Purchasing Truth And The Demand For Eyeballs: Developments On The Voting Systems And The Role Of Media
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The power of repetition is in how it makes a statement look like a fact, and the same can be seen occurring when it comes to purchasing truth. When everyone around you has bought into something, no matter whether you join in or not, you can still easily be influenced by it. In this episode, Bill Stierle and Tom talk about the purchasing of truth and the demand for eyeballs, particularly in regards to the recent Republican claims and events regarding the rigging of the national elections. They discuss the developments in the Smartmatic and Dominion Voting Systems and the demands for retraction. Taking us deeper, Bill and Tom then tap into the team mentality and identity that is playing out in the media, how the truth gets hijacked, and where sensationalism and loyalty win over the truth.
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Bill, I’m excited for this episode that we’ve planned to share with our readers. We’re going to talk about truth and the demand for eyeballs. I wanted to set this up for everybody. There are three different stages of this episode where we’re going to do a little bit of a follow-up because there have been quite some developments in the whole Smartmatic and Dominion Voting Systems demand for retraction. That is a great example of this. We’ve got something lighthearted and humorous, although it’s almost as amusing how true it is as it is a little bit of comic relief in a Saturday Night Live skit that ties into this.
Also, a bit into what you and I have talked about in the past about team sports, support for your team, and how that is playing out. Not only in the skit in a literal way but also how it’s poking fun at our politics. That is very much like team sports. The last thing is we’re going to highlight a rally in the election runoff race that has taken place in Georgia. A Republican rally and how something that candidate Kelly Loeffler was faced with. That is still more examples of the subject about the demand for eyeballs, constituents, and what she maybe did and could have done better.
Coming back to the communication piece, which is essential in our pursuit of truth. It is about how do we communicate truth, even though we cannot control the things that people say and do. We can influence the things that people say and do. The way things are mostly influenced in a society is the things that get bought are the things that are valued. What happens is if you don’t want to see something, stop buying it. What happens if you don’t want to see something and there’s a whole bunch of other people that keep buying something you don’t want to see, then all of a sudden you’re going like, “I don’t want to see this because it doesn’t meet my need for truth and it’s causing outrage inside me.”
The other person is going like, “I do want to see that because isn’t that true? I’m not sure if that’s true.” There’s doubt and uncertainty because what they’re being offered has caught that person’s eyeballs and they want to believe in their version of truth wholeheartedly. There are people there like, “The Jets are the best football team right now.” No, they’re a one-win team at the moment. People are buying and getting Jets’ T-shirts for Christmas, even though they’re a 1 in 13 teams right now.
That team mentality and identity is something that’s playing out in the media on a daily basis and in our politics. In an episode, we talked about how these companies Smartmatic and Dominion Voting Systems were involved in voting machines that had been being completely trashed in outlets like Fox News, Newsmax, and One America News. They put out press releases. They sent legal letters to each of these media outlets demanding retractions because there was a lot of information being spread or propagated by these media outlets that were not true.
You and I talked about that and we said, “They’re right. We agree with them but unfortunately, the horse has left the barn. Even if these media outlets issued a retraction, it’s never going to repair the damage done. It’s too late.” That was our statement at the time. However, surprisingly, Fox News and Newsmax have been airing these rather lengthy videos and creating their own news now about the fact that there’s no evidence to support what they’ve been saying for the past month about these voting systems. This is an example of an unheard-of real retraction that we’ve never seen from an outlet like Fox News. It’s getting all kinds of oxygen that I never thought it was going to get. How about you, Bill?
If you’re trying to protect the need for integrity, then you don’t want to show that you weren’t in integrity. If you would like to get eyeballs on both sides of the equation to jump teams back and forth, it’s okay to cover that you started the conflict because you’re covering how you’re resolving the conflict and you get people on both sides. One of the things that’s a huge dopamine fix for people is to be in the place of looking to be led by my leader identity who I’m being loyal to no matter what the message is. Even if your coach stinks or makes a bad call, it’s still your coach. You go like, “They just had that one bad play.”
