Protecting Mistakes To Maintain Respect And Self-Worth In Politics And Social Media
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Social media has become a form of protective barrier for people to get their need of being heard met while maintaining physical distance. As a result, people tend to be in a constant combative mode to reinforce a point of view—be that in alignment with the truth or not. Just like President Donald Trump. He meets his needs for respect, being heard, identity, and self-worth through his tweets and responses, even at the expense of the nation’s need for integrity, truth, and respect for others. In this discussion, Bill Stierle and Tom talk about the ways politicians, and even ourselves, protect our own mistakes in order to maintain respect and self-worth. They dive deep into actual online interactions that exhibit this and then touch on the need for a compassionate response in political discourse.
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Bill, is there a lot of interesting discussion going on in our civil discourse? I’m finding anyway, I think you are too, especially on social media regarding all things impeachment-related. Would you agree?
I agree. People are trying to work out their emotions on social media. It’s a place for people to get their need for being heard and met. If they’re willing to work out understanding or work out clarity, which is a very important need for us as human beings. The trouble comes when someone is trying to validate their belief structure and trying to reinforce a point of view that’s not in alignment with the truth. What happens is the person that’s posting and the person that’s responding to the post is looking at the truth from different perspectives. One is looking from, “I’ve got to protect my guy. This is my identity.” The other one is going like, “This is not congruent with the law, the oath or the office that one is holding.”
That leaves us to a cool foundation to talk about the trial that is as well as what is the role of the Congress and the Senate to the best of our limited non-legal point of view. The understanding and the misunderstanding that we have based on our core principles. Core principles are centered around the constitution. The various different amendments or additions that we would then agree upon to specify what this constitution is and what it means to us as a nation that runs itself from itself. That’s why we elected officials because we’re trusting that that person is not only going to have the legal mindset but also a moral compass and a legal compass. The legal compass is something that we look at the court. The moral compass is the higher standard.
We cannot change the things that have happened to us. All we can do is change the frame in which that picture sits.
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You’ll keep noticing even in the situation that there is a collapsing between, “This thing is not legal, therefore it’s not criminal, therefore we’ve got to throw it out.” Now, we’re holding the person to a moral standard. This is a higher standard because this is a higher office. We’re not taking this out in a criminal court but at the same time, we’ve got to hold this standard for this deliberative body which is the Senate and this investigative body which is the Congress. I just gave my fifty-cent monologue. I’ve got a post that I like to review. I know that you have a post. Let’s look at the post that you would like to review about a point that somebody made that it got your truth hackles up. You said to yourself, “That’s not the way I’m understanding this. I believe it’s this thing over here.” Let’s see what we could do to be compassionate to the person as well as compassionate to yourself because we get ruffled when somebody says something that doesn’t meet our need for truth.
Oftentimes, I stay out of certain political discussions like this on Facebook because things do get heated and very divisive. I also have been trying dipping my foot in the water to have a civil discourse with people and to try to approach it with some compassion. This person is a mutual Facebook friend of yours and mine but posted something and this is what started it. He said, “No one prevents a witness who can exonerate him from testifying. No one was the original thing.” It wasn’t that post that I had any issue with but it was a response, a comment on it where this person says the problem is it’s not supposed to be the job of the Senate to bring new witnesses and investigate and find new testimony. He said it’s supposed to be the House’s job to investigate and find all the witnesses and then give them to the Senate and the Senate is supposed to make a judgment based on all that evidence. I started my comments saying I respectfully disagree. Talking about trying to have a healthy discourse saying that the House is like a prosecuting attorney. Investigating and deciding what charges to file or like a grand jury where some evidence is presented and they decide to file charges. There will be witnesses, testimony and evidence.
When you have a trial over all of that evidence, it doesn’t mean that new evidence doesn’t come to light after the charges were filed and that new evidence isn’t presented at trial or new witnesses aren’t requested to testify. That was my main point. We went back and forth a little bit and I don’t think he quite understood what I was trying to say at first. I further had to explain that my main point was you are trying to say that the Senate should turn a blind eye to any new witnesses that they shouldn’t think for themselves and decide, “I’d like to hear from this witness. I’d like to ask them questions myself.” The leadership in the Senate would vehemently disagree that they don’t have the authority to call whatever witnesses or requests whatever documents they want in this trial process that they’re not going to take what the House gives them. That was my point and I didn’t give the most empathetic response, but I was trying to keep it very clean. I did say that you’re saying that the Senate should not call new witnesses or hear new evidence is not in alignment with the previous two Senate impeachment trials in the history of our country.
