Truth And Communication Traps
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One of the main reasons why Donald Trump gets to purchase the truth from the people is because of the failure of journalists to have a productive and meaningful discourse with him every time he goes to the podium. A lot of times, they walk straight into communication traps that get in the way of the truth. It takes certain skills to be able to communicate effectively with the president – skills which the journalists at the Press Corps do not seem to possess. Bill Stierle and Tom take on the most common traps that journalists fall into when trying to get the truth out of the president, the press secretary or anyone from the administration. Join in this in-depth discussion and listen as they suggest some ways journalists can get around these traps and really get to the truth.
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We are going to talk about communication traps. It’s a great subject to talk about because one of the things that I was frustrated by in our last discussion is the media, the press corps, especially at the White House. They don’t seem to have a lot of skills to have a productive and meaningful discourse with the Press Secretary or the President when he’s at the podium. You made the point, “There are a lot of communication traps that the media fall and walk into and maybe they even set up for themselves sometimes.” Let’s talk about some of those and what can be done to get around them.
Tom, this topic about communication traps has a whole set of challenges to it because we’re taught to speak and think a certain way. Our school and instructional system says, “Here’s the most efficient way to think and speak.” What winds up happening is that the reliance on facts or information and the push to get that clear when you have someone that is in marketing and sales, they’re not interested in talking about the facts. The thing they’re interested in talking about is their product or service being the best and how this is more valuable than the fact over here that they even know more about the facts than the facts do. That’s a trappy way to think because no matter where the fact searcher goes, this person says, “No, I’m in charge of the facts, truth, decision making and leadership. Don’t worry about it, I have the best people around me that know the facts better than you do.”
Whereas you could have a person, loaded information-wise, press person that knows the subject matter way better than the president does. He asks the question and the President shifts. They call it moving the goalpost, gaslighting, and all those things. All it is doing is reclaiming authority, truth, loyalty and respect as a durable wheel. The first trap to go into is when a media person is asking a question to pursue truth by the fact, the person that’s listening, marketing and meeting doesn’t want to talk about it. All of a sudden, like a dog chasing a car, what’s the dog going to do when he catches it? Slam into the back of it? The dog got to stop and bark more. That’s what they tend to do is they lead them around in that kind of fashion. It doesn’t make sense then that facts have not worked well?
It does make sense to me, Bill, that the facts haven’t worked well. All that the Press Secretary of the President is going to do when a journalist presents them with the fact, “Mr. President, what do you think of the total number of Coronavirus deaths that are reported to be over 110,000 in the United States?”
“We’ve been doing a great job. We’ve been doing the best job ever. Look at how many people we test. We are number one in the world about how many people we have tested in our nation. We’re number one.” He is not answering the question.
No, he goes somewhere else. What’s occurring to me is that when the media asks a direct question of the President or the Press Secretary, instantly, they or anybody in the administration knows what the journalist is going for and what they’re looking. They’re not going to open the door and let you walk right into that truth, fact or whatever. You’ve shown them what you want and they’re going to redirect or misdirect you. It seems interesting, Bill. The way to get around that and to get to the truth is, it is ironic, not to ask the direct question based on the facts. You’ve got to go another way. The question I asked about the Coronavirus deaths, how would you ask the President a different question to try to avoid that trap?
They’ve got to learn how to do a thing called a proactive empathy sentence before their question of fact. None of them know how to do it. It’s difficult. It might start like this, “When the president says that he is the law and order president, I’m guessing he’s trying to instill the feeling of confidence so that he as the person that’s going to make sure the nation returns to stability. Is that correct?”
Yes, they have to say that.
They’ve got to say yes. Watch the next sentence, “Does stability look like bringing the military in to use against the protesters? Is that what stability looks like?” “Yes. The police are not getting the job done. The mayors are not getting the job done.” They’ve got to disclose what the belief is then that they’re doing. What is the belief? Maybe you’re believing that law enforcement by itself can’t handle that. Is that what your belief is? That’s why you need this extra group of people.”
