The Victimhood Culture: Using Tragic Sympathy To Replace The Truth
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Language and communication are fickle things. It changes over time, depending on where you sit. We can see it now with President Donald Trump, sitting in a very different place than where he has been in the past. In this episode, Bill Stierle and Tom tackle this in relation to what the President said at the rally in support of Republican senators Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue. Pointedly, they talk about how he used the victimhood culture in his languaging, using it to purchase truth for his favor. Bill and Tom then discuss the role of the media, the fairness narrative, how tragic sympathy replaces truth, and more.
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Bill, it’s very interesting to see how language and communication changes over time, depending on where you sit. We’re seeing the President sitting in a very different place than he has been in the past. Most notably, he went down to Georgia to have a rally. In this episode, we’re not going to talk about how hardly anybody is wearing masks or social distancing at that rally. What we’re talking about is what the President said at the rally in support of the two Republican senators who are in the runoff, Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, that he is supporting to try to hold the majority in the Senate. He used some interesting language, which was a different tone. It’s a different kind of communication from him. That makes a perfect subject for us to talk about.
One of the biggest challenges with language is noticing that you can use language in different ways to get different outcomes. As Donald Trump, we’ve talked about him being a master brander, marketer, salesperson. He is a person that can convince, talk into, talk about something in a powerful way, use the different levels of dopamine inside the listener to get them to purchase things, create a consistent message about how a wealth equals strength. His products and services that are branded as the Donald Trump product and services are better, the best, the greatest, the most outstanding things. What happens if it’s not true? It’s something that’s problematic.
If you take something like Donald Trump airline, where the rumor is or the truth is that he wanted to put a gold toilet in there. The crew is going like, “You can a have a gold toilet, but it weighs so much. That’s going to cost X number of gas or fuel to put that toilet in there. That’s not your strongest financial play in the competitive airline market is to put a gold toilet in there.” He goes, “No, I want a gold toilet in there.” They put it in there, but it only lasts as long as you can pay for the fuel. You’re hauling the toilet back and forth. You’re paying for the toilet. You’re not generating revenue from the business standpoint.
We can talk as human beings about how to use language and deal with the shades of gray or the shades of truth that we need to deal with focusing on what the value or the value proposition is. It’s not as strong as focusing on what is the branding message or what is the consistent message to keep people engaged as long as he can until there’s nothing more left. Let the listener be left with the emptiness. That’s what is happening is that the people at the Donald Trump rally are going to be left with emptiness. That’s what happens at the end of the investors at Donald Trump airline. The investors are going to experience emptiness. The banks are going to have to experience a form of emptiness. They’re only going to get $0.50 or $0.25 back on the dollar. There’s an emptiness that sits there. This is the seven languaging patterns or something that we can play around with because that’s what sets up a very strong victim and victim culture. You watch the clip the same as I did. He called everybody in the audience a victim.
Not only that, very uncharacteristically for Donald Trump, who’s always a winner. He’s always showing strength. He said, “We are all victims. Everyone here. The thousands of people here at this rally, you’re all victims.” He didn’t label all of them as victims. He put himself into it also, “We are all victims.” That’s not a very uplifting set the vision, forward-looking rallying cry.
That is brilliant to do it that way. By doing it that way, he engenders loyalty. He is saying, “I am in your tribe, win or lose. We’re winners. No, we’re victims, but now we’re winners. We’ll prove I never lose.” He’s going to sit at the end of this thing. He’s at the end of the rope a little bit. It’s not focusing on what the primary part of the job is, which was problem solving. How do you problem solve a presidency? You’ve got to make decisions. You can’t put things off. You’ve got to face the problems, this choice, which is a junkie choice and this choice, that is a worse junky choice. You’re going to take this choice because it’s a little better than this choice over here.
Both choices are still junkie, but at least I’m solving a problem. He went, “I’m sorry. There’s no problem. There’s no virus. There’s no hoax. This is a hoax. This is fake news.” He kept calling his primary job of solving problems not problems. They’re fake. They’re not worth talking about. They are worth talking about if you want to talk about him being a victim. He’ll pull it to that, “They’re out to get me,” but that’s not what’s real. The real thing is that I’m a person that doesn’t face problems or deal with problems. I want things my way. My way is how can I generate as much revenue from this experience as I can. Whether or not the thing is real or not, I’m going to take out the darker side of capitalism to the spin, which is I can borrow money. I can create wreckage. I can make revenue out of that function.
