not rebroadcasting things that don’t meet their editorial standards for truth. They’re starting to tell her back and say, “We are not going to promote that narrative.” They’re starting to tune it or pull it back and saying, “This is about what he said but it wasn’t alignment with truth. Therefore, we’re not going to broadcast this message.” They’re already starting to go like we’re not giving the criminal or the criminal’s attorney airspace to paint a public image that’s not in alignment with truth. Is that censorship? Censorship is happening all the time. There are all kinds of words and phrases and things that can’t be used in the general media as well as if you try to sell something and it kills somebody, you’re on the hook for it. If you sell a product that says you’re going to do this and it kills 1 to 50 people, you’re on the hook for it because you said it was going to do it.
The long-term problem is how quickly can America restore respect and trust, as well as the image of America as this really smart place.
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In fact, I’m thinking of a client of mine who walked on stage, had met somebody that had a wonderful engaging conversation with somebody on stage, came on stage and said, “I just met John over here and John’s a great guy. He does X, Y and Z. I suddenly enjoyed my conversation with him.” John comes on and starts selling a product that he was embezzling money for and the guy that promoted him on from stage, he went to federal prison because of it. Our words do matter. Integrity does matter because I promoted this person. This person was not in integrity and I put the bait on the hook for this person to fleece this other person. Our words do make a big difference. If we’re trying to make a point about something, we also got to be mindful of what are we promoting? For the people that are already in the place of yes on impeachable because there are a lot of people, 50% both impeachment and removal.
In America, the polls were saying that. That’s 54% or something.
Because it’s so high, the 54% is going like, “What is wrong with the other 47%? What more do they need to see?” They have so-and-so confessing, we have this person, he had this evidence and this person did this and all of it. You just need one but all of that, and they’re still at 47%. What is happening in the brain is that the limbic part of the brain has already committed and created stability and loyalty to the vote that they cast for Donald Trump. It’s the loyalty, the habit, the emotion, the belief that he was going to drain the swamp. The only problem is the front part of the brain is not able at the way of languaging things to talk to the limbic part of the brain and to say, “Everybody makes mistakes. This might have been true in this way, but I’m noticing that my vote might not have been for the best candidate for the best interest of the nation or even my own best interest. There is some casualty in the vote that I did.”
If I were to empathize or have compassionate for the person who did the vote and language things to have compassionate and empathy for that vote, there’s a 20% to 25% swing. The other people have been invested and reinforced that their neurobiology will not let them and their body won’t ever let go, that Joe Biden didn’t do something wrong. Where is the one sheet of paper that did it? Did he get a cushy job? Yes. Did he get a paid a lot for a cushy job? Yes. Did he add value? It’s up to the people that paid the money.
I’ll definitely agree that the optics don’t look good. Why would a Ukrainian company hire Hunter Joe Biden to be on their board and pay him $50,000 a month which is what they paid him? Why would they do that? Is he that skilled in energy that can help them? It had to be for his name.
You put a testimonial on your website, you work for that company one time and you put the company logo there. You’re drafting off of that company’s identity.
From a marketing and credibility perspective, having the name of a person named Joe Biden on your board may have provided a lot of value for that company.
I want that person and so-and-so to give me a testimonial. There are celebrities. Brad Pitt said, “Bill Stierle was the ultimate in truth.” Do you think I’ll be a little busy?
You’d be shouting it all over social media and on your website.
They put Hunter Joe Biden on a board, they drafted marketing and eyeballs in their directions. Their investors felt really good about it. Their suppliers and customers, the vice president’s son is on this. This is how close we can get to have America here in Ukraine. We are a person because Joe Biden has several points of integrity that are very strong for people to draft off of. He’s made some blunders but for the most part, he’s got some pretty good pieces of integrity. He doesn’t even leverage enough. He doesn’t even market and promote enough.
Your logic there is very sound. It’s purely marketing and capitalism is a reason why a company would want to have Hunter Joe Biden on their board. It’s for their own self-interest, not about doing a favor for Joe Biden. They were doing a favor for themselves.
