Glenn Beck (6:30)
I want to prevent abuse from the government. I want fairness. You want fairness. Let's start there. But let's start with the facts here. Okay? This is the part that you instinctively might understand. Okay. It's why our. It's why that monologue with the two points of view actually works. If you can honestly hold two truths at once, you can make all kinds of progress. Okay? And that is one. Yeah. You should fear the government. You should fear the government. You should fear the government. Overreach. Our founders were against that. Our founders warned us that government is fire. So, yeah, okay, there's one truth, and I'm with you on that. Are you also worried about violent crime and children being raped? Because I know you are. You're my daughter, you're my son. I know you. That is important. Those two things can be true, and it's in that space where we can have a dialog. Some people are not going to be reached, you know, in the moment. Some people are just. I mean, if there's a. If there's a camera, it's over. Okay? When identity and ego and audience combine, the persuasion rate drops almost to zero. So in that case, if there is a camera, the person that you are trying to appeal to is not the person yelling. This is really important. If a camera is rolling, you are no longer this is Martin Luther King. You are no longer trying to persuade the person who. You're. Who's yelling at you. You're. You're now arguing for the people who are watching who don't. Haven't fully made up their minds yet. They don't know they can be persuaded. That's where minds move. So once there's a camera, stop performing for that person and start understanding the audience that you're trying to attract and to appeal to are the reasonable people who still have an open mind and want to see which one is going to act like a normal human being. Okay? You don't break through by shouting louder than the crowd. You break through by speaking to the person who is standing quietly behind the crowd, wondering, is there another way to see the world than these two points of view? Because that's what we're trying to do. So let me tell you the three stories that happened in the parking lot in Minnesota. No battlefield, no courtroom, no history book, just a parking lot. Three different stories happening at the same time. Layer one, the activist. She sees agents with badges and unmarked cars. She didn't see safety. She sees power. Now, maybe she's watched videos for years that convince her that our government is, you know, is just abusing people and killing people. Maybe she believes the weak are always one step away from being crushed by the system or whatever. So she steps forward, camera in hand. She thinks she's doing something brave. She believes she's standing between the vulnerable and the machine. And when the agent says, we're looking for somebody accused of raping children, her mind is not going to process this information. It processes that information as some sort of justification. Because once trust is gone, every explanation sounds like an excuse. She doesn't trust them. She doesn't trust. So it doesn't matter what they say. Layer two, the agents now step into the agent's shoes for a second. They're not seeing ideology. They're seeing names on warrants, reports, victims, paperwork that says someone dangerous might be close by. They're thinking about the people who don't get interviews on social media. The child harm, the family that lost somebody, the victim who doesn't get their camera pointed their way to them. Interruption is not a protest. It feels like obstruction, Especially when people are chanting death threats to them. So when somebody says, I don't care, that lands on them as a punch. Because from their side of the glass, this isn't about politics. It's about prevention and stopping somebody who has raped a child. Now, the third participant in this, the silent Majority. And that's everybody else. The people who are watching this clip later that night, the mom doing dishes, the dad, you know, scrolling, you know, in the garage, the teenager trying to figure out what the truth even looks like anymore. And they watch one version of the video and they think, how could somebody defend that? Then they watch another version and they think, how did we get to a country where this feels normal? They're not radicals. The third group is tired. And all they're trying to do is decide which fear is bigger, the fear of unchecked power or the fear of rising chaos. Okay, that's the real story here. All three, all three perspectives are completely incomplete. All three of those. The activists might be missing the victims, the agents might be missing the distrust that people feel that's legitimate. And the audience is at home. They're being asked to choose a side before they've even heard the whole story. It's who makes. Who appeals to their emotions. Because modern media rewards emotion first, context much, much later. If context comes at all. It's all about how does it make you feel? And civilizations collapse when people stop believing the other side could possibly be acting in good faith. When every disagreement becomes proof of evil, when every fact becomes propaganda, when empathy becomes surrender. So maybe the question isn't who won the argument in the parking lot? Maybe the question is how many people watched it? How many people became a little more certain that their fellow Americans are the enemy? Because if that number keeps rising, the parking lot isn't just the beginning. Okay, so how do you talk to these people? You've got to start where they are, not where you want them. You know, most people encounter that story on both sides through empathy. A man detained far from home, harsh conditions, wife speaking publicly, dogs waiting for him. If you begin with your being manipulated, you lose people instantly. Instead, start with empathy. I understand why people feel sympathy for this guy because, I mean, nobody likes the idea of somebody sitting in detention for months, you know, not knowing what's going on. His wife, what did she do? The dogs. I get it. You're not surrendering here. You're lowering the temperature so you can add some things to the pot. Okay, then you have to introduce the missing frame, not the attack. Don't say, but he's a bad guy. Say, can we widen the frame here? Can we just for a second, let's step back and look at a bigger picture here. He overstayed a 90 day visa by many, many years. Final order of removal came from a judge. The opportunity for him to leave was available to him, the reason why he didn't want to go back is because he had drug related charges in Ireland. Also, he abandoned his daughter. Saying the daughters are. Saying they're abandoned and unsupported. I mean, you're a daughter. If dad would have left and left mom alone for 18 years. No child support, no nothing. Nothing. Doesn't that need to be included in this? Widen the frame. When, when you say let. Can we just widen the frame a little bit? I agree with what you're seeing. Let's widen the frame just a little bit. That is showing. I believe in fairness. I'm not going to dismiss everything you say. I, I see what you're saying. And then shift from the person to the pattern. This is a critical move. If you focus only on him, people will think you're arguing immigration policy. Instead, you need to say, this is not about one man. This is about how stories get built. Okay, the first narrative. Wife plus dogs plus detention. Compassion. That's what it equals. You add the missing details, the perception changes. People rarely resist. When you make it about media literacy or rather than politics. Nobody trusts the media. Use the terms. Both things can be true. This is, this is so critical because it breaks the binary thinking which we're all trained. There's only right or wrong.