That one bad play cost them the playoffs. If it would have worked, they would have been called a genius but why did you call it there. It’s problematic because the media is like vampires. Like vampires need blood, media needs eyeballs. It’s usually at the expense of the viewer’s time, attention, and lifespan, they’re sucking the life out of people. The conflict is something that I am coming back to because this is my habit. Regrettably, news politics is a habit for many people but they don’t know their truth is being hijacked.
At first, when I watched this retraction, I’m like, “They must have felt threatened.” These Fox News and Newsmax must have felt threatened or taken legal jeopardy they might find themselves in for disparaging these voting companies seriously. I was like, “I can’t believe it.” They could have ignored it and not given any oxygen on their network. Management says, “We’re not issuing a retraction. We’re not going to give it any oxygen in the air. It will go away.” That could have happened but they don’t care if they’re making news of the fact that there’s no evidence to support what they said. If propagating the retraction is going to get them more eyeballs, that’s what they’re all about. Is that correct?
That’s correct. That’s what they’re all about. I need more eyeballs. Regrettably, President Donald Trump is the same way. He’s watching the ratings and how something he says or does gets traction. In early rallies, he used to say, “Drain the swamp.” My people gave me this sentence, “Drain the swamp.” He would tell people about the messaging. I didn’t think “drain the swamp” would work but look at how well it works. Everybody is going, “Drain the swamps.” It’s the loyalty of, “We’re with you, drain the swamp.” It’s unfair media bias. You’re not looking at what the truth is about what you’re doing and you’re not in integrity.
Other nations are not respecting you because you cannot rally long-term behind a rallying cry. Eventually, the loyalty will shift away from somebody that’s not in integrity, fairness, or justice. Many people are experiencing that. It’s like, “I’m still getting the people on the fringe but I am not getting the core voters that I need to push it across.” There’s no one around to feed on them because there’s only this limited group and that’s not enough of them. I need more of them. They get reelected. Media will take both sides of an issue so they can and they will say, “I’m just interested in the eyeballs and I will step into this conflict.” They’re following suit and they’ll get eyeballs for that.
What occurred to me as I’m watching this is what all of the media outlets, CNN, MSNBC, Fox, rightfully so get criticized for sensationalizing things in order to get more eyeballs. People on the right side of the political spectrum call MSNBC, MSDNC and they call CNN the criminal news network. Other people on the left, for the past years and beyond, thought Fox was out of integrity with being “fair and balanced.” In reality, they’re all trying to do the same thing. This is a business of getting ratings and eyeballs. Integrity takes a back seat a lot of the time.
Proportionality takes a backseat. I was listening to Wolf Blitzer and I was in the kitchen doing stuff. Within fifteen minutes, he said breaking news four times with a brand-new storyline. I’m going like, “Is it breaking news? Is it going to make my life wonderful? Do I need to know this, Wolf?” They are not going to say that. The phrase “breaking news” already gets a level eight from my adrenaline cortisol system. It’s like, “What’s breaking? Is there something being evolved here and showing up there?” For those that get used to following this, it’s tough because truth can be boring. Truth doesn’t necessarily have all the shiny stuff on it.
The truth is this bridge needs to be replaced or it’s going to fall down. Repair or replace the bridge but it’s not as good if it falls down. It’s not as good if you reported falling down and if somebody gets hurt, it might be even better if someone gets killed. We’re regrettably allowing things to break more so we can cover more. It’s like, “Can we just fix it.” Why do you want to fix a criminal justice system? It creates wreckage all along with the system. You want to cover the news of wreckage of people’s lives and have traumatic stories and you had to spend eight years in jail because it was unjust or a small arrest. It was the letter of the law but it was not a just or fair use of the taxpayer dollar. I want to argue that all day on a news media show because I am not interested in the truth, fixing what the truth is, justice or proportionality. I just want to cover the trauma.
That’s disheartening but it’s true, isn’t it? It’s the media. According to the cliché, “The squeaky wheel gets the grease.” It’s squeaky wheel reporting because that’s what gets the attention. I’m happy to admit that I was wrong. I don’t have to always be right, unlike some people in the White House. I thought these news outlets were not going to even consider a retraction. They weren’t going to give it any oxygen because if you look at what the message says on its face, it undercuts the credibility of the reporting.