All of a sudden, this is against the cops and not for the cops.
That’s what it demonstrates, “Are you saying that the cops are run by the governors and the governors are soft? Would you like the governors to take more action and have the police suppress the protesters? Is that what you’re looking to do?” When you use the phrase that the President says, “I’m your law and order President,” and then empathize with that sentence, could the President be feeling confident and he wants to be seen as somebody that is going to bring stability back to the nation?
Yes.
“The stability is through force and suppression. Is that what you are thinking?” “Yes, we’re going to arrest those protesters.” You’re going to arrest the protester? That doesn’t sound proportional. You can arrest criminals and protesters. If the protester is breaking a window, you can arrest the protester. You can’t arrest a protester for yelling at you. Are we going to start arresting people for using words and phrases that we don’t like? It’s right up against the first amendment, but the focus is on the cop being wrong. The cops being put in an unwinnable situation with violent training on crowd control.
The whole protest situation going on in this country because George Floyd is killed by a police officer kneeling on his neck. It’s clearly excessive use of force. The guy’s been charged with murder. People are protesting the excessive use of force and the President is saying, “I’m your law and order president. If the governors can’t get it under control, I’m going to send in the US military,” to do what? It’s to bring more force on these people that are protesting against excessive use of force.
You have to get these people to work with you. Don’t you want these people to go back to an economy? Are you going to scare them into their rooms? Is that what you’re going to do? Do you want to scare them into their house more than they’re into their house already? The reporters never ask the I am guessing questions because reporters aren’t trained to speculate. They aren’t trained to empathize. They’re trained to pursue facts and information so they can write their story.
The interesting thing that I’ve certainly learned, and I hope a lot of our readers have is the pursuit of truth according to Bill Stierle. You get more truth by empathizing and showing compassion for your asking, then you do asking the direct question. It seems to me that the direct question is only more likely to work when someone’s under oath in a court of law with the weight of perjury over them. Even still, a lot of people don’t tell the truth.
They know that there’s a danger there. Even when I’ve helped attorneys communicate with their closing or opening arguments, how much empathy do you need to put inside the room in order for the jury to start extending trust to you? You got to treat everybody in the room like they’re a human being, not that there is a bad and a good guy in this room. There’s an unfortunate circumstance. There is a person that missed a step maybe and it caused the other person harm. That might be there and that’s why they’re in court is to get the law to help them with that. Can the judge and the law help them to get the justice that they’re looking for? Even in high conflict negotiations and mediations, you’ve got to go to empathy and compassion to resolve quicker. You got to find out what their needs than fighting through the illusion of language and distraction.
Tom, you’ll notice that the thing they give back and that leads us to the second trap, which is the swirl of explanation. It is like, “Do I need to hear an explanation that is partially the truth and the best person, that wiggliest on this is William Barr.” He explains things that are marginally true to get one little sliver and in the middle of this marginally true stuff of the statements, there’s a blatant, “That’s not true. I think you put a pillow around a pile of crap.” You bubble wrapped a piece of crap and then we have to step on it. It’s like, “There’s crap in the middle of that because it’s not true.”
He did it with the Mueller Report. What happened is that he had a two-week lead before the report came out of a distractive spin and where truth was purchased. This is not a partisan show, although the two of us have some opinions about the world. I got to remind the readers that this is a communication show. It’s how communication is used to purchase truth away from us. That’s what it’s about. Did your parents ever explain to you the good reason why you couldn’t have something when you were growing up?
Of course.
It was numbing and helpless.
I didn’t want to hear the explanation. It wasn’t helpful.
You needed empathy about why you couldn’t have the ice cream. It’s not the 15 or 20-minute dissertation about health and about eating dessert after the meal rather than before the meal as if that was true. That gets us to the third thing, the awareness of the bribe, “The bribe is coming. I’m going to tell you about this later.” That’s a typical marketing sales technique called I’m going to set up uncertainty and I’m going to bribe you to wait until after the commercial break. Every radio show host, and every TV show, Rachel Maddow does the hook. All the writers write the hook and they’ve got to get the listener to come back in after the commercials.