Bill, was he never going to be very helpful to those Senate candidates at this rally? Presumably the primary problem to solve was to get people out to the polls to vote for these two senators on January 5th, 2021. It doesn’t sound like he was focused very much on that.
He is helpful. He did an excellent job of helping them.
Please help me understand that.
He helped them greatly. He said, “We’re victims and us victims have got to fight. We cannot sit down there. We cannot take this.” They come out of the rally more inspired to fight for those candidates. The only problem is that there’s not enough of them. There are not enough people possibly. The reason why I say the word possibly is because the down-ballot votes have been Republican. They haven’t been Democratic. The Republicans took back a number of House seats. They held the Senate solidly. It’s a little unsettling, but they did good on the rest of the voting thing. The voting being fraud or people hiding ballots, and no one has ever said that here’s the ballot. Here’s all the person to vote for Republicans and Donald Trump. They voted for Joe Biden. Did they cut the ballot in half and only count 1/2 of the ballot and not count the other half? That’s what happened in the voting piece is that the down ballots were looked pretty darn good for the Republicans.
Both of these Senate candidates did win more votes than their Republican challengers in Georgia. Joe Biden won by something like 12,000 votes in Georgia after two-plus recounts confirming that. There were tickets splitting where people voted for Joe Biden because they’d had enough of Donald Trump. When it came to their senator, they voted Republican.
I need to still feel good about my Republican identity. I’m voting there, but this guy I’m tired of listening to. This guy I’m not listened to. I’ll take the other guy. I’ll still stay with my Republican identity, but I’m not voting for this guy again because I feel uncomfortable. I feel tired by listening to him because it’s the same when you hear a TV commercial over and over again, Tom. You’re going like, “It was funny the first time, but I don’t want to listen to it now. It’s not good enough. It’s not funny enough.” The languaging patterns that gets us here is problem-solving an explanation then turns into bribes, which are rewards, deals and punishments, which Donald Trump speaks from often and labels and diagnoses, which he speaks from often.
He uses criticism. At the end of his tenure, he’s left with blaming and shaming. Those are the seven patterns when I talk about conflict with people is watch how the language moves from this productive problem-solving adult, I’ve got to work on this and some explanation about why it’s going to work a little bit better than the terrible way that we have to choose to do it. Try to stay out of rewards, deals and punishments, try to stay out of the bribery place if we can, and then set the rule in place to work and see if we can make it better next time around. If we can find another answer, let’s test to see how it goes and we can change the law as we go.
The challenge is that when our society is stuck on labels, criticism, defensiveness, content, withdraw, blaming and shaming, we can’t get out of our own way, language-wise. You’ll see that in debates. All we’re stuck with is labels. Labels can be also used as talking points, Tom. Label is a talking point. The President has every right to challenge this in court. He has the right to do due process. The answer is at the expense of truth, at the expense of trust, no, he doesn’t. No one is saying that sentence.
Everybody is saying, “No, he has the right to pursue whatever he wants to.” To an extent, he does. He can file as many lawsuits as he wants to and nobody can stop him. At some point, those lawsuits don’t achieve any meaningful results.
The media fails because it doesn’t point out what he’s doing or what is happening. All they’re doing is reporting on something and making that reporting of, “This is what he said,” not “This is what he said and this is the cost of what he said.” They’re not taking it that far. This is what he said. This is what the talking point is. The woman senator from Georgia said the President has every right. She said that more than a dozen times. In my experience, it was 6 to 12 times at least during the debate. Where is the languaging expert on the Democratic side to say, “You could try to pursue truth when you’re still in a place to falsehood, but senator, isn’t there ever a time when you have to fight for truth ahead of party or identity? Isn’t there a time that truth has to win out?”