Each of these media outlets has done over pretty much since the election. They allowed other people to come on their airwaves and speak the stuff that was far from the truth to serve their own purpose. Their opinion hosts, I’m talking about the Sean Hannity’s, the Tucker Carlson’s, the Laura Ingraham’s, and the Lou Dobbs’ of Fox voiced opinion that this stuff was true about this machine’s flipping votes and it fed into the narrative they wanted to propagate. In the irony of ironies to me, undercutting their credibility of what they’ve said is not near as important as getting more eyeballs because that’s what this retraction is doing for them now.
Does journalism stop at the person that has an opinion? The answer these days is yes.
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They’re proving that they weren’t things and then they could say, “It was breaking news back then. We were reporting what people were saying to us. People were saying to us it was a fraud.” You reported what people said. They seem like they’re credible. They were on TV once, so they’re credible. That doesn’t make them credible. Does journalism stop at the person that has an opinion? The answer these days is yes. It doesn’t stop a convincing opinion. There are even documentaries that have done that were all these people with convincing opinions. It’s not fully true and backed by science.
What’s more to the point, their opinions feed into their viewer’s biases. It confirms their biases.
“I am going to discard any person of authority because it’s not as important as the marketing eyeballs that I’m going to get because that’s where my ad revenue is coming from.” This is the system. The question is, how do you empathize with somebody on the losing side of it? How do you communicate compassionately to somebody that gets stuck in that corner? You’ve got to be able to say, “I can see how that thing was a truth for you and that got you fired up. I can see how other people are of the opposite opinion of that and how you’re mad because there are people on the other side. You prefer to open the economy rather than meet the need for health and protection for people.
You want financial peace because you want to protect the small business owner, but you’re not interested in protecting the mom or the dad that could get this disease or the person that could die from this early. You’re interested in keeping the economy alive versus that. Is that what you’re saying to me?” That’s boring news but at least it’s truthful. You can still use empathy to create conflict if you’d like.
It’s like, “They’re doing like this and look at how fired they are up there,” and then turn your microphone right over and say, “This group is fired up about it this way.” Come back to the center and saying, “What would best serve the nation?” It’s turning us into a United States again instead of state versus state, which is what identity politics has turned into. Texas is challenging four other states’ elections. It’s like, “Let’s see if we could get four other states to challenge Texas’ elections. Let’s take California, New York, Washington, Massachusetts, or something like that.” They’re going to challenge voter suppression in Texas and we’re going to file a lawsuit to do that.” Texas will go, “We don’t want you to mess with us.” It’s like, “Why are you trying to mess with others?”
State-by-state brings us back to a bit of the local identity and team identity to an extent. That’s a good segue into what I think our readers should enjoy this next segment of the show. Saturday Night Live did a skit where it was all about team sports, the Jets. The Jets, this season, have been at the basement of the league. They hadn’t won a game. They’re 11 and 1 or 12 and 1 or something. It may be worse toward the end of the season. The skit was as if they’re news reporting about the Jets and talking to people they’re interviewing about the score or their records like, “You think the Jets are 1 win and 11 losses. No. That’s not true.” They did things like, “Who did the scoring at that game? Who tabulated the score results? Is it the NFL? Do you think that they know what they’re doing?” I can’t even describe it well. I was crying and laughing through the thing because it played into what you and I have talked about many times on this show. It’s about how the team identity and the support for your team very much parallel support for your political candidates.
The need for loyalty is valuable for a team identity to grow. You’ve got to be loyal to the team. One part of the skit that still cracks me up is like, “In the first quarter, they were up 3 to 0 and all of these other points came in from who knows where.” The game wasn’t over yet, the election at the time wasn’t done yet and the votes weren’t fully counted but the first quarter was three and up. Clearly, the Jets won because of all these votes that came in the first quarter. It was a little sad and maddening. It’s a great way that comedy looks at this thing at the same time to pursue truth when the President makes a claim like, “Look at all the votes that I had before 3 AM, and where did all these votes come in?”