That’s the truth that was bubbling up inside you. It’s like, “They call witnesses with the other two and the Senate should be able to call witnesses in this one.” The person that posted, the original one was saying truth looks like talking to the people that were in the room if the truth were something that would exonerate. Would you think that be a good idea for the person to bring the truth from the people that were in the room? The trouble is there’s not a pursuit of truth from both sides. There’s a pursuit of protection from one side. There’s a pursuit of information from the other side to find the truth. There is a bunch of smoke in the room about where the truth is. It could be in one corner or at another corner. Somebody is a completely autonomous, independent person that has access to all the choices that they’ve ever had in their life all the time. Can you imagine a human being having access to all the autonomy and all the choice that they would like all the time and having the speed to say, “I want this?” People would follow it and then there would be money placed there, and the people would follow that choice no matter what. That’s the mindset that’s in the office.
It’s the mindset of a king.
It has a king, but it’s not a benevolent king as much. It’s beloved. A beloved king is considering everyone with their decision. The king could have pissed off a person this way or that way. Because it’s like, “I did this. I made this decision because I got born into this governance and I wasn’t very good at it but all of a sudden, I’m in charge and now I have all this power.” That’s one of the problems that the United States was dealing with when they decided to do a Republic. The fight for Republic is we’re not going to hand it off to the next person in one family is aligned. What we’re going to do is see if the people can find the best person for this position that’s going to lead with the best interests of the entire nation, not a King that picks favoritism and section offs a country to the favorite people. That’s England before the, “All the Nobles are here. Everybody’s in charge of different regions and they get appointed by the royalty. They’re going to do what they want to do in that region but at the same time, the queen or the king is going to make decisions.”
The Republic and having a Republic means that everybody’s got a say. The idea though of a Republic is that we’re going to pick a leader that has the interest of all people to the best of his or her ability. The Senate does get to call witnesses because it has called witnesses in the past. Congress does get to vet those witnesses and put its best case forward on why they think this person is to be impeached and decide on the impeachment piece, which they did. President Donald Trump is an impeached president. Whether or not he’s going to leave the office, it’s going to be a part of the Senate vote. He, just like the last president, may not leave the office until the Republic votes them out. That’s the way it might go. It would take 22 or 23 senators to have him removed. In a previous episode, I said there’s the importance of six or seven Senators saying, “At least, let’s have some integrity with the process, even though we’re not going to vote to get him to leave.” It’s problematic.
To me, it’s so important to be able to discuss this with one another and to be able to do this in a civil way and on both sides. In order to restore some respect and for everybody to feel we’re moving forward together here and not two divided bodies of people.
It’s also got to be integrity with the oath that all the senators and all the Congresspeople took about this is what the law said. Even Nancy Pelosi says that sometimes there’s a push, sometimes it’s not worth it to go letter of the law. She didn’t say it as succinctly as I did, but if we were looking at the Mueller Report and you went letter of the law, there was enough there.
They would’ve impeached him for obstruction of justice.
That’s right if there was a letter of law, but the Republic and the messaging to the voters in our Republic were confused. Therefore they’re gone like, “This is all they did. They only did this and this. He said this and he did this and that’s right, but it’s not strong enough.” Regrettably, as soon as he got exonerated or it looks like it was not a big deal, he upped his game and pressed it out. That’s what a person does when they always have a choice in their life and always have people giving him respect because of his wealth. Do you respect a wealthy person over a poor person, Tom?
No. You’re asking me if I give them more respect. I don’t know if respect is the word for me. There are differences between a wealthy person and a poor person. It wasn’t the answer you were looking for.
