Biden Win – Restoring Truth And Trust To Unite A Divided Nation
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Many Americans heaved a sigh of relief when it became clear that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have won the election. But not everyone agrees that it is a cause for celebration. Very much in tune to what they have been doing before Election Day, Donald Trump’s camp continues to sow seeds of doubt and skepticism on the electoral process and results. How can we regain the truth and trust that has been undermined to divide a nation? What is Biden’s best move to effectively counter the doubt and skepticism campaign of Trump and his clique? The rest of the world is watching as this drama unfolds in what is increasingly becoming known as the Divided States of America. Listen in as Bill Stierle and Tom share their thoughts on this.
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Bill, I have been breathing a sigh of relief, and that’s how I felt that America has chosen Joe Biden and Kamala Harris to lead the nation going forward. It was nice to see the spontaneous celebrations in the streets in many cities across the US. People seem genuinely happy and relieved. The emotion that was coming out there was noticeable. Although, I was concerned about Coronavirus, I was glad to see everybody wearing masks. In any case, I don’t think we should talk about Coronavirus. We’re into the second or the week after the people’s voice has been heard. We’re seeing some different language and communication coming out of the White House and then the president elects office or the Joe Biden campaign office. There’s certainly a lot to talk about there. Would you agree?
I agree. As a nation, we’ve got to move towards empathy and compassion as something that can protect our truth and our trust in each other. The hardest part for people to get in reading this blog is that if truth and trust are messed with too much, it divides people quickly. In a business deal, in a marriage, in a relationship with your kid, even if your kid makes a mistake once, 2, 3, 4 or 5, they need to practice truth and trust. They need to practice that they can make a mistake. They can be fighting for something that’s not fully true, but they’ve got to come back to the center and have a relationship between truth and trust.
There is a problem because people don’t know what’s happening to them and we’re fighting the wrong battle. We keep trying to fight the battle to claim truth and the battle to claim trust by using facts and information, but it doesn’t fully work that way. I feel disheartened to let everybody know that we’re in for a bit of a struggle because you don’t have a strong relationship between truth and trust. It’s been getting worse over the years. It doesn’t mean that there haven’t been individuals over time that haven’t with their language hijack truth and trust to their side of the message, that hasn’t done damage to the country before, but we’ve been able to bounce back.
The way to bounce back is to start establishing messages that restore truth and trust. That’s a big part of our episode is how to restore it. We’re going to talk about the things that people are doing that aren’t working and that’s the thing that’s upsetting. This is an exciting episode because we are going to have some fun peeling back how do you get back to truth and trust and what language to use to do that. We will also help our audience to see that there is a formula to get back to truth and trust instead of the way that people are talking about it.
We did have an election. We did have 74 million people vote one way. We had 70 million votes the other way. That means that we have a nation that is believing two separate narratives. We’ve got to take a look at those two narratives and not beat up on one side or the other side and say the following sentence, “That person has been hypnotized.” The right is saying that about the left and the left is saying that about the right, “That person that voted the other way has been hijacked or has been lied to.” They don’t know what they’re talking about globally.
I can imagine conversations are not going to be productive if that’s what everybody thinks about everybody else.
That’s where we’ve got to go get back to the center of this. We’ve got to figure out how to have a healthy discussion about truth.
Before we figure out how to have that healthy discussion, it’s important to understand what we’re seeing happen on each side. One of the things you said, the Donald Trump campaign is still sowing seeds of doubt and skepticism in the election results and the process. They’re saying it’s being stolen from the American people. They’re ignoring the facts and have the messaging right out of the White House from 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning the day after the election on until now. Donald Trump in the election saying that there was rampant voter fraud and when all the legal votes are counted, when the illegal ones are thrown out, everyone will see that Donald Trump has been reelected. The interesting thing is falling into the same things that the Donald Trump administration had always done to judge, label, diagnose, criticize, blame, and shame.
Language is like seeds. You’ve got to think of language like a seed and you plant the seed and then you water the crap out of it. You grow that tree that says, “Stolen.” You grow the tree called bad people, ballots illegal, and we won. That’s where it’s troublesome. The hard part about this is that it doesn’t mean that the Democrats don’t do this at the same time. Barack Obama could stand on stage and say, “You will not lose your doctor. You can keep your doctor.” Meanwhile, the president has no control over whether the doctor is going to move from one health care to other healthcare to make more money. You might be a casualty under the Affordable Care Act. Your doctor might move because he can get more money at another place. The care isn’t being left, the doctor left you.
The care is there, but the doctor may not participate in your particular insurance plan, which honestly I’ve experienced that myself.