That’s the way the voting thing works. The people that voted in person are the ones that give you the numbers and then the mail-in votes take a little while because they made them count it on the same day. If they made them count it ahead of time, the numbers would have been a lot closer all the way through the evening. They didn’t allow them to count them early. They waited for the day of. They go, “No, we’re going to count them the day of.” It’s like, “We’ve got them sitting over here. We could count them. They’re all votes.”
Isn’t that amazing that had every state allowed their votes to be counted before election day, to be tabulated but not released, there would never have been this narrative or appearance that Donald Trump was leading by a large margin in a lot of states. Joe Biden is ahead in all these states. It would have been overwhelming. A lot more people would have been convinced on November 3, 2020 that he won the election. That is one of the best parts of this SNL skit where they’re saying, “Look at the first quarter, the Jets clearly won this game. I don’t know what happened after that and where all these mysterious points came from later on.” I don’t care who your sports team, who your favorites are, or your political leanings, ideology, or whatever. If you look at this, it’s funny but what’s sad in some ways is the skit is illuminating the truth of the reality as an analogy of the bias and go, “I guess they were just scoring and tabulating all the results.” The game wasn’t over on election day.
The game is over when the percentages and the tallies are in and the votes were certified. They keep thinking that the game is going in the other direction. People can stop it in Congress but there are not even enough votes there to be able to stop the certification. It’s like, “What are you going to do between here and there?”
Not only did all the states certify the votes but the Electoral College has voted. The Electoral College vote came down exactly how it was expected to based on what had been reported about the states’ votes. On January 6th, 2021, Congress meets to officially certify the votes. Ironically, Mike Pence says, “The leader of the Senate being Vice President is the person that’s going to have to bless or finally certify the election for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.” There are senators and congresspeople on the right talking about challenging this certification of the vote on January 6th.
The reality is they don’t have enough votes to stop it and to prevent it from happening. Mitch McConnell and the leadership of both in the House and the Senate have come out and said, “We need to embrace Joe Biden as President-elect, move on for the good of the country.” They don’t want to have a vote, which is what might be forced upon them, to have all these Republican senators go on record voting against Donald Trump on that day. If enough senators make noise about this, they have the ability to force the Republican leadership to have more of a prominent and notable vote where they all have to go on record in order to carry out their constitutional duty. They’re trying to avoid that. That’s an interesting thing that’s going to play out here.
I felt disheartened as I hear you say that because they all have been on record with the impeachment. They voted on party lines. There is a Georgia vote with the two senators coming up which is another part that’s in the play here. The amount of pain, suffering between here and when January 20th shows up is extraordinary. I’m slowing down to get a hold of how difficult it’s going to be and how much work it’s going to take to restore trust, collaboration, and cooperation. When there’s so much money in the mix and when loyalty has been stoked hard, it’s going to be difficult to see what the next 8 to 12 years are going to look like in our lifetime. We’re in the fight to restore and get enough propaganda around the truth.
know this is the weirdest sentence to say but truth has to be sold in such a way that if you’re not being truthful, there’s got to be a heavy consequence for it. Right now, there’s not a heavy consequence. You can vote on an impeachment thing. Lindsey Graham says, “If this same thing happens, I will not take the vote.” He does exactly the opposite and paid no political price for it. He did not get a vote if there was one way to vote him out. The guy has got no integrity. He said one thing over here and he’s saying this over here, and the State of South Carolina pick loyalty to Lindsey Graham over integrity, truth, and respect.