That’s how truth gets purchased. Notice within four sentences I changed your optics to say, “This is a marketing piece for a company to bring a political celebrity on their board to give the appearance of Americans believe in this company.” Why? The vice president’s son is on it. America believes on it because he’s come in with America’s label on it. Whatever money they spent on Hunter Joe Biden was not about Hunter Joe Biden’s skill. Have you ever been overpaid, Tom?
A lot of times, you get paid for your value or your worth, certainly not your time or your particular skillset, it depends. All different types of things happen. People starting out in their careers get paid for their time.
That whole time versus value thing, you’ve got to get that done by 35. Otherwise, you’re sucking air between 35 and 45 if you’re still doing things by time in a good way, because that is what truth does. It does scary honesty. Scary honesty says, “You’ve got to gain wisdom, knowledge and experience not just to get the college degree but in your wisdom, knowledge and experience from that degree with the people you hang around, with the positions you put yourself in and how well you roll up your sleeves and challenge your brain to make changes.” People can read this blog and think I’m a good communicator, just as they can validate that truth. “I’m a pretty good communicator. I communicate pretty well.” They can think that thought just like they can have the thought, “I’m a pretty good driver. I’m one of the best drivers ever. I’m a great driver on the road.” Tom, it’s very clear that there are A, B, C, D and even F drivers on the road. Tom, isn’t that truth a little bit more truthful that there’s a grade of drivers on the road?
Yeah, I believe that.
They make a judgment and they get in an accident or the circumstances come and they react and they’re in the wrong place in the wrong time and bad thing happens? In communication, the same thing happens. People think they’re good communicators. Donald Trump thinks that his letter was perfect. He thinks his phone call was perfect, it was the nicest phone call. What the real truth is this communication pattern that he has used has gotten him success in the past. He, as a real estate person, is negotiating with people, trying to either A) Investment money for or B) Get people to purchase this process to go, “I have another 300 in these other building but there are only seven left in this building.” That arm twisting sometimes is needed to get people to buy a sale. It can be very effective. It’s almost necessary to create the uncertainty that there’s scarcity, that there’s only so many of this left.
I live by that in sales in my own business. Having a sale that ends by a certain date, the scarcity, the uncertainty of when something will be as inexpensive again makes a lot of people buy now instead of buying later.
You’re offering them a perspective and a perception. You’re adjusting your accordying not the value of the product. You’re accordying the urgency inside the audience. When Donald Trump does tweets, the best way to triage that tweet is to provide compassion and empathy for it and change it into a thought. When I read the word lynching, I’m guessing the president is feeling helpless, scared, terrified about his need for the life of his presidency to be met with this investigation. I empathized with the word lynching. I did not judge it.
You made us all believe or understand that the president is scared, which he would never admit.
If I’m one of the senators or one of the candidates and I tweet that back at him, that tweet goes viral as well as the response to the tweet.
I wonder what the response would be.
Defensiveness and denial. What happens though when he does this form of defensiveness, he’s being defensive against himself instead of being defensive against the person. He thinks he’s defending against the person but what he’s doing, becoming defensive is exposing how scared, helpless, hopeless he feels about the life of his presidency. His presidency is getting hung and the best tragic word he used was lynching. I can feel unsettled in and saying, “I’m feeling helpless and hopeless about getting fairness, about the motives behind what I was doing.” He could get himself an empathy as he’s texting it.
We need to have empathy and compassion for whatever the partial truth or no-truth that’s being spoken and change it into an idea.
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Triage makes a lot of sense. We need our politicians in general and especially our media to get some skills because they amplify, everything gets further out of proportion. You mentioned some things that reminded me. Do you know who Joshua Johnson is of 1A on NPR? He does a morning show out of Washington every day on NPR. He was in Kansas live doing his show. Interviewing people in Kansas, one of the reddest of States and of Donald Trump voters. You were talking about the brain and people have made their vote. What you said is very true about the 25% or 30% in the middle and what they may do. Their minds may be able to shift but to get a window into people whose minds won’t shift. He was interviewing a woman who’s a resident of Kansas. He asked her, “How is it that you were comfortable voting for the president and you’re willing to vote for him again when he thinks that he has enough power to be able to touch women in their private parts and brag about it. How can you vote for someone like that?”