Look at the shock on your face. You’re going like, “Isn’t there a time when truth has to come to the front of the list?” If the person doesn’t sit back, and regrettably, he sat back and smirked instead of go after it. Isn’t there a time when truth has to come to the front of the list? Isn’t there a time when we have to experience our loss and let it go? Is there a time that you can’t trust the good voters and the good poll workers here at the state? I’m going to trust the poll workers here on this one. I’m going to trust the state. All a sudden, I’m speaking like the Democratic candidate here. It’s not a partisan conversation. She could have done this. She could have said, “I trust the poll workers. Even though the President is trying to get his pursuit of truth, I trust the poll workers.” She could have honored him and still got the voters she needed.
Isn’t that very interesting?
She backed herself into a corner. She wasn’t terribly skilled. She did say like over and over, “The President has the right to pursue every legal recourse to make sure that this was a free and fair election in Georgia.” It was Kelly Loeffler. By the end of this debate, she got herself into a bit of a pickle because she was asked whether Donald Trump’s continued attacks on Republican Governor Brian Kemp and Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger about the validity of the presidential election. Whether she worried it might have an effect on the runoff. What she said is interesting because she worked very hard.
When she said the President has every right to pursue every legal recourse, the question she was asked was, “Can you now say that the President lost the election?” She was trying not to say yes. She’s trying not to agree with the idea that the President lost the election. What she ends up saying is the buck stops with the Secretary of State. He has to run an election that Georgians trust because everything is at stake on January 5th, 2021, the future of the country. We can take the path of supporting the American dream, of standing the economy back up and getting through this virus together. When she said everything is at stake on January 5th, what that meant was it’s a lot more important for the Republicans to hold the Senate. Everything being at stake means Joe Biden has won the presidency. It was a backhanded admission saying everything is at stake on January 5th that Joe Biden won. That’s the pickle. She couldn’t argue both sides of it.
The black and white language, the one way or another language, right or wrong, good or bad language is a very twelve-year-old mindset. There’s no mistake, free and fair election. Fairness is a twelve-year-old value set that we need to practice when we’re 12, 9 to 12 years old practice. Tom, you have 9 to 12-year-olds running around your house. Any parents who’s reading this right now, they’re going to be like, “The fairness narrative.” The fairness narrative is something to be practiced between ages 9 to 12 because they’re coming out of a child. The child is coming out of me, which they need to be or they’ll die. They have to like, “Feed me, care for me, protect me,” or they aren’t going to make it. It’s a rough go if they don’t get some trust there.
Anthropologically speaking, children have that need to be cared for or else.
As soon as they’re 9 to 12, they’re going like, “I don’t understand why you’re not caring for me and doing everything for me. It’s not fair when I lose something.” The answer is you lost something. The phrase that shows up is life is not fair. The real phrase is life is an experience of not 100% right or wrong. It’s images or levels of gray between, am I going to get everything I want or I’m only going to get part of things I want? I’ve got to live with the loss. Notice fairness is a win-lose. It’s a very young narrative. People wonder why people can vote with Donald Trump is that he’s tapping into the need for fairness not being met.
At the same time, it’s advocating one of the primary Republican talking points, which is self-reliance. Take care of yourself. Don’t depend on the state. We want to depend on the state. No, don’t depend on state, self-reliance. What are you doing at this rally then? Are you going to advocate for fairness, which means you need to do something to be a self-autonomous individual? No, it’s not fair. They’re not counting the votes. It’s like, “You go count the votes then.” “No, I don’t want to count the votes.” “Are the ones that are volunteering?” “No.” “Count the votes. Figure out how the votes are done.” “I know they’re lying. I know it’s not fair because the President says, I’m fair.” I’m being funny, but it’s also a 9 to 12-year-old narrative.
You are dramatizing it a little bit, but to make a point, which is a good one, Bill. To me, this is fascinating. I saw an interview with Brad Parscale. Do you remember who he is? He was the campaign manager for Donald Trump’s campaign sometime in the summer after the Oklahoma City rally that had only so many thousand people. It wasn’t the big rally it was supposed to be. He was on his way out. He had some personal issues after he was out and he made the news. The point is he was interviewed about the election. I want to touch on this point and come back to Kelly Loeffler because this is fascinating to me. I hope it is to our readers.
Brad Parscale said, “If the President had only showed some compassion and empathy over the course of 2020 regarding the Coronavirus, he would have won this election easily.” That’s true. He would have swung a lot more people to him if he had been more empathetic with the people and their concerns over the Coronavirus. You could debate me on that. What you said about Kelly Loeffler that if she had done two things she could have said, like you said, “The President has every right to preserve legal option.”
