Truth And The Dignity Culture: Going In-Depth Into Gabriel Sterling’s Impassioned Plea To Donald Trump
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One of the recent events that shocked many recently is Republican Gabriel Sterling’s, Georgia’s top election officials, very impassioned plea to Donald Trump. Long overdue but still needed to happen, he asked them to tone down the rhetoric and violent talk. In this episode, Bill Stierle and Tom discuss this recent talk of the town and what it says about truth and the dignity culture. Many politicians only hold on to values during elections. Truth gets forgotten, and our identity becomes more valuable. See how it unfolds in this episode and find out what better way we, particularly our leaders, uphold the truth
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Bill, I know we had an intent for what we were going to talk about in the next episode after our last episode. As often happens, things get thrown into disarray with what’s happening in our media, our culture, and our country. We’ve had some shocking events take place. In the last episode, we talked about Donald Trump’s attorney, Joseph diGenova, who had called for Christopher Krebs to be drawn and quartered, taken out at dawn, and shot. We did address that, but what happened that’s notable and I think is a fantastic departure point for us is that since then, we had one of Georgia’s top election officials, Republican Gabriel Sterling, come out and make a very impassioned plea to Donald Trump and to the sitting senators of Georgia, the two Republicans that are in run-off elections for the beginning of January 2021 fighting for their seats.
He made an impassioned plea to them to tone down the rhetoric and the violent talk. He was saying to stop inspiring people to commit potential acts of violence. Someone is going to get hurt. Someone is going to get shot. Someone’s going to get killed and it’s not right. There’s a lot more to it and I’ve got links to the video, so you can watch the speech if you haven’t seen it. I’ve got links to the articles about it. That’s our departure point because I watched this speech, Bill. I know you watched the speech. I want to talk about that because while I applaud Gabriel Sterling for coming out and making that impassioned plea. It was overdue and needed to happen. After that speech, I said, “I wish he had said this.” I’m sure you had also some feelings like, “I wish he had said that.” Let’s start there. What do you think?
First off, to applaud Mr. Gabriel Sterling for coming out and saying what I would call an adult-to-adult conversation, “You can’t say that thing because someone’s going to get hurt. This is the truth. This is the way the truth is going. If you keep talking that way, somebody’s going to get hurt.” It’s one thing for people to be in the public eye. We can get security for ourselves to protect ourselves if you want to stir the hornet’s nest and kick things around a little bit. If you go and you keep escalating it, then what winds up happening is people that are trying to do their job are going to get hurt. He was telling a story of a twenty-year-old that somebody was accusing him of this, and all the guys were doing is taking one thing from one place to another. He’s this twenty-year-old and he’s getting violence moving in his direction. He’s going like, “I’m a twenty-year-old. I’m doing my job here. I’m doing it for free.”
Let’s be clear about that. There’s a twenty-year-old employee of the Georgia election system. I don’t know his specific job, but a video of him was taken very much out of context. In the video, they were able to zoom in and see his name badge on his uniform. They’ve targeted this young adult and his family. It becomes its own conspiracy theory that he was doing something he shouldn’t do and somehow that’s evidence of voter fraud in Georgia. This has been completely debunked. He was just doing his job. This is part of the violence that Mr. Gabriel Sterling was talking about in his speech. He was also referring to Joseph diGenova in what he said. What was interesting and striking to me is he’s saying, “Senators in Georgia, you need to denounce this. You need to come out and say this kind of talk is wrong.” He is pleading with them to do that.
Notice how quick I went to their subconscious mind, and not until after January 5th and the runoff election. I’m not saying anything before then. I’m not going to come to defend this thing. If I defend him, I’ve got a Twitter guy over here coming in my direction. I need emotional safety. I need protection because I don’t want those people coming in my direction and more importantly, not voting for me, staying home and going to like, “Forget it, I don’t want you either. I want the person that’s going to fight for the thing that I want, not the person that’s going to do that.” This is why the marginalization of language takes place because this is the emotional brain running the show.
I’m pointing to my head now. The back part of the brain does emotion and habit or emotions and beliefs, around safety or whatever it’s been worked up about. I am validating something. I’m validating that socialism is bad or whatever belief they want. Emotion and habit or emotions and belief always win over logic and future thinking. Where’s the logic? That’s the phrase that you and I have said that’s been completely debunked is a logical piece. The people that are even reading to this and we’ve said this many times on the show, the facts and truth don’t matter when the emotion is engaged. I’d rather reject it than change my belief.