It’s a good answer because it was exactly where we are called a healthy discourse. Let’s sit in a scenario so you and I can have a little fun here. This is an internal exercise. You and I are coming out of dinner and we’re coming out of a restaurant. There’s valet there. We’re waiting for a valet person and a homeless person walks by with a shopping cart. At the same time, a rich person gets into a Mercedes, Lamborghini, Aston Martin or some expensive car. Those two forms of two human beings dealing with their world are very different from our capitalistic value set. That person is successful and respected. That person is poor and not respected. I was doing a capitalist mindset. I’m not doing a compassionate mindset. I set it on the thing because that person that’s homeless, we do not know what took them out.
We do not know that they were a former CEO. They had a traumatic childhood that they couldn’t get themselves away from. They lost all their money in that housing, they never recovered and they said, “I became homeless here and I lost my wife and family. Now, I have no responsibility or accountability just otherwise food and find a place for me to camp.” That’s all they have. If I get food, restrooms, camp and I have enough money for that, I can live in that space. I don’t have to report to anybody. I have a lot of choice and freedom. I have independence. It’s a little uncomfortable at night. It’s a little dicey if I don’t find food, but do I have to work for anybody? Do I have to do anything during my day? No. It was like a retirement home.
When you asked me if I had more respect for one or the other, I didn’t feel that way. Do I think that the wealthy person has a bigger need for respect? Perhaps. There’s a lot of interesting things you could talk about there, but I don’t necessarily think the rich person deserves more respect. I’m obviously purchasing this for my own biases. We have a mutual business acquaintance whose company has been raided by the SEC. It has taken over the company that has done and this guy was seemingly on top of the world. They were killing it with a company on the Inc. 5000 list three or four years in a row. It ended up being a big Ponzi scheme as what they were accused of. The SEC has raided and that person is out of work, out of money, going to be prosecuted and may very well go to prison for a bunch of years. The whole wealth equaling respect. I know in America that does tend to happen, but that’s not my personal viewpoint.
The awareness that our values, respect, fairness, integrity and follow the rules, it’s exactly right. Somebody could be on top of the world and somebody is not. It’s very troublesome. If somebody is trying to fight and trying to deal with the rules of things, it’s trouble because it’s what is criminal versus what is moral.
I agree with that and it’s an important question in our political discourse and our political experience with what our government is doing. Do you have a good example from another Facebook post?
The post that was on my Facebook that came through the feed line was a Washington Post Article, “The Dalai Lama says Donald Trump has a lack of moral principles.” When that post goes up, somebody is going to vent their pain. One person wrote it is inaccurate to say Donald Trump has a lack of moral principles. This person said, “He has no moral principle. He is a sociopath with a malignant narcissistic personality disorder. He has no consciousness. He will do whatever he wants, whenever he wants to get whatever he so desires.” That post and the post above, after reading the article, I started thinking to myself, “What’s a compassionate response to President Donald Trump? What is he doing?”
It’s important quickly before you give that compassionate response for us to acknowledge to our readers that both the Dalai Lama saying Donald Trump has a lack of moral principle and then the person who first commented saying he has no moral principle, he’s a sociopath, etc. Both the Dalai Lama and that person were labeling Donald Trump.
They were placed in judgment and some labeling about that. The observable though, if I want to stay in compassionate observation of what’s taking place for this 70-something-year-old person. Whether it’s the homeless person or the rich person that I also could be compassionate for. Whether it’s you responding to the inner accuracies on the post that you are pointing out as well as the person trying to figure out and/or protect the president the way they were looking to do it. There is another road to go and it’s the high road.
We’re in sore need of the high road, Bill.
We’ve got to pick the high road on this, which is how do you look at the things that President Donald Trump is saying and doing and acknowledging the good reasons/the good need that he’s trying to get met by every single post that he posts?
At least bring awareness to the need that he has. Don’t you think that’s even helpful?
It is. A lot of the times, he’s stirring the pot in order to either meet the need for respect for himself or meet the need for choice, “I want to do it this way because I think it’s the best way.” Meet the need for identity, “This is the way I think America should work,” and meet the need for protection for the choices that he made. I decided to craft a compassionate response to both the Dalai Lama and to the woman that responded or you could have a compassionate response. The first part of it is President Donald Trump meets his needs for respect, acknowledgment, being heard, choice, recognition, identity, and self-worth when he texts or when he writes, when he responds. It’s at the expense of the nation’s need for integrity, truth, respect for other nations and people as well as the need for stability.
