There are two kinds of people in the world: those who dichotomize, and those who don’t. In our current political season, however, it seems that there is an overwhelming majority of those who do. First and foremost is the division between “us” and “them,” by which, of course, the candidates mean to refer respectively to those nasty elephants on the hunt for another red November, and those feckless donkeys of the bleeding hearts looking to pin the tail and the blame somewhere good.
Then there is the old favorite of the distinction between the good guys and the bad guys, the Clint Eastwoods and the Lee Van Cleefs. This distinction is one that both candidates have been especially comfortable embracing, John Kerry foaming at the mouth to hunt down those nasty varmints as much as his swaggering political foe. Perhaps this bellicose attitude fits the times, although many of us were only moderately reassured when President Bush insistently reminded us last Thursday that he knew Osama bin Laden had attacked the U.S.
Next we have the distinction between the big corporations, especially the sinister masterminds of the drug companies and the evil geniuses of the insurance companies, and the good people of America’s middle class, who, as I know from the Johns, are constantly being squeezed. I can picture a political cartoon that would illustrate this for us, although I haven’t the talent to draw it: the nasty corporate man, looking very much like a less enervated, more maniacal version of Dick Cheney, dollar signs aglow in his eyes, reaching out to choke the terrified John Q. Public, pockets emptied, wishing he could take his job back from the cackling Indian in the background who stole his technical support job at IBM. After all, “outsourcing” is clearly the leading candidate for word of the year, miles ahead of Paris Hilton’s “hot” or that perennial favorite of a friend of mine, “heteroclite.” Any politician looking to do a half decent job of pandering in these times had better use it wisely.
At Wesleyan many people take this last distinction to its logical extension, and imagine that the fundamental dichotomy is between people who want to make the world more equal and just, and those who hope only to help themselves. In some cases there seems to be the belief that one is either a plutocrat or a democrat, and for the most naïve, this characteristic is manifested by whether one is a Republican or a Democrat. Those who support W. must either be crooked or stupid. (And, despite the ridiculous article in a recent Argus, George has plenty of defenders on campus.)
My point, of course, is that all of these dichotomies are false, in the logical sense of the word that means “not true.” (And they left out Eli Wallach!) The dichotomy with which I opened this column is as false as the rest, because everyone thinks this way some of the time. It is convenient. It allows us to speak and act with conviction. It allows us to quickly distinguish allies from enemies. These qualities must be either assets or liabilities, mustn’t they?
Well, no, the truth is that they are a thoroughly mixed blessing. Chances are, without this way of thinking, moral clarity of any sort would be impossible, and most of us, I think, are still of the opinion that that would be a serious loss. But are we to imagine that there are two types of situations, those in which dichotomies apply and those in which they don’t? I fear that this is paradoxically the case, at least unless you want to go and be a nihilist, in which case you must be exhausted, and should probably take a very long nap, or a sedative, or a cyanide capsule.
What can we learn from this hastily reasoned conclusion? First, the difference between the political parties today seems to be less in the dichotomies they choose to acknowledge, and more in when to apply them. The President and his posse clearly err one way, with their “with us or against us” policy, but it seems likely that the Democrats probably err in the other direction, remaining agnostic too often. (Worth noting is that third parties should ideally use entirely different sets of dichotomies, presumably ones more cutting than “People who are Ralph Nader and people who aren’t.”)
It would certainly be refreshing, in any case, if we had political leaders capable of understanding nuances rather than insinuating that nuance, despite all appearances, actually has four letters, and ought to be monitored by the FCC. I ought to learn my own lesson and see that there is actually not such a sharp distinction between the combatants, that “black and white or shades of gray” is just as false a dichotomy as any other when misapplied. We oughtn’t be quite so smug in declaring this to be the most important election in which any of us will ever vote, anyhow.
Having disburdened myself of all this complexity (Don’t you rebuke me, Avril Lavigne!), I will scuttle back to simplicity and leave a poem I wrote and like enough to share.
“That Awful Nag”
Hey George W.
I hate to trouble you
But don’t you have time for me?
Most people heed me
And everyone needs me
They call me “Reality”
I do understand
This message you canned
About how each person ought to be free
It may cause you dismay, though
That when most people say so
They do not mean freedom from me.
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