What’s scary to me is that the leaders in our country, the elected officials, the president, senators, and congress people can only have principles and hold to them when there’s not an election coming up. That’s sad. It is not putting country over party or country over self.
Newt Gingrich summarizes this and this has been the thread for many years. He has this one completely down. A newspaper reporter says, “This was the fact. This is the thing. Are you saying that it’s not your job as a politician to correct that voter’s inaccuracy?” Newt Gingrich says, “It is not my job to get that voter to know what the truth is. My job is to get the voter to vote for me. Truth is secondary to getting them to vote for me. I need to give them a sentence or 2 or 3 that they can believe and vote for me. I don’t want to get into proving them wrong or helping them to understand because then they won’t vote for me. They’ll feel doubt and skepticism, and people don’t vote for you when they feel doubt and skepticism. They vote for you when they feel confident with you.”
ven though Gabriel Sterling is saying an adult conversation, “You’re going to get hurt,” he’s talking to a room of 9 to 13 years old. Those are the ones that are reacting in the emotional way that they are. Those 9 to 13 years old are in the adult bodies that don’t want to believe that Donald Trump lost and there were the votes. He planted the seeds in 2016. He’s been watering the seeds every once in a while over the last four years. This is when he’s harvesting their brains and the crops of the belief that there are massive voter frauds. He said that Hillary Clinton’s votes were fraudulent, that the three million that she got were mostly fraudulent votes. It wasn’t true then and it’s not true now. It’s not true that the states have certified all of these things. Bill Barr has said, “There’s been no evidence,” now they’re throwing him under the bus.
Anybody who’s not loyal to President Donald Trump is thrown under the bus. That’s the big picture reality of President Donald Trump. Not to get too distracted with that, although it’s juicy, let’s come back to Gabriel Sterling because I not only appreciate what he said as an adult in the room who is speaking the truth despite the fact that the truth doesn’t matter. I appreciate that he did it. I do think it was overdue and needed to be said. I want to tell you what I came away wishing he had also said, then I would love to know what you wish you had said because they’re different things. He was saying, “You need to come out and condemn this speech, denounce it and say that it’s wrong because it is wrong.” I’m paraphrasing here. I encourage everybody to watch his speech and see it for themselves.
His message was, “President Donald Trump, senators of Georgia, senators in general, leaders of our country, you need to come out and condemn this speech.” I had a friend when I showed this article, he said, “That’s some South American dictatorial stuff there.” To him, that speech was from another part of the world that’s not America. What I wished he had said was, “President Donald Trump and senators of Georgia, if you do not denounce it and somebody gets hurt or dies, you will be partially responsible for that injury or that death.” I wanted him to try to hang that responsibility around our next leaders who don’t come out and condemn this. I thought it would have had more impact and forced those people to make a statement instead of being silent.
I appreciate that, Tom. That would be a good ad to say to those particular senators or Republican leaders. The thing that the Republicans don’t fully get here yet is that you can stay on the ship, but if the ship is sinking, you’re thinking that you’re going to get on the lifeboat at the end and you’re going to be the only one that’s drifting there. What winds up happening is you now in the middle of the sea and nobody cares about you. There’s nothing historical part of that and stuff. It’s sad and disheartening to watch this.
People like Marco Rubio and some of the other people are going to take a hit on this. Eventually, through the field of time, they’re going to get dinged with this. It’s like, “This is not your moment.” Even as I say that it looks like it’s the truth to me that they’re going to get dinged by it. Clearly, from the voting, they’re not going to get dinged by it. They’re not going to be held accountable. Why is that? Our identity is more valuable than the truth. Our identity is more valuable than respect. Our identity is more valuable than integrity and our identity is more valuable than the law.
Can somebody please say this from a microphone and a podium out there? Unfortunately, everybody doesn’t have your mind and words to identify this. It’s a good way to point that out.
