Election Day is approaching, and with it comes the inevitable and mind-numbing frustration created by American corporate media. And while the ads and the repetition will make us all want to throw things at the TV and launch our phones and tablets into the stratosphere, that’s not the worst of it. The worst of it will come from a media ecosystem that is entirely addicted to conflict and division, so much so that when they can’t get their fix from standard left/right hate, they’ll create conflict within groups and then report on the left-on-left or right-on-right dustups they create. And the tool they most often use to create this conflict is an old and trusty political trick called the binary argument.
My own favorite binary political argument happened when George Bush wanted to invade Iraq and seize Iraqi oil after 9/11. I still remember the speech. He told us very sternly that we were in grave danger due to the “weapons of mass destruction” that never existed, and then he said it:
“Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.”
That’s how it works. We offer only two choices, and then we make one of those choices so awful that everyone must support the other. And at the same time, we also eliminate every other argument simply by refusing to acknowledge that they exist. So, in this case, even though the overwhelming majority is both anti-war and anti-terrorism, we force them into the pro-war camp simply by telling them that doing anything else makes them terrorists also.
And it worked. Bush’s war for oil started out with massive approval among the American population, and only a very few of our representatives fought back against the cooked-up narrative. And when a young Senator with a foreign-sounding name voted against the war, it was called the end of his political career. That Senator was Barack Obama, and while things ended up working out pretty well for him, he took a lot of heat for that vote, and most of it had all the racist undertones we have since come to expect from our friends and neighbors.
This tactic is so common these days that it’s become a bit of a journalistic easy button, something anyone with a deadline can use to drum up clicks and views. And even though the election is still months away, some are getting a head start on the post-election divisive chatter by driving a wedge right through the middle of the struggling working class. It sounds a bit like this:
1. Moderates and independent “swing” voters want us to focus on the affordability crisis.
2. Lefties want investigations and accountability for Trump and his crime family.
The idea is that we can do one, or the other, but not both. Therefore, we should focus on the affordability crisis as the more urgent of the two concerns. We’ll basically be told that if we focus on Trump, working families will suffer. And if we haven’t seen this argument on cable news yet, just know that it’s coming, and soon. And when it comes, it will come from left-friendly places, and it will be the dominant post-election narrative because that’s how we give ourselves permission to once again let the Epstein Class off the hook. And if Trump isn’t impeached, this is the reason we will be force-fed, not by the talking heads, but by the billionaires that own them.
So, before the nonsense begins, let me be perfectly clear. Affordability and accountability are and must remain linked, and any attempt to separate them is intentional, and certainly driven by the very people seeking to avoid accountability. And here’s the worst part – it’s going to work. Most of the criminals will walk, though our imaginary justice system might serve up a scapegoat or two. But it’s unlikely that any of them will be named Trump. And the reason for this is simple: While individual Americans are both smart and patriotic, We the People are easily led and largely motivated by fear. Create a binary, make one of the choices scary, and then just watch us all fall in line.
I’m not much of a betting man, but if I were, this is where my money would be.
Brett Pransky is a writer, a teacher, a father, and a husband, but rarely in that order. He spends his days amplifying the voices of freedom and democracy as an Editor right here at The Political Voices Network, and he spends his nights trying to fix the world one clever sentence at a time.