The commercials are paying the bill. Listeners are not paying the bill. The person that’s in charge of the eyeball is the network so we got to keep the listener. All of the different products and services Donald Trump has started and failed have prepared him to be the president to sell to people consistently a sizzle. All he does is sell the sizzle. That’s the hardest part that we used to be a nation where you could eat your steak. Now, you can only smell your steak and hear it cooking in the other room. We used to have the steak of respect, being the leader in the world to help other countries out, using the military for good and calling other countries on human rights issues, but now we don’t. We don’t have that steak anymore.
As a country, we look like lack serious credibility on that because of how we’re treating our own people here.
In order to get the state to come back, the jails have to be cut in half. The population has to be cut in half. Any African-American that is in for a drug charge has got to come out. If there some violence with it, then they stay in. If there’s a drug associated with it, no. The history and the truth is clear that drugs were used to put black people in jail and marginalized the people that are advocates. We’re in a tough space because there are no systems in place to let half the prisoners out because there’s no economy for them to come back to. There’s no job waiting for them. There’s no preparation for them to leave jail. There’s none of that. There’s nothing there. We are paying $30,000 a year to keep him in more than a college education. What are we doing? If the person’s violent, they stay in. If the person can’t move to a place of some certainty that they won’t harm somebody else, there are ways to get there with all kinds of programs on restorative justice. There are lots of things that can sand off the edge of violence inside a person’s head.
There are a lot of people that need to stay in there for longer because they’re not safe, but the guards even know who’s safe and who’s not, who’s healthy and who’s not. Let’s go fix our society from the inside out. I’m ranting a bit, but this is this bribery piece is important to get ahold of because that’s how the press gets trapped. It’s a trap because we’re going to wait. There’s going to be a promise. Even Joe Biden got some problems with this one. He’s making a promise. He doesn’t need to make a promise. He needs to stand for value. Donald Trump promised things like he’s a short-order chef cooking some cheap hamburgers. Did you see all the opinions in that statement? I took out my bias for a piece, but he sizzles it. He’s a good cook. As a communication specialist, I’ll be the first one to give him an acknowledgment of how well he does the three steps. He puts a reward, gives anticipation and creates uncertainty. He does not deliver on any of those things.
His frequent statement is, “We’ll see what happens.” That’s the uncertainty that he’s throwing all the time. “When is that going to happen Mr. President?” “We’ll see what happens.”
You’ll get more truth by empathizing with the person you’re asking rather than asking a direct question.
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“We are not sure. It depends if the Democrats are going to help me vote for this.” “No, it doesn’t.” It’s an idea that costs too much money is ineffective and isn’t valuable to us as a nation. “No, we’re not going to vote for you. There’s no uncertainty at all.”
Bill, it occurs to me, there’s something that we were discussing and I was watching a video from January or December of 2019, which shows empathy helps bring the truth out and questioning differently. People like Jon Stewart, when he was hosting The Daily Show that uses this technique more often, bring it out. Sometimes some of the other people there are still doing it. This is a comedy show. It’s meant to be funny. It’s not meant to be a hard news organization, but in some ways, they would get the truth out more than the journalists and the press corps. An example is there was Jordan Klepper, who was one of The Daily Show’s “correspondents.”
It’s a comedy show, but he was at a Donald Trump rally and he’s asking people how they feel about Donald Trump, whether they are supporters, some basic questions and then all of the sizzle talking points would come out about Donald Trump. What was clear in the way that Jordan Klepper would ask the questions of them is they didn’t know any facts about these things that they were saying. They did not do any research on their own to read or to know anything like that. When they were asked about impeachment, some people would say, “This impeachment thing is a hoax. It was a perfect call, read the transcript.”