They’re betting on our identity as a Republican is more valuable than truth. We’re going to create our own truth to validate that because this is our truth now. It’s not real but it is our truth. Our truth is different than your truth. Tom, you and I have both voted for different sports teams over our history. We’ve had different teams and players that we follow and like and things like that. When you build loyalty to a team, they can be 0-10, and you’re still with them going, “Come on, you’ve got to get a win in here. It’s not going to be this season, we’re 0-10.” It’s like, “I can’t wear the jersey out now. I’d like to wear the jersey because I’ve been loyal to the team. It’s hanging in my closet. I can’t wear things.”
A few years ago, I could not wear my Dolphins stuff at all, but now I can wear my Dolphins stuff because they’re winning a little bit more. How am I going to put that coat on? It’s a little tough. There is a push or an edge that takes place. When we have an identity, we feel good about our identity. I’ve been waiting years for the Kansas City Chiefs to win and I bought all the Super Bowl stuff because they won. I’m walking down an alley and the lovely guy he’s picking up the trash. He goes, “Kansas City Chiefs.” I looked at him and he’s given me the scowl. I go, “Raiders.” He goes, “Raiders.” Here I am in the alley having a Republican and Democratic thing based on loyalty and identity. It’s a sports team, there doesn’t have to be violence like, “I’m voting for my team.”
When it comes to politics or language, here’s where Mr. Gabriel Sterling is right on target. You cannot let it go to a place where they need for physical safety is not meant for others. You cannot let it go to the place where there is something illegal that is taking place. You cannot damage the truth on the way to getting your end result. You can’t damage truth and respect. Some people have the belief that the world respects the United States more because of how strong President Donald Trump is. People believe our world standing. The only problem is that’s not fully true. They figure out a way to work around him. If the deal isn’t fair, then you’ve got to call it on not being fair rather than using it as a moment to get recognition, acknowledgment, and respect at the expense of fairness or value.
Let’s take the Iran nuclear deal as an example. President Donald Trump pulled out of that because it was a terrible deal, “It was a terrible deal. I’m going to work out a much better deal,” which was always what he said. The reality is it wasn’t his deal and he didn’t like it. It was Barack Obama’s deal and so he pulled out of it. We’ve learned the Iranians have about three times the amount of enriched uranium they would have been able to have had the US stayed in that Iran nuclear deal. That’s a little bit of truth, but maybe the facts don’t matter. It’s interesting to see how some people do believe that his path of showing strength we’re better off and safer. A lot of the facts don’t bear that out.
Let’s get back to Gabriel Sterling because I wanted him to say something that would be a little bit more of an accountability piece and make our leaders accountable for the violence that may happen if they don’t denounce that language. What is it though when you saw his speech, what did you wish Gabriel Sterling would have said? What could he have said a little differently that would have made his message more impactful or more effective?
Sentence number one might have been something like this. Everybody is listening now, I’d like to acknowledge the president for expressing himself. He is taking the steps to meet the first freedom of speech. He’s able to express himself. I’d like to respect his right to express himself but I feel torn because I also have a need for safety for all the people that are doing the work and the volunteers that take the time to count the votes for our nation. As the United States of America, one of the ways that we get respect is that we cooperate and allow every vote to count. I also like to applaud and extend trust to all the vote counters, and all the people that worked inside the State of Georgia. To not only count the vote the first time and get a number, but also do a wonderful diligent job of counting it a second time, because that met my need for trust. I do have a need for safety and protection.
If somebody is talking in a way that doesn’t meet the need for safety because they’re questioning trust, I’m not sure that we’re honoring the right to vote and the willingness for the population to count its own votes. I trust this. America does a good job of counting votes. It’s one of the things we’re good at. We go to other countries to help them count votes and to build systems so that they can count votes. We’re trying to get everybody’s need for being heard, not just one person’s or one group of people’s need for being heard. We’re trying to get everybody’s need for being heard. That’s one of the things that makes America great. The president for his point has the ability to influence others because he meets his need for being heard but regrettably, it’s not to be at the expense of truth or trust. We Georgians would like to respect ourselves because we trust ourselves. When the president talks this way, he endangers and doesn’t make it safe for us Georgians to count our votes and also us Georgians trust each other.
