Guest Post by The Zman
The false dichotomy, sometimes called the false choice, is one of the most popular rhetoric tricks used in liberal democracy. The point is to frame the debate in such a way as to either avoid some unpleasant topic or narrow the scope to the benefit of one party in the debate. “We either do X or we allow this terrible thing to continue” is an effective way to compel action. After all, everyone knows that doing nothing in never an acceptable action. Only monsters choose that option.
It is fair to say that our political system is built upon the false choice. Every election we are asked to choose between the two offerings put forward by the parties. In most cases, one option is ridiculous. That is why over 90% of incumbents win reelection. In races with real competition, the options put forward are nearly identical. Both parties offer up a plank of wood spouting whatever slogans are popular at the moment. The voters select between two robots programmed by the same people.
The reason this is a false choice is there is at least one other option. The voters could stage a boycott of the election. Maybe demand some reforms as a condition of rejoining the charade of democracy. Of course, the voters could riot at the polling stations, hurl the voting machines into the river and burn the ballots. They could vote for a third party candidate as a protest. Picking from one of the two options offered up from the uniparty is a false choice, because there are other options.
Of course, people do not select the other options because they are constantly reminded that those are all bad options. No rational person votes third-party. Even the most cynical critics of democracy say the third party option is a waste of time. Similarly, boycotts are dismissed as pointless. Rebellion, of course, is dismissed out of hand, despite the fact the country was literally founded on rebellion. The one thing everyone seems to agree upon is you have no choice but to pick from the two parties.
Another example of where the false choice is the foundation of liberal democracy is in the current Covid panic. The reason the rulers took a wrecking ball to society is they were sure they had just two options. It was either the wrecking ball or do nothing and we all know that doing nothing is never an option. They had to do something, and all of the choices were bad, so they happily went with the bad option. When you eliminate the best option, you are always left with the worst options.
The false choice plays out in more subtle ways too. Unwilling to leave well enough alone, the rulers are now trying to impose a vaccine passport. The idea is to require this for travel or to attend public gatherings. Given that liberal democracy looks a lot like fascism, businesses and banks are making noises about requiring the vaccine in order to have a job or use the financial system. You can get the vaccine, the choice is yours, but you may not be able live in society.
People are rightly upset about this turn of events. House broken conservatives are banging on about how the vaccine passport if just like when their grandparents made the Jews wear gold stars. The point of the yes/no debate on the vaccine passport is to distract from the real problem. The people in charge of public health are incompetent and have turned a minor public health problem into a disaster. Worse yet, they seem to take some pleasure in being incompetent at it.
Not so long ago, proof of vaccination was a common requirement for travel. People were given a card that showed their vaccinations. This was before computers when the people in charge were somewhat competent at their jobs. People went along with it because they understood it was for public health. They could trust the people in charge enough to go along with it. The people who cured things like polio and smallpox were proud of it and the policies that made it possible.
Today, of course, no one trusts anyone. There can be no public pride in collective accomplishment because we have accomplished nothing, other than putting men in dresses and desecrating some statues. This is why half the public is skeptical of the vaccine and the passport business. Instead of dealing with that reality, we choose to have a debate about the passport itself. The false choice here is whether to get the vaccine or not. Whether to have a proof of vaccine or not.
The promise of democracy is that public policy is no longer set according to the narrow interests of a small ruling class. Instead, the marketplace of democracy will set the priorities and select the polices based on majority will. In reality, democracy is a mass delusion where the public debates pointless issues and selects from identical options, all in order to avoid facing reality. Say what you will about aristocracy, at least everyone knows who is in charge and who is to blame.
The Covid hysteria underscores how the false choice society staggers on through inertia and dumb luck. Faced with a real crisis, the current regime would collapse in a pile, with the people bickering with one another over how best to celebrate the pile once the dust settles. The false choice society is a society built on lies the people tell one another in order to avoid reality. The trouble is reality is the thing that does not go away when you stop believing in it.
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He hits this one out of the park. Voting is self destructive and just plain old stupid. It makes common people feel important for a day. It provides the illusion of control. It’s a mass hallucination. Nothing is ever ameliorated or evil trend upended. You can tell from the most common justification for participating in the con: At least he’s not______. Talk about low expectations. I’ve given up hope people will wise up to this obvious scam. You have to give THEM credit. This is a gift that just keeps giving.
I had a conversation with a dear friend the other day, in which her basic premise was “there is no way all the global leaders worked together to do all this. There must be something else going on.”
“This” being mask mandates, forced shut downs, and now vaccine passports.
And yes, there most certainly is something else going on. The slide to digital currency, Creepy Uncle Gates and his fakeburgers, AOC and her Green New Deal, Universal Basic Income.
Medicade/Medicare is completely broke, Social Security is hanging on a by fingernail, and with millions of young people in massive debt and the economy teetering on a cliff, the coffers will not soon be filled up.
You do the math.
All elasticity has been harvested out of the system. Things that break can not be repaired. A reactionary just-in-time supply-side economic system has spilled over into government and now we have a just-in-time government that has failed miserably and is flailing about. It has no elasticity from which to gather reserves as it runs from one crisis to the next living in perpetual crisis mode.
The virus itself is real. It is also potentially dangerous. That being said, the criminals that control our government and corporations are not about to let any crisis go to waste.
Every so called emergency is now a license to steal for corporations, and justification for government on all levels to usurp power and tighten their control over the citizens.
The so called vaccines are especially troubling. Pharmaceutical companies stand to make hundreds of billions of dollars off their “experimental” gene therapy drugs without any worries about side effects or law suits.
They are putting pressure on Congress to force Americans to submit to being injected with their drugs despite reasonable objections. This type of cell altering drug may have serious side effects that we are yet to see.
These drugs are not approved by FDA and are still classified as experimental. I am not sure how you justify the testing of an experimental drug on the entire population when the vast majority 99.6% of infections are classified as “mild”.
The virus has pretty much run its course, and the statistics were falling dramatically before the drugs began being distributed.
Our country is entering a very dystopian future, where lies are depicted as truth, and truth is ridiculed and suppressed. I for one do not trust either my government or the unscrupulous drug companies.
And millions pouring into all the Western nations. Not a coincidence.
There was a real third choice in the last presidential election- Jo Jorgenson. Perhaps the best presidential candidate in my voting lifetime!
just another leftist. meow
Kinda’ like when a politician tells yah’ they have to raise taxes or cut police and fire protection without ever mentioning that there is a multitude of pork they could cut and still maintain police and fire protection .
Fear is a politicians friend .
At this point, voting is simply lending credibility to a illegitimate government.
It is better to abstain from voting, to make it clear to the rest of the world that the US government no longer represents the American people.
If the vast majority of voters refused to endorse the government by voting, it would remove all semblance of legitimacy from the government and illuminate the fact that the US in reality is just another dictatorship.
Of course as we have seen in this last election, like fake money, and fake news, the government can just fabricate fake votes.