Labels And Diagnoses: How They Trap You

How do labels and diagnoses affect voters? Based on how President Donald Trump is delivering his messages, it can steer people’s belief in the shortest time possible. In this episode, Bill Stierle and Tom talk about the dangers of labels and diagnoses. They talk about how these things affect arguments and stir up emotions that manifest in our actions. They point out how people’s self-worth is attached to Trump as an example. Join Bill and Tom as they have another interesting conversation on label problems and how others, especially democrats, are taking the labeling bait.

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We’ve seen a lot of labels thrown around in the media. That would be a great thing to touch on.

The danger of labels and diagnoses, we’ve covered in a previous episode. The big part about that now is that labels and diagnoses as you continue to say, use them and not convert those labels and diagnoses to the root cause of why the person is saying the thing that you’re calling, whether it’s racism, bipolar, narcissist or whatever label and diagnoses that you put on the person. What happens is the other side that is being called that label and diagnoses gets to argue with you. It’s strange but they’ll say, “No, I’m not,” because you’re not arguing for the subtexts about what the person is saying. You’re trying to prove the context if the label fits. You’re arguing facts again. You can’t argue the facts. The fact is that my guy is not a racist because I’m not a racist and I voted for him. I’m not a racist, but I believe in what he’s doing. Look at all the great things he’s doing.

Let’s put a little context on this because what we’re talking about is the President launched a typical tweetstorm, a series of tweets where he was criticizing these particular US representatives in the House of Representatives. He’s telling them among other things that they should go back to where they came from, run those countries, come back and tell us how to do it here in the US. I’m paraphrasing. I’m not literally quoting this thing. It was largely viewed as a thinly-veiled racist message. When you talk about derogatory terms that were used especially in the early twentieth century for immigrants, people without papers and coming from other countries, they were often said, “Go back to where you came from. You’re not supposed to be here. You’re not an American.” That’s the basis of what a lot of people and certainly the media latched onto at first. This is the reality of media, this 24-hour news cycle. They immediately see and respond to it and labeled it as racist.

People had been working themselves up to as some of the newscasters are starting to get around to is like, “When he came down the escalator, I called it at the beginning. That’s a dog whistle.” There’s another label. “That’s a trope.” That’s another problem there. The problem is you’ve got to talk about what kind of racism is it and have that in the same narrative. It’s okay to use a label so you get off the label quickly. Don’t stay on the label because what happens is it gives the other side a margin of argument. Is this a racism that is based on mutual respect? Talk about mutual respect. Do not talk about racism anymore. This is racist. It doesn’t meet the need for mutual respect as American looks like.

That would be very different.

I’m talking about the right thing. This statement has racism because it doesn’t meet the need for fairness. Here’s what fairness looks like for all Americans. The President is dividing us with that phrase because it’s not about fairness. You come back to the root of what the heart of the conversation is. Do not stay in the label of racist because it’s racist or not racist.

Where’s the line? How much does someone have to do to be a racist or are we now going to have classes of your level one racist?

It’s like the gradation of and this is why the dictionary keeps changing and adding new words. This is why the DSM-5, the diagnosis manual for psychologists keeps adding new labels and diagnoses because we’re trying to describe and put a label on behavior and the nuance of behavior. Here’s a great example. Here’s a term that’s not used anymore in diagnosis because the construct of it is lost, neurotic. They’re neurotic. That person is neurotic, hysteric or hysterical.

Hysterical resonates with me because if you understand the root of the word hysteria or hysterical, it was a medical term at the time. It was a diagnosis.

Hysterectomy is I’m taking out a woman’s part because this is causing her hysteria. It’s very scary and it’s surreal words. Words create emotion because they activate the needs of ours and those needs cause the feeling to activate inside our body. It happens so instantly that the person’s brain can’t get ahold of it and have a quality discussion or a civil discourse to take place between the two different people. The candidates are fundamentally making the mistakes and they’re walking into the labeled trap. Candidates don’t know that they’re running against language usage. They don’t know that’s what they’re doing.

That’s a light bulb moment right there in case anyone didn’t realize it. The candidates don’t know they’re running against language.

They don’t know that they’re running about language positioning. They don’t know it because all you’ve got to do is flip to Senator Kamala Harris. She says, “Yes, that’s racist.” That’s the only snippet she’s getting. If she pulls it back and somebody asks the racist question and she says, “Mutual respect for American’s look like, fairness for Americans looks like.” She gains points and votes because she’s not doing what everybody else is doing, calling my guy a racist.

Don't stay on the label because what happens is it gives the other side a margin of argument.

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We’ve talked about Kamala Harris before because she’s an attorney and a prosecutor. That’s a little bit of a problem for her. She’s largely a black and white thinker.