My doctor left too. Can we say that Barack Obama lied to the people? Not fully. We can’t say that. Can we say that Donald Trump lied to the people? Not fully, and there is a scale between how much of a lie is that or how much is it not?
We call that partial truth.
It’s getting into the partial truth position. This is a show about language and how language is being used to hijack people’s physiology. Can it be a partisan show? Yes. Can we have certain partisan beliefs about things? Are we sending trust now? We are extending trust that there are good people counting votes and that each state and each election system of every state is doing their job. All that has to happen to throw it off is what about the 50 votes in Georgia that got moved? What was that story?” The poll worker left and came back and this pile that was not counted about 50 votes was counted and gone.
I didn’t see that story, but I’m sure there are lots of stories or incidents like that.
We have 74 million who voted one way and 70 million who voted the other way. We have a nation that believes in two separate narratives.
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Donald Trump said to have them on his own. There were these votes and they were dumped into the river. He’s the one who is planting the belief, the seeds of languaging and messaging to create the feeling of doubt and skepticism causing one identity, not to like the other identity. For a Democrat, not to like a Republican and a Republican, not to like a Democrat. Those shifty Democrats, those illegal bad people.
He always says, “Something bad is going on in Philadelphia.” That is what he keeps saying. These overarching statements have nothing to do with facts, but to his people, it says a lot.
Here’s what I’d like for the readers to get ahold of, “Something bad will happen if you don’t buy this message now.” That’s exactly what my auto repair service person said to me similarly about the leaky water coming out of my radiator like, “You’ve got to get this fixed now because something bad is going to happen. The timing belt is 100,000 miles old and it’s cracked and something bad’s going to happen if you don’t fix it.” Before I got out of there, I was out $2,700 because I have to change all the liquid the car needs an upgrade, I bought it about a year ago and it was used. All of these things are called maintenance that needed to be fix but something bad will happen, “If you don’t buy this message now.” It can be used with products and services that you don’t need, and something bad won’t happen, “If you don’t buy this condo, now, we only have 100 of them left and I sold 25 of them. By the end of next week, it is over for this location. Something bad will happen and we’d like for you to become a part of our community.”
Notice how I went for the close on my narrative. People believe the sentence socialism will destroy the nation if Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are in the White House. Did you even see the eight years of Barack Obama trying to slug it out with dealing with some big problems? Why don’t you watch it? “No, I’m not watching that.” That’s the problem with languages that something bad will happen message needs to be combated with and met with as much empathy and compassion as we can muster to the person that’s speaking. It seems like Kayleigh McEnany is scared, worried and anxious about the votes. She’s having trouble trusting the poll workers and the states. I wonder what the systems in place so if any of them did get caught with votes, what would happen to them? I feel curious, what would the law say. The law said that this person would go to jail. That’s where the media needs to be interviewing people.
They don’t do it. They don’t have the skills or they don’t care. They’re after what’s the attention-grabbing headline.
It’s an awareness about what’s going to work. Whether it’s 60 Minutes, everybody’s not going to watch 60 Minutes, but the small soundbites that need to take place across media would be we interviewed the secretary who’s in charge of elections from the states. We reviewed with them what would happen to them if they were caught falsifying votes. “What would happen to you?” “Here’s what will happen to me. I go to court and this would happen.” They would go down all the bad things. They then look in the camera and go, “There’s no way I would ever do that or anything like that is going to happen on my watch.” That’s the counter-messaging that needs to take place. I’m doing the shortlist of things to do. That’s the one I’m going to do right off the bat.
Coming out of the White House, we see all of this language and messaging to sow seeds of doubt. Now what we’ve seen from the President-elect Joe Biden’s office coming out and speaking messages of unity, that there have been messages of restoration and healing. The other interesting thing is you see him taking action, even though he’s only president-elect. He doesn’t have a lot of formal power to do anything but he’s already starting focusing on the Coronavirus, which is the thing that most people want them to be dealing with. Announced his team to take this virus head-on and try and restore our economy by getting the virus under control as soon as possible. Haven’t there been some messages of unity? There are some good messages coming out of Joe Biden from his acceptance speech and over a couple of days since, but I suspect there are some missed opportunities there as well.
I appreciate that. There is a moment of acknowledgment that he is messaging a message of unity that hits the ears of the 74 million people that, “Thank you for the message of unity.” For the people that voted against him, the answer is, “I don’t trust you. You’re Sleepy Joe. You are this and that. You’re going to do this to me. You’re going to do that to me. You are not authentic by giving me that message.” This is me doing scary honesty about what their ears are hearing are their needs for authenticity, truth, and trust. The damage of truth and trust has been done to the candidate, personally. The one guy in Arizona that came up and screamed behind the door, “Joe Biden is a part of a crime family.” How do you work for many years in government and you have enemy swirling around you and you’re the crime family, and nobody brings any charges about you up until now? That’s a great example of a thought message being put into that gentleman’s head. He needs empathy for the pain because he has the thought that Joe Biden is from the crime family.