The need for stability is a little bit dicey here. As soon as you start to pick insides and making a voter pick aside, the person that sits on the side and gets justified to do a tragic act towards the other side. Because I voted for this person, this person is speaking the way I would like. Therefore, I get to act out on this person that’s different than me. That bias and that thinking error are not true but you cannot convince the person that’s not true because they make it true inside their head. The hard part about it is this compassionate response to a person who meets their needs at the expense of others.
Donald Trump is not in alignment with the oath that he took when he raised his hand, put his hand on the Bible. He is not in alignment with what he said right from the beginning. If he was, he would have moved to the center. Still, got some of the things that he got met but wouldn’t have created all the wreckage that he wound up creating and not dealing with the major systemic problems in the United States which are a collective problem not a, “How can I take care of my people and not take care of the other people?” That’s called a collective collaborative or collective cooperative mindset. He does not have that. He does not have, “We’re all going to get there because we’re a nation.” He has it, “This is the way I see the nation working because those people are,” and then fill in whatever bad thing he would like to say about the other person. When you hear me talk this way and you notice how there is a calm in it but there’s also sadness in it because we’re so far away from it. Does that make sense inside your body?
It does. We’re far away from the truth when you talk about these things that Donald Trump is doing, meeting his needs for respect, acknowledgment, being heard, identity and self-worth at the expense of the nation. That is sad.
All of a sudden it’s like, “If I want my need for respect to be met, I want to give things to people I respect, people that are wealthier than I am. I’m going to give them things so they respect me more.” Meanwhile, they’re not. He doesn’t know that, but they’re not respecting him more. He’ll learn that lesson when he comes out of the office. There are groups of people that are going to welcome him, celebrate him and think he was the greatest thing. They want him in the room because he was the president and he did cause the big tax cut. They believe that they can value their industries and their livelihoods at the expense of the nation or expense of the world. It’s huge and different. It’s good to back off our judgment and realize this is the duality that we’re facing rather than he’s the bad guy we’ve got to get rid of which is we all know that that’s not particularly true. He’s not the one bad guy. His thinking and his way that he is applying the constitution to himself is fitting his needs. It’s not fitting the nation’s needs.
He also makes a huge part of the American population believe that he cares about them and then he’s doing things to help them when that isn’t in alignment with what he’s done. For example, he talked about the tax cut that he signed into law was going to more than be paid for by economic growth. He talked about eliminating the nation’s budget deficit in so many years, when in fact he has ballooned our budget deficit over $3 trillion since he took office. It hasn’t reduced it at all. That’s something we’re all going to pay for in years to come.
The immigration that’s coming into our nation is not worrying about the people on the border. One, automation through technology is what’s killing jobs. The job that you train for, that your expertise is not needed. Thank you very much, but good luck scrapping it out on your side. The second part of it is the immigration does not enough talent in the talent pool for the jobs that are at the high functioning jobs. We have this gap that we need to fill with foreigners with the talent, so companies are hiring people in. Microsoft has done that for years. They went to other countries and said, “Who’s the brightest, smartest kid in this class?” They put them in their institute. They get to move to the United States, they moved to stuff and there’s a whole industry about plucking talent from other countries for a good reason. I want a talented person. We’re not as interested in growing, nurturing and developing talent here.
Which was regrettable.
There are some states that are looking to do that. I’m thinking about Michigan specifically that is looking to grow talent. The state is giving money to businesses to train their employees so they can upgrade their employees along the way so that this person doesn’t fall off and become unemployed and then you’re stuck. That bill hasn’t been passed yet. Do they have the courage to do it? Are they smart enough to say, “We’ve got to do something about the talent?” With all this said, Tom, can you see how these two simple posts on Facebook have stirred an emotional venting from the different people? It feels good to call Donald Trump a sociopath for a moment but it’s not helpful.