There’s some black and white thinking going on here. All or none thinking that takes place in that mindset is you are innocent until you’re proven guilty. While I have all these points of guiltiness but notice how that doesn’t make a difference for the voter who has already put their identity and hook their identity wagon onto Donald Trump. They’ve hooked the identity. My self-worth is attached to him. My truth is attached to him. That’s how he’s purchased truth. The voters do not know that they’ve been sold by language messaging. The guy is a great sizzle. He’s the sizzle king. He sells sizzle. We’re not even talking about his steaks but he sells sizzle.

We’re not talking about his time in the WWF. He’s the sizzle guy.

That small label changes to here is how he’s activating the needs for identity that is causing the person to anticipate that their identity will fill better when he’s in the Oval Office rather than the other person that is being cast as the enemy, that is the Democrat.

Those Democrats and Lindsey Graham did the same thing. They’re communists. He’s reaching for a very old label. That’s why we didn’t like the Russians before, but now that they’re oligarchs and it’s run as an authoritarian state, that’s okay? It’s okay to have Benito Mussolini in there instead. Is that what’s okay now? Yeah, because we have our own authoritarian person. Many voters are interested in extending trust as the leader because they appreciate the person who has the power to fire people and that has the wealth and privilege that they don’t have. I’d rather put my identity behind that person.

Here comes the problem with the label is that if you are a white nationalist or a racist and the President is called a racist, you’re like, “Okay, so what?” If you’re someone who is among the people that voted for Donald Trump, he’s your guy and you’re like, “I’m not a racist.” They don’t want to believe that the guy they voted for is a racist either. It’s either you are or you aren’t. You’re on the team with the racist or you’re not. If you’re on the team, you’re going to be defensive saying that tweet wasn’t racist. The argument becomes, was that statement a racist statement or was it not? Instead of talking about what an awful statement and position, what he said was in a more nuanced way and a more compassionate way. This makes perfect sense to me. The Democrats missed a huge opportunity.

They had him on seven different angles that they could have all picked. One could have picked the fairness angle. One could have picked the mutual respect angle. One could have picked how support looks like. One could have picked what justice would look like. They’ve already got four of them. Somebody could have picked identity. Is this the identity the American wants to go to? What they were doing is, it’s small movements of votes from one side to the other side. It’s not you’re going to say the definitive sentence and that’s going to move you over. That’s not the way it works. It’s small messages done over a period of time, which gets people to buy things that don’t work. Many Americans still buy things that don’t work. They buy things and pay too much money for them because they’ve been sold the sizzle. There’s no stake there. There’s no product or service there. They paid money for something they got nothing from. That allows the rich person to sell the same thing. It gives them an opportunity to pollute the environment, justify it and referenced to profit. It gives them that opportunity to do that.

The President seemingly shot himself in the foot or should have with this tweetstorm, which now has been labeled as racist. There’s an argument going on about whether it’s racist or not and people are aligning on one side of the other. The Democrats seemingly didn’t do themselves any favors either because the four US representatives or members of the US House of Representatives have also been labeled. Maybe they did it themselves. That didn’t help them either. You have Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. These four US freshmen representatives, all people of color in one way or another, all US citizens, although one wasn’t born in the US have labeled themselves as the squad.

It’s problematic. It’s disappointing that they’ve picked that brand or that label to go by the squad because the squad or the team is not claiming any respect or any brand identity that’s going to work. Regrettably, America runs on branded product purchasing because that’s what capitalism is all about. It works on using words in certain ways and it’s using certain labels and diagnoses in a certain way to say, “This is what Coca-Cola looks like and this is what Pepsi looks like. Those other colas are not very good colas, they’re just colas within their special formula.” Integrity plays into this thing because the integrity of a conversation is internal that can turn into a very strong external powerful conversation by saying, “This is what justice looks like. This is what support for the immigrants look like.” We’re not breaking the rules. We’re not opening the gates, but support for human life looks like. What support for human looks like for a person that is fleeing a country that their son is being recruited to be in a gang to deliver drugs and they’re twelve. What the support for that mother and her son looks like is a bed, food and a shower to start. That’s what it looks like. Do you think I could get a few votes?

Yeah, I’m sure you could.

That’s an integrity conversation. Integrity conversation is allowing the language to help you deliver the message and not get caught in the wall or no wall, border or no border, problem or no problem.

Are you with the squad or are you not with the squad? Are you in the squad or are you out of the squad? This squad label is going to be a barrier to fellow representatives in the House supporting them as much as they otherwise would. Are they going to be willing to be labeled as a member of the squad? Is this the Jets and the Sharks again? Where are we here?