There’s been a lot of talk about how the President is calling the election rigged. Calling everything that happened in Georgia unfair is going to de-motivate Republican voters not to come back and vote in the runoff elections for Senate on January 5th, 2021. There’s a lot of debate about that. There may be some truth to that by continuing to say the election was tainted and rigged, people will say, “Why am I going to vote? My vote is not going to matter. Look what happened in the presidential election.” Kelly Loeffler could have cured that. You showed us. She could have cured that. She could have given support to Donald Trump. She has every option. “I’m going to trust the poll workers, the process and give empathy to them. I believe in the system and that could then cure people from saying my vote is not going to count.” She didn’t do it.
This is the challenge. The weird part about it is you can’t argue with Donald Trump’s success. His success, the slash and burn, the divided country, the us against them is what it takes many times to get a fan to buy a t-shirt for their favorite team. It’s like, “I am on this side of this team. I am on the side of this city. This is my city and my team. I am going to live and die with the Falcons. I am going to live and die with the Dolphins.” I am going to live and die with whatever the team is, the Jets, even though they’re 0 and whatever right now.
It depends upon and leans upon a grievance rather than it leans around truth. I can cultivate a lot of loyalty if I’m a victim. I can cultivate a lot of loyalty. We’ll get them next time. We’re disappointed now, but we’re going to come back and get them next time. There are, in the NFL, 31 losing teams every year. There’s only one winning one. There’s something to losing and playing the victim and saying, “I’m going to get you next year,” that makes the fans and our ability to step back and to participate in life.
That victim, that loss, that we’re going to pick ourselves back up, we’re going to bounce back up and Donald Trump is playing the music that goes with that. Kelly Loeffler and all the rest of the Republicans are going like, “We’re shutting up. We’re going to let this guy take the heat for the victim thing. We’re going to follow on his coattails. We learned if we shut up, we don’t become the target.” His message is let the other side be the other team and let them be the target.
This started way back with Newt Gingrich. These people are bad people. Why did they go that way? They came off of Nixon getting things. They had to like, “We’re good. Nixon was one bad person.” It’s hard because people can tolerate the insults, even unintentional. I can pick a sentence that the other side is saying. I can amplify that to prove that they’re wrong and bad. “Defund the police,” that slogan catches on and then all of a sudden, you hear it in the debate. They’re going to defund the police. Meanwhile, the guys are going like, “Defund in anything,” but it doesn’t matter because that’s not the way branding and marketing works. It’s I’m going to hang whatever sentence that’s on your side over your head and make it the leaded weight that’s going to take you to the bottom of the lake and try to work through it that way. It’s unsettled.
That does seem to be how everybody does it. The media is an accomplice a lot of the time in doing this. In that debate with Kelly Loeffler and Raphael Warnock, who’s the Democratic candidate, what the moderator was focused on is trying to get Kelly Loeffler to admit that Donald Trump lost the election. He’s trying to have this gotcha moment. That was the whole point instead of trying to accomplish something more meaningful. They got her in this pickle of saying a Republican Senate majority is the only thing keeping Democrats from defunding the police and beginning the march towards socialism. Donald Trump won the election and is going to be in office for four more years. You couldn’t say both of those things. That’s what they were focused on trying to get her to admit. Had they gone a different way and talked to her because they could have then taking this thing, “Do you trust the people of Georgia? Do you trust the poll workers? Do you trust the process?” It would have been very different.
Here’s the debate. Do you think that Georgians are victims? Do you think that Georgia are victims? I don’t think Georgians are victims. Georgians voted. I feel proud that Georgia has voted. I also feel proud that they counted the votes. They also feel proud that they counted the votes the second time so that we can have trust. I also feel proud that there are X number of volunteer poll workers in this state. Those people I’m proud of. Those are the real winners. They’re the ones that are holding the space so we get to have democracy. Those are the ones I’m putting my hat into.