I’d also like the other Republicans to start talking about trust and truth too because it’s not once, but it’s also twice unless you have some evidence. If that evidence doesn’t show up, I would prefer us not to talk about this because we’re done. We’re done counting. We already have trust and truth inside Georgia, and it doesn’t meet the need for safety. If somebody gets hurt, it’s on the senators and the Republican parties for not speaking up. It’s up to other Georgians to say, “We were counted,” because we were. If you have some evidence that you would like to swear on in court, bring that forward or don’t talk about Georgia in that way again. You could see there’s a little bit of, “Don’t screw with the identity of Georgia and our right to vote. Do not question trusting our vote takers. Do not trust them. Don’t do that because I’m not letting you cross the truth trust line. I’m at the front lines, you’re not.” My advocacy is not at the expense of the president’s need for respect or at the expense of calling him a liar. He can believe whatever he wants. He has a First Amendment right to express himself, but not at my expense, he doesn’t.
It’s interesting when you put it that way that I appreciate the president’s need for this or that, it makes it seem small. It’s no longer a big issue of, “The election was fraught with fraud.” The president himself has a need for acknowledgment, respect, and recognition. It makes it more about him and less about the people.
You’ve got to separate the message. The election is not a fraud. The need for truth and trust has been met. I’m interested in truth and trust, but not at the expense of integrity or safety. It changes the emphasis. It says, “We’re not talking about fairness here. We’re talking about truth and trust. We’re not talking about being heard.” This is why you’ve got to think about the population has to regrettably wake up a little bit here and scale-like, “If the need for truth is something they’re fighting for and if fraud shows up in a courtroom.” The judge says, “What evidence you have for me?” Rudy Giuliani says, “Your honor, we’re not alleging fraud.” She goes, “Why are you here then?” He says, “We don’t have any evidence of fraud.” She goes, “Why are you here in this room?” He knows the accountability piece is right there inside that courtroom because if he puts the word fraud in there and he doesn’t show, the judge can take it out on him.
We’re not going to find a line that President Donald Trump won’t cross. I thought we probably wouldn’t find a line that Rudy Giuliani wouldn’t cross. In a recent couple of years, we couldn’t find a line that Bill Barr wouldn’t cross, but we’ve seen Rudy Giuliani will not say there’s a fraud where there isn’t when he’s in a court in front of a judge, because he can be disbarred for lying in a court of law. Bill Barr has found a line similarly when it comes to, “He’s is taking the president’s position on many things and push the line of even having a justice department defend the president in a civil lawsuit, which isn’t supposed to happen or never happened before.”
When it comes to propagating the message, the president is trying to put out that the election was rigged and fraudulent. They’re trying to steal an election, Bill Barr wouldn’t say that. He got to a point where the facts do not support that, which is a little bit back from saying that the president is wrong or saying that there was no fraud. There’s not any evidence to support that. At least he didn’t cross that line of continuing to propagate this message. We’ve heard a lot of journalists asking Kayleigh McEnany, “Is the president going to fire Bill Barr for what he said?” She said, “If the president is going to announce any staffing changes, you’ll be the first to know.”
In other words, she’s like, “I am not a part of the official chain of command.” If the reporter was on top of that, “I hear that we’re not going to hear from you. Why are we all here then? It sounds like you’re not a part of the chain of command,” but I’m not being snarky.
I agree with you because I thought a good response to the reporter is, “Will we see it on Twitter?”
“You would like us to wait for it on Twitter,” and then call them on it too, which is a big part of the process of truth-telling. When we ask somebody to meet their need, it sounds like you’re going to ask for us to trust the president’s communication with Twitter rather than trust your communication.
It undermines her authority or the very reason for being there.
It’s like, “You’re not necessarily in alignment with him. It’s this same top-down thing. It sounds like you’re not going to provide us anything.” We’ll wait for him to do it then.
All of these White House staffers and camera members have to have short-timers disease. Their loyalty is being tested. They’re all like, “How long am I going to continue doing this?”
I can appreciate your belief in that, but many of their needs are getting met. Their need for respect gets met even one of the people on Donald Trump’s legal team, Rudy Giuliani, other characters, other attorneys, supposed witnesses, and things that are a part of it. They’re there to create the feeling of doubt and skepticism through the possibility of something being wrong or unjust. There are mistakes that people make all over our government. Some of them only rise to levels 1, 2, and 3. The media makes those things because it’s a slow day, 6, 7, and 8 things. They belong to the 1, 2, and 3 things.