They said, “We’re going with loyalty. Lindsey Graham is loyal to the President and there’s enough of us in this state to have him elected.” The cost for lying is not as expensive and the cost for truth is not as valuable. It’s a little unsettling because we know what the markers for the game are. You can’t even speak up for truth and get any points for being truth against loyalty. That is something we have not seen for the longest time. The need for truth is not a prize. It’s unsettling because the media is smiling all the way. They’re able to collect eyeballs on both sides and they don’t care about truth because the truth isn’t paying. If the truth had greater value then the eyeballs would follow it. Sensationalism and loyalty bias is the one that’s winning over truth. There’s a way out, empathize with it and try to move past it, but it’s hard. Regrettably, there are not enough skilled people in media to language their way through it and there are not enough skilled people in politics to be able to language. They don’t know what to say when somebody is blatantly lying at them anymore.
Let’s pivot to our third section which you alluded to. We have this election in Georgia that is the control of the Senate hangs in the balance of that election. There were dueling rallies. There was one with Kamala Harris for the Democrats and Ivanka Trump organized or she was the purported organizer that was for both David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler. Kelly Loeffler was on the podium on the stage talking to this rally crowd. As she took the stage, something notable happened, and it was recorded. Kelly Loeffler took the stage and she’s trying to start speaking to communicate her message, whatever that message was. I say that because we don’t know what her message was.
She wasn’t able to give her message because as she took the stage, the crowd was chanting like, “Fight for Donald Trump,” over and over. She can’t even get a word in edgewise. She says, “You’re right,” and she’s holding up her number one finger trying to get the crowd to calm down. She finally thinks that she’s going to be able to start speaking and then they start yelling like, “Stop the steal.” It’s remarkable that she had no skill to control the crowd to give them any empathy or recognition and then be able to say something about her. This example shows that the crowd was more interested in fighting for Donald Trump in an election he’s already lost than they were. What they should be focused on is these candidates and making sure they elect them so that the Democrats don’t get control of the Senate. You want to check out that video if you haven’t seen it already. Bill, if you were advising Kelly Loeffler, is there anything she could have done better to purchase the crowd back to get control of her own rally.
If she would have hung around two words, she would have been safe and would have got control of the crowd. If she would have hung around at first, she needed to hang around justice and fairness. For example, when they’re yelling, “Stop the steal,” she could say, “I hear your anger. I hear that you want justice and fairness. The President wants fairness and justice the way he sees it too.” They would go, “Yes,” and they would stop chanting. The “stop the steal” was you need to hear that we’re angry because we’ve been sold on justice and fairness.
They haven’t been sold on truth but they’ve been sold on justice and fairness. They haven’t been sold on truth because they recounted the votes three times in the state by hand. It’s like, “You already recounted this three times. We’ve looked at the scoreboard.” If Kelly Loeffler assigns justice and fairness to the way the President sees it, that satisfies loyalty. Whether or not she could do anything about it or if she does anything when she gets there like, “Elect me first and take your best bet.” All of the people in the rally are already voting for her. She’s got to worry about the ones that are watching this video. She doesn’t have to worry about the chanter. She’s got to worry about how this does look in media.
In reality, the way it looks says she is catering to the most radical fringe of her party. That’s not going to help her in the middle.
They say stop the stealing. They got people in the middle going like, “We’ve counted this three times.” Many people in the middle’s logical mind have come online. They’re going like, “Georgia has already certified their election. We’ve lost the game here.” The people in the middle are back to the rational place. As she leaned into them, she didn’t need their vote. She already has their vote. Those are all fans. She’s got to hear them and then look more rational than they do.
If somebody speaks in truth, then that gets more points than ten messages of false, points of view, or smaller versions of the truth.
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That’s hard to do for her at that moment. She didn’t succeed at that.
She looked like she couldn’t communicate over and couldn’t lead that group. It’s like, “I hear you feel angry and you want me to fight for justice and fairness the way the President sees it. The President has been a fighter from the beginning. I’ll fight for you too.” Now she’s got a shot. When she turns around or she’s on the pole later, she says, “I was one of the votes.” That’s the way it works too. They say, “Fight for Donald Trump,” that’s a need for being heard. You would like me to hear how furious you feel. If she puts the word furious in that crowd, they’ll start to calm down. It’s like, “I hear you feel furious and you would like me to hear how important it is for making sure that every vote counts. In Georgia, we count every vote. That’s what we do. Get out there and vote to make sure your vote is counted.” If you notice, I avoided the whole thing.