I see it an awful lot and I’ve often stayed away from commenting on these conversations because I do see people are venting. They’re exasperated. They’re feeling like things aren’t going the way they want it to. They want to be heard, so they’re meeting their need for being heard and that’s fine. People seem to be much bolder in their comments, putting them and writing on social media. They would be speaking to someone in person because they don’t have to absorb the visual of the expression on someone’s face or see how they’re reacting to them. They have some safety or security to be free from that type of response or feedback. I see the statements going back and forth being very harsh and very sharp in claims and attacks. I find that it’s not been a very healthy civil discourse but there are exceptions. In general, I’m disheartened at all the speed to label, diagnose and accuse others and it’s not helpful.
There’s good news and bad news. The good news is in order for your own emotional management, you’ve got to accept that the person that is writing doesn’t have the skill to become compassionate. It’s an easy mental health piece. You go, “This person does not have the skill to be compassionate and empathetic to that person.” They went to the label and diagnose, “Why?” Here’s the bad news is we’ve been trained to label and diagnose each other. We have not been trained to be compassionate or to move things forward. We’ve been trained to make things more criminal than they need to be. We are disproportionately putting people in jail that don’t belong there, that is not a threat. They did a bad thing and they made a mistake. By the letter of the law, this punishment is way too harsh for the action that they did. That is problematic.
If I ruled the world, would things be more compassionate and empathetic? Yes. Am I going to get that? No. That’s what I’m working for and that’s why I get employed the way I do. It’s to help people do that, whether it’s a company that I did or association that I did or another couple that is fighting with trying to dissolve a marriage. They’re looking at each other with enemy images and they look at themselves with enemy images and it’s wrecking. The problem is that this is this person’s humanity that we’re talking about. It’s not labeling and diagnosing this person is being evil. It’s getting to closure.
Once you have some awareness of the skillful use of language by working with you, Bill or reading your blog, it is sometimes shocking. When you look through social media, how many people have no awareness of the skillful use of language, compassionate or empathetic use of language? It’s absent in our culture. It’s unfortunate.
We cannot change the things that have happened to us. All we can do is change the frame in which that picture sits. We can only change the way we think about it. How can you change a traumatic event in childhood as if most of the many people in the nation have struggled with?
How can you change a great loss of a loved one or of an event? It’s even for great sports games. How are the Packers going to mourn their loss to the 49ers? That’s a therapy for all those players going like, “We’ve got all the way to here and this is as far as we got. The end of the road is here. I need some serious therapy as a player before I ever get back on to the field again.” They have to have some way to participate with a loss. If you don’t then things will not go well.
Tom, let’s take a look at next time. One of the things that would be interesting when we look at truth is that the vote that will come either that they’re going to see somewhat witnesses. They are going to not seeing any new witnesses or they’re going to let the attorneys drawback and forth to each other for the time period. The senators got to say, “I’ve got to hear them but I’m not in agreement with them.” They get to cast their vote because I heard this and I choose to agree that it’s not to an impeachable offense. If they choose to go through that pathway, things will not go well. Look at the turnaround from Richard Nixon to Gerald Ford to Jimmy Carter to Ronald Reagan because that was the turnaround from Richard Nixon who would have been impeached and didn’t have the votes to stay in office. Resign Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and Ronald Reagan. If the Republicans decide to stay with their course and the momentum of the Democrats being known and advocate for things of integrity. If they get to be known as that, then the Republicans won’t see the light of day for 8, 12, 16 years or whatever.
That will be interesting to talk about that because I’ve been talking with people about that and it seems that if the senators don’t call new witnesses, don’t see new evidence and sweep this thing under the rug of the Senate, then the president remains in office.
People I’ve been talking to seem to believe there will be a much bigger backlash against these senators in the Senate who have refused to honor their oath that they took. The consequences may be much more severe for their party than if some of them decide to hold the president responsible for his actions. I’d like to talk about that. I’ll look forward to that.
Tom, this has been a good one. Thanks for facilitating and bringing your part of the story. It’s always good to get that back and forth on how to understand how to purchase truth. The different powers that are trying to influence the voter to get them to ingrain themselves into my truth are better than this other truth. Rather than this is what’s criminal, this is what’s moral. We’re looking for what the moral piece is for these elected officials, not the criminal piece.
Thanks, Bill.
Take care.