If you make the small things 6, 7, and 8, then the things that are needed to be covered, the 8, 9, and 10 things as far as danger, valuable and tragic, they don’t get covered as much because you’re moving the fight, flight and freeze response inside the listener up to the top of the list. Inside the brain that activates safety and protection protocols. I’m going to fight for safety or protection, and then I’m fighting for belief. I’m not fighting for the truth anymore. That’s where I’m fighting for a bias. You and I both know people that are stuck in that place. They fight for the bias instead of fighting for the truth. They’re advocating and handing over their trust. In this case, the one that affects my need for truth is Lou Dobbs getting on there and questioning Bill Barr.
That was through the looking glass.
That was tough to watch and I can appreciate Lou Dobbs meeting his need for protection for the president or to validate the truth. He’s like, “Who’s calling who a liar? Now you’re calling Bill Barr a liar.” He’s a part of the construct of the deep state. There are people that are working behind the scenes to do things but there are also many more on the front line that are working to keep those people in their certain boxes.
When I saw that clip of Lou Dobbs talking about Bill Barr, I was like, “Wow.” I realized this shows you when it comes to this president, loyalty is above everything else. Everybody who is loyal to the president is good, but everybody not loyal to the president is bad. You could be good now because you’re loyal to me and if you’re not good to me tomorrow, you’re dead to me and bad. Loyalty is above party and country when it comes to this president.
That trend has been going in that direction for many years. It caused the division, the amplification of social media over the last several years that driven the divisions and the siloing of people. People aren’t talking to each other as much. It takes time to reach for understanding. You and I get on here and we get to know each other better because we’re in a proactive conversation. It’s like, “I’m thinking about it this way, Tom.” You go, “Bill, I’m thinking about it this way.” We’re able to hit our beliefs and our values to call them to say, “What Tom said is a little closer to the truth than what I said.” There was a belief or a bias that I was fed that’s not true, and I’m okay to swap it out.
The majority of Americans are reasonable and good people. We’re having a reasonable discussion and conversation. When I talked to somebody who has different beliefs than me, you get to know them as people, they’re not bad people, even if they have some beliefs that I would fight very hard against, but at the end of the day, they’re good people. I find most people are. The mark of a good person and people that I like the most are willing to have those conversations and are willing to challenge their beliefs and be challenged or to at least have civil adult conversations. The thing that I wish would happen more is more of those people would speak the truth more and not allow the propagation of all these things that are junky.
It’s a good place to stick the landing here too because the way to stick the landing on this is that, “How do you make the discussion of truly safe?” The way to stick that is there are two different kinds of safety that need to happen, physical safety and emotional safety. Those are the two initial kinds of safety. For physical safety, we see that as, “We don’t want to hurt anybody.” For emotional safety, we want to make sure it’s safe for somebody to speak up without somebody jumping down their throat, excommunicating them, ostracizing them, or never talking to them again. We want to make it safe for people to express themselves. Because of social media, we have other kinds of safety that are showing up which we’ve never had to contend with on a large scale.
How is my brand or my personality going to be received by the outside environment? People can start hammering me in this show by going, “You’re this and that.” All of a sudden, there can be a viral video about me or you at a drop of the hat, but that was out of context. All of a sudden, it goes in different directions. The pursuit of making truth safe to talk about and something that we can talk about is, how do you find safety in truth-telling, which would be a good place to talk. It’s like, “I want to talk safely about that,” and then also be ready to, “The person is trying to hold on to the truth that’s not true. How can I be compassionate to them without hitting them over the head with the stick, call on names, and doing those other things?” It can lead us to some interesting discussions. We’ve got to work through post-Corona. We’ve got to work through having healthy capitalism and come back. We’ve got to fight for empathy and consideration for others and people as we go through these very troubling times.
We have a lot of things we can work on there, especially when it comes to safety and trust with the vaccine. There are going to be issues for people with that.
It’s a wonderful place to start.
I look forward to that. Thank you so much.
Thanks, Tom.
Important Links:
- https://www.YouTube.com/watch?v=nH9FnY0qvNI
- https://www.TheGuardian.com/us-news/2020/dec/01/georgia-election-republicans-trump-gabriel-sterling
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