If she did that, she could help them realize, “Not enough of us and not enough of our team voted in the last election.” That created this result of, “Therefore we need everyone to get out and vote.”
All she did was get pelted by slogans and sentences. Branding overshadows the truth. Is Tide the best soap on the shelf? I know that Tide was the first soap example that came into my head and that was the brand that showed up. Is it better than Oxiclean? I don’t know what the truth is. They’ve done such a good job of branding that Tide is plastered on my brain. When I’m looking to purchase things, is it a price point? Is it the color of the Jag? Is it the way they do numbers of loads inside this thing and causing wacky math to show up in my head? I’m going like, “I’m not calculating how much of this money is versus how many loads this does. You’re making me think here.”
That’s the whole point of branding. If a confused mind wants to go to the habit, it doesn’t want to rethink a branding decision. People don’t want to rethink Donald Trump. They’re already loyal to Donald Trump and the Republican cell for many years. Since Ronald Reagan has been selling, “The government is bad,” that group of people has been buying the phrase, “Government is bad. Therefore, starve the beast. We’re not going to spend money on the government, we’re not going to help people in this way, we’re not going to do XYZ, and try to bring our society. We’re not doing it.” The dismantling of the great society, taxing the rich, buying all the social programs and getting our society to have a middle class turned into affluence in the ‘80s, ‘90s, and early 2000s.
Even with the crashes that went there, we did good as economies but all of a sudden, we’re sucking air because there’s a belief that the government is bad. Meanwhile, the government is the foundation of the floor that capitalism sits on, and people don’t get that. That’s what it does. That’s the foundation. It’s the floor that it sits on. It’s like, “This is the house, the foundation is the government and the house is what capitalism is on top of it.” How difficult is that concept? They don’t get that and they’re like, “That foundation is bad. We should not fix the foundation.”
We’re back to the squeaky wheel.
I feel disheartened that a lot of politicians don’t have communication skills, the ability to empathize on the fly and to be able to be present to the questions being asked. They can have a point of view about what the tax rate is for rich people and stuff, how many social programs that you want to do or you want the government to do, or how to create a path that’s going to help America’s rebuilding of the middle class which is the next thing that’s up for us. If our kids are up to it, they’ve got to fight for like, “We need to rebuild this middle class.” There’s everything from unions that can come back to other forms of things. An unloyal worker is always a talented person going to get the most money. All they’ve got to do is shop and businesses are going to suck air because of it. That affects stability. We’ve got to work on fixing our stability and infrastructure as if this is not a mystery. That leads us to where we are going with the truth.
As Joe Biden and Kamala Harris comes in, watch the smallest little mistake they make. The smallest mistakes get amplified to level ten because there’s not a sacredness around the truth. We’ve got to restore a sacredness and a high value around the truth. If somebody speaks in truth then that gets more points than ten messages of false, points of view, or smaller versions of the truth. I don’t know how our society is going to get off the crack cocaine of this media blitz. I’m not sure how we’re going to break the news addiction because it doesn’t look like it’s changing soon.
The demand for eyeballs is being fueled. There’s a demand for information and these media outlets want to supply it. It’s their business. It’s the old cliché that the train wreck gets a lot more attention than that train moved smoothly and efficiently through town. I hardly even noticed it.
There was something that went by me and it’s like you’re sitting there watching it. We need to do a little bit of work. That’s the growth of integrity, mutual respect, and being able to engage. What need are we going to get met as a nation? What do we want the USA to look like in the next years? That’s what we’re up to next.
I enjoyed this episode and I want to remind everybody to please check out that SNL skit video. You’re going to enjoy it on its face. Hopefully, you’ll see what we saw in it that imitating life may be revealing more truth about it than we realized. Thank you, everybody.
Important Links:
- Kelly Loeffler – video
- https://YouTu.be/GP_K5czbny4
- https://www.Google.com/amp/s/www.businessinsider.com/newsmax-airs-election-fraud-correction-video-lawsuit-dominion-smartmatic-2020-12%3famp
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