He would say, “Have you read the transcript?” That’s a direct question to call myself out. This is not an empathetic question, but people would say, “I haven’t read it, but I’ve heard people talk about who has read it.” It was perfect like, “To be clear, you haven’t read it.” “No, I haven’t read it.” The people were spearing these talking points without digging deeper. This is an interesting one that gets at empathy and how Jordan Klepper would question people. As he said to one person who was saying the impeachment thing was a hoax. He says, “Should John Bolton testify in the impeachment trial?” They would say, “No, he shouldn’t testify because he’s not going to tell the truth anyway. Donald Trump fired him and he’s disgruntled and he’ll never tell the truth.” Jordan Klepper would say, “If there was a system or a way maybe we could put John Bolton under oath to make sure that he would tell the truth.” The person said, “Under oath, that’s a good idea. Maybe if there was a judge who was watching over this whole thing, the highest judge in the land,” then you go, “Sure, that’s good.”
The person then realized, “Do you mean the impeachment trial where people are under oath and there’s a judge?” “No, that wouldn’t work.” He would go with them with their beliefs and give them empathy for their position. “You believe this and you think that should be done this way.” He would emphasize with them and get them eventually to walk out on a plank where they realize their argument is invalid because you know the truth is on their side. They’re spewing talking points. I want to make sure of the interest of our readers and I know people view The Daily Show is a left-wing show. That’s not the point.
It is a communication piece. You’re bringing the point of how biases affect us. Tom, we are sitting with 1 dozen to 2 dozen biases in our head that don’t service and are true. Everybody’s got a dozen to two dozen biases easy about anything from spending money to what’s the best cereal to what’s the best car to get. We sit with biases and we’ve been influenced. This show is about how that influence gets codified, entrenched and what can we do to get out of it? That’s what we’re talking about. The Jordan Klepper example is a great to provide the person a place to speak what they have rattling around in their brain. Let that out of a person’s head so they can explore it with another person. It’s like, “Talk it through. Is this bias true? Are you going to stay with it?”
One of the things I got on my Facebook posts is one of my colleagues or clients said, “Bill, you’ve approached this post with a great deal of equanimity and graciousness more than I could ever do, isn’t it time for you to call your Facebook list?” Because people were giving me pushback. I know he was making the recommendations, like, “Don’t you want to get rid of some of these people that are in the opposition place?” The answer is no. They’re sitting with a bias that they’re getting the opportunity to vent. I’m giving them the opportunity to write it out there so they can explore it. Other people can provide a perspective that might be helpful to them. It’s the perspective of what this thing is. We have talked about it many times all there has got to be is one word out of place. The person who is bias will get activated and they turn into a fire breathing dragon. I disagree with this vehemently. You disagree with what? The one word?
A lot of times, it’s a labeler diagnosis that will set someone off. That’s what Donald Trump is good at in branding. He’ll label and diagnose it.
He gets people on fire and then what happens is that he gives them the opportunity to hijack truth because “I’m on your side. You can fire people.” I’ve never been able to fire people in their lives. He tapped into the feeling of helplessness and then pointed the finger and said, “You’ve been helpless and hopeless.” “It seems like voting for a Democrat never got you off of you’re helpless and hopeless so I think you should vote for me.” That simple belief bias hijacked an entire group because even the people that vote for Barack Obama the last time, they got hijacked over to Donald Trump because of the famous poster that Barack Obama had, “Hope.” We voted for this guy. We wanted hope and we didn’t see any movement. Barack Obama was in the middle of two wars and a struggling economy digging it out of the ditch. That’s challenging.
That reminds me of one of the most effective sizzle lines from Sarah Palin in the election in 2012 because she wasn’t running, but she was put on stage a lot talking about, “How is that hope you change thing working for you?” That’s how she hijacked that idea of hope and how a lot of people had not realized the promise of that hope.