It is the Jets and the Sharks. It is the two different gang members. It’s interesting that this whole stirring of this thing took place right before the Mueller testimony. If it was happening after the testimony, think about somebody that is doing sizzle narrative. The sizzle narrative is, “I’m turning the stake onto the other side. I’m turning another steak over here.” They’re moving from what message are they turning to make sizzle and get you to look over to that other steak, “I’m looking at this other steak.” The problem is that it keeps us away from having an integrity conversation about one of them. One of the stakes is not being these things. All it’s doing is sizzling on one side and smelling good to a brain that’s hungry for identity. America is hungry for identity. We don’t have one right now.

Is it going to be white or is it going to be based on respect? Is it going to be just white or is it going to be based in fairness? Is it going to be white or is it going to be based in justice? Justice to me would look like people of color are being locked up at the rate they’re being locked and what they’re being locked up for and how they’re being locked up doesn’t meet the need for justice or the need for fairness, let alone respect and truth. It’s not being looked up that way. If somebody does or says something or plans a bank heist and gets caught with all the things that they’re doing to plan the bank heist, that’s called collusion, “I’m going to do that. I got caught with all the things or conspiracy to commit a crime.” If they are tampering with witnesses, that’s called obstruction. Anybody else that was a different color or had a different job is going to be struggling with jail right now. He is a master of stretching out and making the courts and everyone else get tired and getting off the hook. I don’t know what’s going to happen. Will the court in New York, the Southern District, try him? They might do it.

America runs on branded-product purchasing because that's what capitalism is all about.

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I don’t know if I’m going to get that, but I sure am going to look for it. Whether it’s a Republican or a Democrat, I need the integrity, fairness, justice and truth person to show up and I’ll vote for them. The other one that doesn’t look like a strong leader, even if they’re a Democrat, if the other person looks stronger, they look like they can get it done. I watch them vote to see if they do and I’ll vote them out next time. If I’m guided from the inside, my integrity is pretty good. If I’m guided by labels and diagnosis and even if I put myself in a label and diagnosis box, I’ve got to get out of that quick. I go, “We represent and we are standing for mutual respect, which looks like we need a conversation that stands for stability, that stands for these three values, mutual respect, justice and fairness.”



That black and white thinking or labeling and diagnosis, let’s take Kamala Harris as an example because she’s the obvious one. She is a person of color and she came out and said the statement was racist. She is putting herself in that place. Is that thinking and language being used eventually going to trip her up and hurt her more than help her rather than saying, “That doesn’t meet Americans’ need for justice and justice would look like this or might look like this?” Is it eventually going to spiral down to somewhere that’s not going to work?

If she doesn’t get off the label and diagnosis soon and onto the value that’s affecting her emotional, her message and her delivery will start to look jumpy. Donald Trump’s message is stable.

There’s a cognitive dissonance right there, “Donald Trump’s message is stable.”

It’s a very stable identity message. This is not what America looks like when it’s great. We’re great and when we’re great, we’re compliant. That is what he is messaging.

Compliant with what?

To the power and authority that you have given me and because I’m your leader, you’ve got to hand over unquestioned trust because I hold the truth. Don’t believe those cameras. Don’t believe what you’re seeing. It’s tough wreckage. He started an internal cold war. What would happen if somebody asks you, “Tom, there’s a group of people, a friend of mine. She has an American sister but her cousin is an illegal immigrant and this immigrant is filing their paperwork. Can they stay at your house because ICE knows where they live? Can they stay at your house for a couple of months?” That’s the question my friends and I asked around a circle, “Can they stay a couple of months?” The nice part about it is that we’re at least in a safe dialogue of what truth, integrity, justice are we standing for? We’re standing for due process of an immigrant. That’s what we’re standing for, not hiding an immigrant. We’re standing for a due process of an asylum seeker. What happens if they come to your door and they have guns? Would you be willing to give your life for that value or no? What happens if you lock the doors and they break it down?

Who are they? Are you talking about ICE?

ICE or it could be a police officer, a military person or whoever. It’s very dangerous narratives to say, “Go back to your country.” Meanwhile, I’m in my country. My response if I was one of those four women would be something like, “The President is feeling a little bit confused and a little bit frustrated that he’s not getting the support he would like for the wall he’s looking to build. He’s confused because I happen to be an American and this is my home. I don’t know what country I would go to because I’m fighting for the American values that I’m standing for, not necessarily my ethnicity. Ethnically, everybody can see that I come from an African-American background or I come from this background.”

They all could have stood up and said, “I come from this background.” It’s not the truth message, the fact message, “We’re all Americans.” It doesn’t stick. Empathy and compassion for the President would work much better. “It seems like the President is feeling angry, frustrated and aggravated because he’d like support regarding immigration. He seems like he feels a little confused because he’s mixing our identity as Americans with the color of our skin. He’s not seeing us as equal Americans because we are equal Americans to him.” Did you see how your brain is twisting around going like, “Who is teaching them messaging?” Their messaging is off. You don’t fight a tweet with an outrage to let that stick.