Senator Kelly Loeffler isn’t doing that. She’s saying that you are victims. I don’t think we’re victims here in Georgia. I gained 10,000 votes within three sentences easy, maybe even more, because I’m saying I’m not a victim. Victims gain sympathy because we all know what it’s like to lose, Tom. If you’re a victim, Tom, of something, someone stole your car. That happened to me. I can get tons of sympathy for that. I can get people caring about me right and left. That is terrible. How did that happen? That could never happen to me. Meanwhile, it can happen to anybody.
Tragic sympathy replaces truth in a heartbeat. I’d rather feel bad for my friend, Bill, losing his car rather than the truth that the car was made with a poor system of security on it. It was easy for them to boot it. It was a design flaw inside the car. I’m not a victim anymore, but I’m not going to tell anybody that. I’d rather drink from the drops of being a victim than doing that. I can gain respect for the number of bruises I get.
How many likes and shares the post about your stolen car got?
My car got stolen, a negative post, you’re going to get sympathy coming in your direction. Not necessarily empathy, but you will get sympathy coming into your direction about, “That’s too bad. I feel sad about that for you.” Meanwhile I’m like, “I’ll take a cup of that tea any day.” This is a marketing tactic. This is a branding tactic. This is a sales tactic that is being used. It can be used as a short-lived way to engage voters in order to vote your way. It appeals to black and white thinking. I can keep a constant argument. I can keep anger. I can use it to rail against the enemies around us. I can create a word like socialism and amplify that as if it has horns on it as the devil.
Meanwhile, we have 3, 4 or 5 different systems of socialism that we do here in the United States. We have the firemen. We have the police. We have corporate bailouts, which is a socialism. We have coddling the rich, which is another form of socialism. We have some socialism going on here, whether we like it or not. Very few people talk about the various different kinds of socialism that we have and that we enjoy. Medicare. People enjoy that. Why? They want somebody else to save money for them because they don’t have the discipline to save the money in their old age for medical stuff.
I’m asking for truth to at least have a little bit of honesty about now how we pay for it and how much is being taken out of everybody’s pocket to pay for these things, to deal with the human condition on the smaller thing, as well as the bigger thing. It’s a big thing. We’ve got to work our way back to dignity because when Donald Trump says, “I will be successful because we’re winners,” he’s taking the entire population of people to get them to walk the plank. The only problem is that they’re the first one that’s going over the ship. He isn’t going over. He’s going to like, “Yes, it didn’t work out. Yes, they were lying. They were this, that.”
All of a sudden, they get sympathy, but the person has donated $10,000, $20,000, $50,000 to your legal fund. Who gets that money? He does. It’s unsettling to talk about it. We’ve got to work our way back to what dignity looks like. How do we focus on having a healthier version of truth? Tom, when you think about the path forward, because there is a path forward, we know and we’re trusting that there is going to be an exit from Donald Trump out of the White House.
We’re trusting that there are more people on one side that it’s too hard to pull it over. If the vote was 1,000 more people in each of the battleground states, it would be tougher. All of a sudden, truth has been damaged. Trust has been damaged when you play the victim sympathy game, it does. It gets damaged. It’s the same as a 9 or a 12-year-old. How do you coach your 9 and 12-year-old to speak the truth and take their lumps when they take their sister’s cookie and they have two and their sister has zero? How do you talk about the truth? I made it a zero-sum game. They had three cookies and your other daughter had one cookie. How do you talk about that truth and get them to admit that’s the situation we’re in right now? Trying to get Donald Trump to concede is saying, “Joe Biden has got three cookies and you only got one.” “No, he doesn’t. That’s not true.”
Donald Trump is playing the game of NFL competition. He’s saying, “I’m going to be back in four years.” He’s already saying this. He’s like, “They’re going to be here for the next four years or I’ll be back in four years.” He’s not ever going to say, “I’ve lost,” but he’s like, “I may not be in the White House right now, but I’ll be back.” There’s this idea of comeback and resurrection. This is going to be his narrative.
This is straight out mythic. This is a tragic hero that is coming back. During the speech, look at this anticipation. This is a brilliant sales marketing stuff. It’s brilliant. He’s so good. He said, “I don’t have to be here tonight with you. I could be down in Florida retired by now. I could be on my way right now, but I’m here with all of you. I don’t have to do this.” “Thank you so much for being here.” They have no idea that what he’s doing is reinforcing his brand of winner affluence better than, “I’m in command, I’m in control of this.”