Part of it too is that Americans have not gotten used to running the marathon. We’ve been coached into running a sprint. One of the things that COVID has forced us all into as a nation, as a species is to run the marathon with this. A lot of people are trying to paint a sprint narrative on this. Donald Trump is trying to do it too, saying, “We’ve got to reopen. It will all go away if there’s a good economy. The stock market went up, didn’t it? Am I a good boy, yet?” It is like, “Aren’t you getting your money back? The stock market is coming back.” There’s no award that you get for going back up a couple of point because a marathon is you got to get one foot after each other and he’s not particularly good at that.
The economy under the Donald Trump administration had continued to go up as it was in the Obama administration. It had continued to go up and the President was taking credit for the victory laps all the time, saying, “It’s all because of me. It’s all going well.” In 2020, the economy is taking a sharp dive. Of course, the President doesn’t take any responsibilities and blaming everybody else. It’s convenient that, “It’s all because of me when it’s good, when it’s bad, no, it’s not because of me.”
That’s the reward, anticipation and uncertainty. I could complain about something and the reward then becomes loyalty. “I’m getting loyalty because you’re also not blaming me. I’m not going to blame me so you don’t blame me. You’re going to look to assign other people to be responsible for something, even though I’m the leader.” The buck does not stop at his resolute desk. It doesn’t in this administration because only things that look like, “This is the intention that I’m going to set. This is the executive order I’m going to put in.” We’ve got to be aware of the bribe. We’ve got to be careful not to ask a follow-up question to get clarity, but ask a follow-up question to deepen the conversation. Provide Americans’ reflection of the good reason why we’re doing something.
We used to be a nation where you could eat your steak. Now, Donald Trump sells us the sizzle.
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They never do that. The press corps always ask the follow-up question and get some explanation. They find some detail that they don’t think is alignment with truth. They follow-up say, “Does the president thinks this?” It creates that antagonism between the person at the podium and the journalist. It doesn’t get anything except maybe a reaction.
They’re doing a little bit better of acting as if they’re one of the American citizens, instead of supporting the American citizens. As soon as they humanize it and bring it to themselves, it’ll go better for the reporters. It’s like, “I’m one of the American citizens and this is how I’m affected by what you said.” The person there is not answering the question. It exposes their inability to empathize and their inability to be concerned or bring a concern to the American public.
Do you remember when the Chinese American reporter in the Rose Garden in the Press Corps asked the President? He made this nasty comment about China and about the Chinese people. She’s a Chinese-American and he said to her, “Why don’t you go ask China?” She says to him, “Mr. President, is there a reason you said that statement to me?” Implying, “I’m a Chinese-American. Did you tell me to go ask China because I’m Chinese?” That is what she was saying. Imagine if she had done what you have said, “Mr. President, I’m a Chinese-American and that statement is hurtful to me because I’m an American citizen.” If she had framed it differently, she would have gotten a different response from the President that probably would have been much more productive. At the same time, get him to reveal his own bias.
He visually got stuck into one of his own biases. He was projecting and going back to a talking point of assigning blame to China for whatever the question was. All of a sudden, he’s asking a person of Asian appearance. Her best phrase might have been like, I don’t know about best, but here are a couple of choices. She could have said, “Mr. President, I feel uncomfortable.” He doesn’t do good with somebody feeling uncomfortable. He’s not the consoler.
He doesn’t know what to do with it.
She can say, “I feel uncomfortable because as an Asian person, I have no relationship with China. Are you asking me as a reporter to go to report on China because I’m Asian or is that a talking point that you mentioned?” He is not known for deep comments. He could turn around and walk off stage. He’s done that before. That might be his best play because he doesn’t have any tools in his toolbox. He can’t empathize with himself. There’s no way he’s going to be able to empathize with her if he had any skill. If I was the person up there being the President and somebody said that to me, I would go like, “I do feel uncomfortable too. I would like greater accountability with China and I’m not sure how to bring attention to that.” I said it in an uncertain sentence, but he didn’t have that skill. I don’t know how to get them to have accountability either. Maybe the press can get China to have accountability.