That’s not human nature.

As Gandhi would say, “Let’s not mix human nature with human conditioning.” Conditioning is different. Human nature is what you and I are doing right now. This is what human nature is. We’re having a wonderful and vibrant discussion about what American identity is. There are many countries around the world that make one religion their country’s religion. They have problems with that because they can’t get the diversity of vote they would like. They’re not taking the diversity of human beings. They’re saying, “Our country is this. Our country is not that.” When they do that and when they get that thing separated, what happens is they don’t know that when they do that and they don’t do the inclusion piece, it allows any other religious group to say, “You people over there, you’re not doing justice to other human beings and you’re taking advantage of other beings.”

The need for identity is valuable for us as human beings to know what we are fighting for.

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“See, I’ve been trying,” or something like that?



That’s the way you’re hearing it. Somebody who has voted for him says, “This gives me truth and evidence that he’s not a racist.” It’s a validation piece, it’s not a truth piece. That’s the way the brain works. That’s why I’m getting aggravated. I get aggravated because it’s the way truth works. It’s the way messaging works. Truth is easily rejected by many other needs. Identity is one of the strongest needs you can get people to redirect truth. If you get somebody hooked on identity or an individuality or sports team, they will argue about why a discussion about their team means that broadcasters are against that team.

It’s a very interesting idea to make the comparison between our current political climate and what is very American in sports, whether it’s the NFL or the MLB or the NBA or NHL, that alignment with a team that we all know. If you’re an NFL fan and you have your team, there are 32 teams, only one team is going to be the winner this year. Not everybody is going to be on the winning side.

We all know that in reality, but everybody wants to be on the winning team. When one team is accused of cheating, everybody who’s on that team is like, “Yeah, but.” It’s because that’s my team.

They’re looking for somebody to blame. That fan that is associated with the identity is in a blaming narrative. The biggest challenge that we’re facing here is how the people’s brains are getting hijacked to things that like Mitt Romney can’t say. That comment is a racist comment.

Do you hear him dance around that?

He has danced around that. He uses the word divisiveness or he’s going to say that these contents are not fit for the office. That doesn’t say, “The President doesn’t meet my need for respect because he said that. The President is not helping us with justice when he says things like that.”

Isn’t it interesting that the other Republicans are trying to avoid labeling the President as a racist because they feel that’s going to put them in a box for whatever reason?

They’re doing a good job of not using the label.

They’re not using it in a way that would give them the high ground.

They don’t want to take it on. They’re not using any language that’s going to give them anything that’s going to make them look a little bit better than the President because as soon as they become in line of sight with the next tweet. The emotion is courage, but the need is the ethic of being able to have an adult response to a tantrum. There are two different adult response to a tantrum. One is oppression. I can take this kid that’s upset in a restaurant and carry them out of the restaurant and wait for them to calm down. I can use an authoritarian experience to scare the crap out of them so that they calm down. Many times, that doesn’t work because the parent will have to pay for that later or nourishing the upset with words like mutual respect, fairness, integrity, truth and values.

You’ve got to go there because if you go in the other direction, it’s name-calling, “You’re a racist. I’m a racist. I’m not a racist. You’re a racist.” The word progressive turns into another label that they can throw in the direction. Now, you’ve taken what an optimal growth person would look like because progressive is not conservative. What is conservative? We’re stuck in a label. You see how my rant is getting more entangled like I’m stuck in spider webs right now?

It’s an interesting point that the Republicans are avoiding the label. The Democrats are taking the bait of the label. Each side could do a much better job communicating their point. Whether you’re trying to distance yourself from the President and what he said, or if you’re trying to help point out the true meaning of what the President has said in his tweet, while it may be racist, but here’s the bigger point. It missed opportunities all around.

There are a lot of missed opportunities language-wise to get us back to the center of the narrative. I know that in the past episode, we talked about how truth needs to focus on the centerpiece, not focused on the two images. We had an image that showed two different things and the cylinder or the center part of that image that was casting two different images is another example of racist, not racist. You’ve got to be careful about labels and diagnoses. They’re an interesting place to start. If you say, “This seems like it’s racist, but then get off of it.” What a respectful person would look like, what fairness would look like, what justice would look like.

What support would look like for immigrants or asylum seekers?

We could go on forever, but we’ve covered this point well. The reality is we’ve got to get to a point where people use language to get to the real issue and not get distracted or take the bait. This is part of what is making our discourse so divisive in this country right now. Thanks so much for that, Bill. I enjoyed that discussion, especially around a current event. I appreciate your perspective.

You’re welcome. The next time, we can dip into what is a one-to-one response to take places that here’s what they say, here’s what the next thing and what you can say next. That would make a big difference for people. Thanks, Tom. I appreciate getting on.