Meanwhile, the votes are gone and the money is coming out of their pockets. It’s unsettling. We do need to do a better job as human beings, as Americans to communicate with our strengths, with our inner worth and face our grievances and emphasize how we can move into a place of collaboration and cooperation rather than oppression and social marginalization. That’s the part of this that’s damn unsettling. There’s money to be made when you think you’re oppressed and you think you’ve been socially marginalized. People will pay not to hear that, not to experience that. I’ll pay money to believe that you’re on my side. Meanwhile, the revenue or the value is leaving their pockets and going to the other person that’s promoting that.
They don’t realize it. They’re bitter and in resentment about not having the cookies the way the other sister got cookies, going to the movies, going with her friends, going to do other things that the younger girl can’t do. It’s insightful. They remember it as that’s not fair. That’s why my parents aren’t fair. You’re going to like, “Don’t you globally sweep us into we’re not fair.” They do. That’s what the mind does. I wish it didn’t do it, but that’s one of the things that does. We are in a very precarious situation because we’ve got to figure out a way to return to a dignity narrative and away from a victim narrative. We’ve got to honor things that we do and do well, not the other way around.
The quickest way to get rid of a marketing message is to amplify the message before it happens.
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This period of time between now and January 20th, 2021 is unsettling because there’s an inherent uncertainty, what if? Hopefully, it will improve once we get past the inauguration.
There’s a belief that once you get past something that it’s going to get better and regrettably this narrative does not ever get better unless you face it. You’ve got to turn and face it. It’s never in the future, Tom. This is something we should probably make an episode out of is truth and being in the present moment. That is what you and I are doing right now is that you said it’s going to get better over there. I’m going to like, “We have to do it right now.” It sounds like this. If Joe Biden would come out and do this, it would change the world. All he’s got to do is this one five-sentence message.
Here it is, “I hear that President Donald Trump is going to take Air Force One down to Florida and do a big exit ceremony. Isn’t that amazing how he’s going to get his need for recognition and respect by doing that? As the President, he gets to do that up to that date. It’s interesting that he’s choosing to get his need for respect and recognition in order to build a relationship with his followers. Meanwhile, we’re going to be in Washington, DC and celebrating the transition into a new government that is going to be looking at this new vision for America, where we care for each other. We collaborate and cooperate against our greatest threat, which is the Coronavirus. I wish President Donald Trump good luck on his journey of celebration of his presidency. He’s pivoting and being in the present moment.”
I said it with a little bit of energy and fire, but if Joe Biden gets a hold of that, he would do it with a sense of understanding and compassion a lot more than a little bit of the energy that I had, but I was making it up as I go because it’s coming from my heart because that’s what he’s doing. It’s called state the obvious. He’s saying things that Donald Trump is saying ahead of Donald Trump doing things. The quickest way to get rid of a marketing message is to amplify the message before it happens. It has no more power.
You’d take the wind out of the sails of the message. It won’t be what Donald Trump said. It will be what Joe Biden said that Donald Trump echoed.
You’re celebrating Donald Trump’s past presidency with him. He doesn’t need to concede. You celebrated him conceding, whether he likes it or not.
It’s kicking him out the door and closing it behind him.
It helps our nation because then Joe Biden gets to have a clean slate rather than the media putting the two of the events against each other, which one we’re going to cover? Who’s not going to cover people? No, Joe Biden goes like, “Some of the media might cover them. Anybody that wants to cover that, they’re more than welcome to. Meanwhile, what we’re going to be doing are these things and getting some things done to protect the nation, work collaboratively, follow where the numbers are, to make sure that we’re safe, make sure grandma is safe, make sure we get through the holidays better than we can. To do this, here are the things that we’re up to.” Pull the power back on your side, Joe Biden. That’s the thing. This has been fun, Tom.
Thank you so much.
Important Links:
- https://YouTu.be/raymu9S5qEg
- https://www.CNN.com/2020/12/07/politics/kelly-loeffler-donald-trump-debate/index.html
- https://www.CNN.com/2020/12/05/politics/donald-trump-kelly-loeffler-david-perdue-coronavirus-election/index.html
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