It’s a little convoluted in the communication world because we were taking places. People taking potshots at each other with little anything at a press conference with squirt guns, but on the streets, we’re having rubber bullets, which is upsetting too. There are lots of problems going on here to deal with these three major issues among many of the major issues that we’re facing as we go into a restoring America to reclaim some of the steaks that we’ve been sizzling, and we’re not getting back to. We’ve got to get back to produce the steak that we used to supporting others, being a world leader, standing for integrity, dealing with and cleaning up our human rights stuff. It is uncomfortable.
We do have some major economic, social, and health problems to deal with. A big part of what is needed for media to do is not get caught in the traps that they’re in. The last trap I want to talk about is leaning on the rule of law as an absolute trap. This particular trap is difficult because when somebody says, “I am your law and order president,” and then orders heavily armed soldiers to DC to threaten and deploy military nationwide. He’s going to use tear gas and rubber bullets on protesters or he’s getting permission to. The person that the officer’s caught in the double bind that many officers are in and we could do a whole show on how truth has been purchased regarding policing.
How the police are expected to do too much? Police do not belong to doing social issues. We’ll get into that, but law and order are like, “We can’t give it to the cops. Dog walking or a dog chasing, call the cops.” You got to have some systems in place to deal with various social items. We don’t want dogs to breed out of control in the outside environment. There are some countries that dogs do. They’re out of control and they can’t get rid of them. It’s hard. Coming back to leaning on the rule of law as an absolute. In communication, there are four accepted communication strategies, problem-solving, explanation, bribery, reward steals, and punishments and the fourth one that’s acceptable is rules, duties, and obligations.
Put all that in mind. When the president leans on the rule of law and says, “I am the law and order president,” and then in the middle of this speech that he gives, he says, “There’s only one law.” Somebody made a joke about it and said, “Is he quoting Robocop? What is he doing out there?” There’s only one law. If someone, a voter that values the need for order because I’m a person that follows the rules, I’m in complete a 100% agreement with him because I don’t like messiness. I don’t like it when my kitchen’s not clean. I don’t like it when my yard’s not done. There’s a solid group of Americans, somewhere between 25% to 33% have the value of law and order as a forum and it’s attached to fairness, “They get to speak up, but I don’t get to speak up. They get to be messy and I don’t get to be messy.”
The problem is that there’s the letter of the law and there’s the spirit of the law. The letter of the law looks one thing and then the spirit of the law is, “What is this intention going for?” This is what the intention is. When somebody leans on the rule of law as absolute, and then takes a walk and holds up a Bible, they’re tapping into something old communication-wise. These are the rules that we follow. This is the Judeo-Christian rules. In Donald Trump’s case, “These are the Old Testament rule and I’m an Old Testament. It’s uncomfortable too because when somebody quotes a rule, it’s like, “Here’s what these Ten Commandments are and you better follow them.”
I didn’t laugh because I find the president holding up a Bible disingenuous. I didn’t think it was funny, quite honestly. I don’t think he’s read it. Not only that you talk about the Ten Commandments, how many do we know that this president has broken Stormy Daniels and stuff? I have a trouble with the president’s integrity. This is my opinion.
You’re expecting the president to do something that is difficult. You’re expecting the president not to be human. The back door or the skeleton key on this is he isn’t that Old Testament guy, but he’s acting like the Old Testament guy. He is the person that can make up the rules, but he doesn’t have to be someone that lives by the rules because he gets the free pass.
You mentioned the rule of law and one of the things that come to mind is how the president and the press secretary vote by mail. He’s waging this assault on voting by mail because it’s supposedly fraught with fraud. He’s benefiting from a law that allows him to vote by mail, but he doesn’t want other American citizens to vote by mail. Largely because he doesn’t want to make it easy for people to vote against him by mail.
That could be a truth, but his truth is he’s created an imagination and a story. He’s been selling the story of these things that can be printed and that there’s no one checking them. Meanwhile, there are people checking them. There are ways and systems in place to make sure that this one vote or this thing is not this widespread thing that is being orchestrated by someone or something. That there are systems in place to check that. It’s one of the things that is important is not to create doubt and skepticism about something that we have. My belief structure says that I have a general sense of certainty around.