That’s a projected identity away from Donald Trump. It’s not to say that Donald Trump has the crime family, but from time to time, many people meet their needs at the expense of other people. That’s life, sometimes you do. The trouble is in that man’s head to an extent that it’s like a tree that is solidly taken root in that guy’s belief structure. It’s because he believes it fervently, what happens is that all that comes out of his mouth is judgment, labels, criticism, blame, and there have been messages of even shame that have come out of people’s mouth projecting on the other side.
I have this chart called the Levels of Truth that we’ve talked about in the past, but it’s probably a good idea to bring it up again because the level of illusion that’s taking place and the level of meaning that is being made up is being inserted into people’s heads. I’m not saying that the left doesn’t have its set of problems. I would be glad and happy to take a run at those that are at the extreme on the left. On the right, there’s a list of things that have been implanted. Once the language of judgment, labels, diagnosis, criticism, blame, or even shaming sentences get stuck in a person’s head, then what winds up happening is they have limited ability to evaluate things. They have limited ability to be an observer to a situation. They immediately go level ten, “You’re wrong. I’m right.
Shut up. I don’t want to talk about it” That’s what happens when the language of criticism, blame, and shame shows up. The reason why they don’t want to talk about it because it’s dangerous to talk about it. One person might be right. It was upsetting.
When the citizens in Nevada are outside the Clark County office where they were counting votes and all that and whoever’s in charge of counting the votes was speaking at a press conference. That guy comes up, yells and screams. I thought it was wise of the person who was giving the press covers to stop speaking, turn, look, let the guy scream until he was done screaming. You could see in this split instant the guy didn’t know what to say next. He was maybe even a little bit embarrassed or exasperated after he had screamed and yelled at his peace. He ran away as fast as he ran up to the mic. The guy said, “What was your question?” He was turning back to the press saying, “Is there anybody else have a question?”
I appreciate him turning it and doing that. I’m not judging that piece, but that’ll be worth for everyone that reading this next sentence that I would have requested the poll person to say. Here’s what I would have said, “That gentleman is feeling furious because he has a need for trust that we’re counting all the votes here. At this moment because he walked away, he doesn’t have his need for trust met. Like many people in the nation, we need to restore the trust that I and my staff are making sure that his vote is being counted and everybody else’s vote is being counted evenly. We are not here to take his voice away, even though he’s feeling furious because he has the thought that his voice is being taken away. I want to give everybody here reassurance that his vote was counted, as well as all the people in this county. If they’ve registered and they’ve turned in their vote, you have counted it here, next question.”
That would have been fantastic. That would have helped an awful lot of people, a lot of citizens out there that are feeling doubt and skepticism over all the votes being counted. It would’ve helped to meet a lot of their needs for trust. Bill, I want to make sure in this episode, we do two more things in particular. Let’s talk about the Joe Biden campaign for a moment. While there are messages of unity and Joe Biden is speaking like the adult in the room more so than we’ve had from our leaders at the podium in the last several years. That’s nice, but what opportunity has he missed thus far? What could he do to make his messages land better with half of America that didn’t vote for him?
If I were advising Joe Biden, he steps into the recount messaging, “If the president would like to recount the certain states that he would like to recount, I am interested in having them recounted if he would like those. I am not fearful of the vote. I have trust in the people that counted the vote. He doesn’t. He’s struggling with trust. I want to make sure the president as an American citizen, as well as all the people that follow him have trust in the vote. I would request the governors of Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Arizona to recount all their votes. That would be my request now. He seems scared, worried, and anxious. He needs reassurance. If he’s one American that needs reassurance, there are 70 million other Americans that need the same level of reassurance about our campaigns and our counting. I would request that those votes are to be recounted and make sure that they’re certified because our votes count.” If he came out and said that the oxygen would get sucked out of the room.
We need to start pulling the weeds out of our collective consciousness and message ourselves into a nation of restoration.
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That would take the wind out of the president’s sales on this whole doubt and skepticism campaign in our election system.
This is the number of votes in this county that you lost by. Here’s what happened in Detroit. This Detroit area has been certified because if this person didn’t certify, they would go to jail. I would then parade out all the different people that are in charge and put a face on the poll workers, put a face on the election officials. Let those people speak, “This is what my job is. This is what I do. This is how I work. I’ve been doing it for many years. We at our facility, this is the group of people that we have as poll watchers over here and here’s the group that we have in this poll watchers over here. These poll watchers are in charge of the Republican count. This group is in charge of the telecast because, in the distant past, we had problems with this, but we haven’t had problems like this. We even got better after the year 2000. You have a lot of different ways to step into this.
