The Cascading Stupidity of Binary Politics “Make America Great Again” “Forward Together” “A Future to Believe In” “I’m With Her” “Keep America Great” “For Everyone” “Not me. Us” Those are some of the more prominent campaigns slogans from the past two presidential election cycles. But while some of them have proven more effective than others, they all pale in comparison to perhaps the most compelling (and often discussed) election mantra in today’s era of persistently unappealing top-tier contenders: “It’s a Binary Choice.” We heard about the “binary choice” ad nauseum back in 2016, especially once the primaries had left us with two of the most disliked major-party nominees in American history. Much of the country viewed the viable alternatives as a choice between a punch to the face and a punch to the gut, but a choice we nonetheless had to make. Technically, of course, the choice was far from binary. Eligible voters could choose whomever they wanted, or to not vote at all. As Americans, we have that freedom. So it was the outcome that was binary, not the choice. Anyway, either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump would become our next president. This was an inarguable fact, regardless of their glaring unfitness for the office. Michael Anton (who would later join the Trump administration) made this point under a pseudonym in an editorial in September 2016, titled “The Flight 93 Election.” In the piece (which received a lot of attention), Anton compared conservatives who would not vote for Trump (to help defeat Clinton) to the premise of United 93 passengers (whose plane was hijacked on 9/11 by Al-Qaeda terrorists) not storming the cockpit. “2016 is the Flight 93 election: charge the cockpit or you die,” Anton wrote. “You may die anyway. You—or the leader of your party—may make it into the cockpit and not know how to fly or land the plane. There are no guarantees. Except one: if you don’t try, death is certain.” Of course, most voters probably didn’t buy the notion that the election was a matter of life or death, even in a metaphorical sense. Life, after all, is the antithesis of death, while Trump and Clinton actually had quite a bit in common, from their longtime political leanings and positions, to their moral and ethical defects. But the broader point being made was that it was incumbent on each disaffected voter to decide which of the two was potentially (if even marginally) worse, and then vote for the other…even if the process required voters to fork over at least part of their soul. This was all contingent, however, on the winning candidate then being “held accountable,” once in office, by those who voted for him or her. That was the deal anyway, as exhaustively expressed by the party faithful on both sides (including in the media), in their sales pitch to the remaining holdout voters. As we all know, Trump ended up winning. And I suppose none of us should have been all that surprised that the GOP and its base didn’t hold up their end of the bargain — not when it has come to personal and professional conduct, not when it has come to protecting our norms and institutions, and not even when it has come to defending long-held party tenets and platforms. What has surprised me is the astonishing persistence of the aforementioned campaign theme that should have effectively died on election night of 2016:the binary choice. Yes, we were narrowly spared from a Clinton presidency, and that was understandably a huge and consequential victory in the eyes of many people — a victory certainly worthy of celebration. But after all this time, Hillary has somehow remained one of the most popular arguments in defense of Trump…and not just in the context of the election. We’re talking about a defense of just about every bad decision, egregious action, and mind-numbing display of ignorance that has come out of the Trump White House. I mean, how often do we still hear the question, “Would you rather have Hillary?” posed in reflexive defense of Trump? It’s thrown at me all the time, pretty much whenever I write a column that is in any way critical of the president. Clinton’s been out of politics (other than the occasional provocative soundbite to sell books) for three years now, but that old election-era choice, amazingly, is still being put forth. It’s interesting that we never heard that sort of thing during the last Republican presidency. No one on the right ever ran to George W. Bush’s defense, spouting, “Would you rather have Gore?” or “Would you rather have Kerry?” even as Bush’s popularity hit rock-bottom in his second term. That’s because the argument wouldn’t have made any sense. Bush won…twice. His past opponents were inconsequential to his leadership as president. But somehow, that isn’t the case with Trump. Quite the opposite, in fact. Trump is, more often than not, propped up and rationalized by his supporters on the basis of his past and present political adversaries (or even just perceived adversaries). The “binary choice” in 2016 has morphed into its own subculture of never-ending binary ultimatums. Powered by the fertilizer of tribalism, they have infected and drastically dumbed down just about every political debate we’ve had over the past three years. And though it stemmed from the awfulness of Clinton vs. Trump, it has taken on other forms: Chronic Whataboutism There are few certainties in life, but here’s one of them… For every Trump enormity, there was an at least somewhat similar enormity committed by someone on the left, of some notoriety, at some point in time. And that past example will reliably and repeatedly be evoked by Trump’s loyal followers, and presented as a defense of whatever Trump did, while they completely ignore the significance and consequences of the actual action. If you need an example of what I’m talking about, Fox News’s Jesse Watters proudly spits out at least a half-dozen of these whenever he’s on the air — again, while failing to address the enormity itself. The most desirable playing field for pro-Trump whataboutists is when they can point out that it was President Obama himself that had performed the controversial deed similar to Trump’s. This almost always leads to an exhausting exchange in which the pro-Trumpers are fervently defending Trump’s commission of an act they found unacceptable when Obama did it, while the anti-Trumpers are attacking Trump’s commission of the act they were perfectly fine with Obama committing. This buffoonery is a perfect storm of useless, hypocritical nonsense that advances nothing on the given issue, other than partisan drool. But it’s a perfect illustration of what binary politics does to the human brain. A Twitter friend of mine, Angela, came up with an amusing solution to this problem a while back: We should put all the “Now do Trump” and “Now do Obama” idiots in an island somewhere and let them whatabout at each other without any middle men. pic.twitter.com/z4nIz3Qj3z — Angela (one of many) (@angelaisms) August 29, 2019 Strawmen Galore In today’s politics, when someone makes a reasoned, independent argument against President Trump, you can rest assured that the criticism will be twisted into some bizarre, far more arguable, alternate-universe premise by members of the Trump faithful. Of course, the Left has been guilty of this for a very long time, perhaps most notably in the assignment of evil intentions to Republicans and conservatives over their resistance to the expansion of government entitlements and dependence. But the Right has been playing catch-up over the past few years. And if you’ve ever watched Mollie Hemingway on Special Report, you know what I’m talking about. Hemingway is a staunch proponent of the political strawman, and this video from last month is just one of many examples. To add some context, this panel discussion took place right after news broke that President Trump had invited Taliban leaders to meet with him at Camp David (on U.S. soil) just days before this year’s 9/11 anniversary. The thunderous criticism Trump was receiving was in regard to the logistics of the scheduled meeting: the who, when, and where. But Hemingway took a hatchet to that premise, instead framing detractors of Trump’s plan as feeling “scandalized” by his intention of ending U.S. war efforts in Afghanistan after 18 years. Of course, no one had been making that argument in regard to the meeting. Hemingway was very obviously obfuscating the issue (as she often does), because Trump’s decision was indefensible. And when fellow panelist A.B. Stoddard criticized Trump very specifically for the reckless and dysfunctional “process” he had followed, Hemingway nonsensically (but very confidently) asserted that Stoddard’s critique was a “good example” of “people seeming more upset about ending [the war] than the fact that we are in year 18.” Huh? Thankfully, Stoddard wasn’t about to let Hemingway pervert what she’d just said, and she called Hemingway out on it. Amazingly, this prompted Hemingway to once again misrepresent Stoddard’s position, and in the very same way. Hemingway’s impression of deranged parrot seemed to even take back host Bret Baier, who stepped in to shut down the nonsense. This is how binary politics operate. Issues are broken down into exactly two opposing arguments (even if one of them isn’t even real).