What level of certainty? I would say in my mind is somewhere between 97% to 99% certainty, that the vote by mail that I’m trusting that Americans have that level of integrity. The ones that are counting the votes have that level of integrity to match it up and that we have enough detailed ordered people out there to keep a ballot box from being stuffed. That’s at least a few of my things and it doesn’t mean that it may not happen because I’m staring at it with a sober eye too. It’s like, “I could stare at it. How can smart people do a better job of this?” Trusting that there’s the level of integrity and level of trust is high enough.
Let’s go with this one as one of our last examples as it’s good for the rule of law where the Press Corps said to the Press Secretary, “The President voted by mail, but he doesn’t want the rest of the citizens to vote by mail. They’re pursuing truth by the direct facts. Didn’t the President vote by mail?” “Yes, but the President has to vote by mail because he’s in DC and he can’t go to Florida to vote.” That’s what they do.
They starting their question in the wrong place. I would start the question with going after the emotion. I’m guessing or could the President be feeling doubtful that the ballots are being counted accurately and he needs some more trust in the ballots being counted accurately?” “Yes.” That’s the subtext.
That’s a straightforward question that they would answer yes to.
They would say, “Yes.” It seems like the President doesn’t have trust. Does he have trust in his vet ballot, getting counted correctly?
That is a good question. They would have to say yes.
How can we have the same level of trust that the president gets for the rest of the Americans because he is just one American, even though he holds the highest job in the land? How can we have the same level of trust that everybody’s vote gets counted?
She wouldn’t know how to answer that.
No, because there’s no policy in place to do anything about it. It’s a red herring. It’s creating the doubt. It creates loyalty to the leader. It’s not about fixing the system. “We all still believe in America that one person, one vote so how can we have trust again? If the president doesn’t have trust, what’s his plan to get trust to protect Americans’ votes?” “I don’t know. I have to get back to you.” There’s no way to go, but empathy, calling doubt out. Doubt and skepticism are being used as a weapon activating the feeling of doubt and skepticism. “This is why the conspiracy shows have a great deal of popularity to it because I don’t know about the crop circles. What is that dark thing underneath the cornfield there? Was it an old military landing base? I watched a 30 minutes show to discover that it wasn’t the alien that you baited with me at the beginning of the show, it was a military. I feel good because I know something. It wasn’t an alien, but you put the bait on the hook to get me the watch the show about an alien. It wasn’t some alien experts think so.”
They already know at the start of the show that it’s an old World War II landing strip used by the English against the Nazis and they tell this whole another story. We’re doing it as to each other all the time. It’s just that the President is good at it. He uses these different tactics to purchase truth away from others. This is a communication show and it’s about watching these things. If you want your message to be sold, if you would like people to follow you, then the tools and techniques that we teach here will get people to follow you better. That’s the best thing. You can use it for good. It is a scary time. The next time, we will go into Purchasing Truth and the reality regarding police. The police discussion is timely as well as they need some empathy and some consideration about what has happened to them, to the ranks, and the different things they’ve been required to do. The different levels and mindsets that they’ve been cultivated that haven’t been particularly good. We got to do a little bit of work there because it hasn’t gone well for them.
It’s a great subject for next time. I made note of that. It’s a good discussion to have because in general, I think police are not part of an issue so much. It’s not that Republicans like police and Democrats don’t like them. I don’t think that’s true. I think that police and policing, while there are lots of issues and problems to discuss, it’s not divided along clear political lines. That’s a good way to talk about purchasing of truth, language and communication in a healthy way. There’s a need for it in what’s going on in our country.
Tom, thanks a lot. Thanks, everybody, for reading. More to come.
Important Links:
- John Oliver – Plastics: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver on YouTube
- DeliverZero
- https://www.CNN.com/2021/03/22/business/deliverzero-takeout-food-waste-startup/index.html
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