Yknow what else people suck at? Governance. And for similar reasons I think. We want to believe the experts who tell us they’ll do all the hard part for us, all we need to do is click on a menu. And when we don’t like the results, then surely the answer must lay in a different brightly colored box with promises to simplify the problems that vex us. Rinse, wash, repeat… while the ones who package these menus and campaigns get richer and more powerful.
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It all comes down to forced choice.
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Hobsons’s choice always has a third response, a mu option. Refusal to cooperate with the question as framed, is a legitimate response, if unpopular. The only good thing I can imagine about a Trump presidency, is that more people will be inspired to withhold their cooperation, perhaps enough to re-frame the questions.
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That’s probably the one good thing about a Trump presidency. Nobody on the left will ignore him. It will be active resistance the whole way.
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I often answer “A or B” questions with a strident “I reject your false dichotomy!”. Often to make myself realize that there is usually more than two way of looking at things. I don’t even mean a third way, I mean the many different ways of looking at things and framing a discussion (or not).
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Well, if we’re gonna go there (and why not?) I need to mention an acquaintance who press-ganged me into helping her with her “internet connection” over the phone. She described the colour of the router’s case in detail, but couldn’t tell me the make or model. Then she casually mentioned her PC had been booting into safe mode for weeks. I asked her to check a few things, which she asked me to repeat so she could write them down.
When I asked if she could turn on the computer, you know, now, she explained she wasn’t home, but at our mutual friend’s house.
And that’s when I hung up the phone on her.
But still – I’m convinced that wasn’t about computer skills, but life skills. This was a person who still called up her ex-husband for help, years after the divorce, just because she’d never learned how to do anything for herself (and he’d enable by helping her, every time). I’ve met men who are the same about any “get your hands dirty” job, from changing oil to changing diapers. It’s some weird holdover from the 19th century class boundaries, near as I can tell.
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