She responded fully acknowledging that he did that and she thinks it’s disgusting and she doesn’t agree with what he did or said. She believes in freedom and capitalism. She even talks about it around the dinner table with her children and all of this as to why she’s for Donald Trump and we’ll vote for him again because somehow, she believes that Donald Trump represents freedom and capitalism. She doesn’t believe that the other candidate, whoever it’s going to be is going to represent and stand for freedom and capitalism in the same way. She will still vote for him. There are people that are never going to move.
If somebody locks in and locks their belief structure around or their vote around one or two needs, their voting is going to be pretty myopic and pretty narrow and they’re not going to do it. The way to get in front of that is the need for freedom being met, is the need for capitalism being met by the action. Here’s a person that is an authoritarian. Authoritarianism is not something that we don’t want to do it that nobody knows what it is. If you put Benito Mussolini in there and you put Adolf Hitler in there, they get a sense that, “Those people are bad people.” They were for fascism. Pick your leader. All of those people are old in the memory of a human being that’s lived under capitalism for their entire life. They don’t see that he’s not advocating for capitalism. He’s not advocating for freedom. What he’s advocating for is getting the need for respect and financial affluence for the few versus the health of the nation for the many.
He’s not working in that space because there’s no freedom at $10 an hour or $5 an hour. There’s no capitalism other than your life energy is getting eaten by $5, $7, $10 and $12 an hour. You’re getting eaten up pretty bad there. You’re losing ground. You could put 2 or 3 or 5 more hours onto your workweek, 10 more hours onto your workweek. Put ten more hours on $10 an hour. That’s an extra $100 dollars for your tempo. I went right down a rabbit hole there because the thing that he’s railing against immigrants are the ones that want to come in and take those jobs because they’re doing it to sacrifice their life so their kids and grandkids don’t have to go through what they went through. These other economies that don’t work as well as ours. It’s really unsettling.
Perspective is quite an interesting thing and triage, I like that reference, it makes a lot of sense.
We’ve got to make sure that whatever the partial truth or no truth that’s being spoken to change it into a thought, change it into an idea. Provide empathy and compassion for that, which is I feel doubtful and skeptical that that truth isn’t in alignment with what they’re saying. The way this is showing up here. What I’m interested in seeing how this truth matches their truth because it doesn’t seem like they’re providing any support other than it’s just a thought or an idea and Americans get to express thoughts and ideas as much as they want. Not make that thought and ideal real when it’s not. Global warming or the lack of global warming.
The same process that the Republican-controlled house went through investigating Bill Clinton and having closed-door hearings and depositions is somehow not fair when it was fair several years ago.
When the ethics and the sexuality stuff was more repressed back then and the integrity of the office was more value back then. Give me a tax cut, let me run some money and let me have choices and let me do this secret backroom alley and I’m good with that instead. It’s like, “No, we’re not doing the needs of the few over the needs of the many.” That’s what’s happening.
In particular, the needs of the one, the President’s need for political advantage.
The life of his presidency and the respect of his presidency. He’s fighting for two important things. Respect, recognition and acknowledgment. He’ll stop talking about 2016 when he gets the level of recognition and acknowledgment that he didn’t get for running the race the way he did against the candidate that didn’t know how to talk back to someone that is an expert in marketing and sales. She didn’t know how to diffuse the sales narrative. He sold everybody to buy the vote.
He exploited many things that she said. She hurt herself unfortunately. That doesn’t highlight the need for the democratic candidate, whoever that may become, to be very skilled and be able to have a debate in such a way as to bring compassion and empathy to it and help Donald Trump walk right out on that plank all by himself.
Let him walk out on the plank. If you provide him empathy and compassion, he will walk right into and out of his own election. He’s mostly there, but that’s not what the long-term problem is. The long-term problem is how quickly can America restore respect and trust that it doesn’t have as well as the image of America is this smart place. Show their underbelly there a little bit because if you hijack a person’s thoughts through some of these marketing and sales narratives, it doesn’t go so well.
There’s more to come. Obviously, we get through the election and then we can deal with the restoration piece because we’ve got to first get there. Thank you so much. I enjoyed that.
Tom, thanks.