That would be good. Somebody in the president-elect’s communication team needs to get some skills so these messages are served up to him. I’m sure Joe Biden would be happy to communicate in that way. It’s his style.
It’s right in his wheelhouse. From our chart, I know that you’re going to post them on a chart. It puts the president and a future president in the position of observation and evaluation because it’s saying, “We are going to observe and we are going to evaluate the president’s claim. We’re not going to hearsay it. We are going to say it. Who does he want to watch? Does he want Rudy Giuliani to watch? Does he want him and his teams to watch? Is that what he’d like?” There’s one thing to be vigilant about something. They do not have the tenacity and the sticktoitiveness to do this level of truth searching.
If Joe Biden were to step in and claim the space of truth with observational, empathetic, and evaluation style language, what winds up happening? The air gets sucked out of the room because of all the judgments of right or wrong, all the labels and diagnosis that box in a person’s belief structure, all the languages of criticism, blame and shame of, my way is right. You should have known. What’s wrong with you. I’m a bad person. They’re a bad person language. All that stuff you can’t use because it’s like, “I’m not a bad person. I gave you the key to the vault. You counted the number two and I counted the number two. Would you like to count the number again? We can do this another time if you like.” I’m saying it gently like, “Do you still don’t have trust and reassurance. Would you like to talk to every person that voted? We can do that too.”
That’s helpful to see how Joe Biden could already be communicating a little better. Not to say that he wants to bring the country more together, but his words could bring the country closer together. On the other side of this, you’ve got the president who’s casting doubt on the election saying that there’s rampant fraud all over the place. He’s got his legal team challenging it in different states. That messaging while he’s casting a lot of doubt, he is also falling short. There’s an interesting article from TheAmericanConservative.com that is written by a Republican who is saying that, “For a president who for months has been talking about the election is going to be fraught with fraud, he hasn’t put together a good legal team and a strong coordinated effort to go and challenge it.”
It’s striking me as I’m saying this, Bill. I’m talking about somebody writing about the facts about what he’s doing to fight it and not about what Donald Trump cares about and is much less the facts. If he wants to remain in the White House, he needs to care about the facts because the facts are not going to support him staying there. He more cares about casting doubt and riling up his base to be supportive of him in calling this an illegitimate election, then he is pursuing the truth of where the votes properly cast.
It’s easier to cast doubt and skepticism at systems that you don’t understand. One of the things that Donald Trump has done brilliantly and tragically, both at the same time, has cast doubts into systems that people don’t know very much about. You don’t know what does it take to count votes in a state. Civic engagement is not high. I don’t know how many poll workers it takes to count all the votes in California. How many poll workers does it take? How does that system work? That entire is a complete vacuum in my mind about what does it take to do that. I’m not paying attention to that. He’s taken advantage of that with his voters by saying, “You don’t know what those people are doing over there.” The answer is, “You’re right. I don’t know what those people are doing over there.”
“As Americans, I’m extending trust that they are doing something.” You can’t trust that because bad people are doing bad things in Philadelphia, “The last time I was in Philadelphia, it’s a city. I was there many years ago when it was in a decline. It was scary there.” It’s like, “None of that is true.” He fills in and it uses the person’s blank creativity to write an imaginary story, planting a seed on the person’s brain and it’s upsetting. It doesn’t mean that visionary people aren’t to do that, imagine what it’ll be like, “Let’s go to the moon, by the end of the decade. The scientists are looking around.” They’re like, “We’re not even close to that,” but that’s the opposite of it.
You set a compelling vision that grabs the imagination, and then you start doing it. You do some tests rockets, and you blow a couple of things up. A couple of people even die in the process of doing it, but you still forge ahead to put a person on the moon. That’s significant. Think of all the satellites that are up there in the cell phones that are using them. It’s a bit much. That’s powerful stuff. Next time, when we do this, I would like to take these levels of truth out for a spin because we need the levels of truth to message ourselves into a nation of restoration. We’ve got to look at this and start pulling the weeds out of our collective consciousness. Some of these thought patterns have got to come out.
I agree because we’ve got to get to a point where we’re talking with each other in a restorative way and not passing each other. That’s not going to be helpful. Thanks, Bill. That’s a great one.
Thanks, Tom.
Important Links:
- Levels of Truth
- TheAmericanConservative.com
- https://www.TheAmericanConservative.com/dreher/trump-defeat-maga-blues-and-bitter-klingers/?fbclid=IwAR1-yUqbNtEE1rFiGk_A0jmYa8soYkXBMf6X6VJDwafpm48iBz4eaxQxoP8
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