Us versus them

It's no secret that I hate either-or arguments. In most cases, I don't agree with either side of a binary argument. There is one type of either-or argument that I wanted to address more specifically. This is the us versus them mentality.


Us versus them comes up in numerous areas, but politics would have to be one of the most obvious and frustrating examples. Most Americans, including so-called independents, tend to embrace the idea that they must pick a side. Once they do, they conform. Everything their preferred party supports must be good. Everything the other party supports must be bad

Sometimes, political conformity leads to contradictory beliefs. For example, the Patriot Act was controversial when Bush signed it into law. The Republicans insisted that there was nothing to worry about if you had nothing to hide. The Democrats insisted that it was one of the worst pieces of legislation in American history. The Patriot Act expired, and Obama renewed the law. Democrats insisted that Republicans who opposed the law were hypocritical. Meanwhile, these accusations of hypocrisy were coming from people who were being hypocritical themselves.

One real oddity of this example is that I never saw anyone successfully counter accusations of hypocrisy. Most people who criticized the Patriot Act under Obama legitimately supported it under Bush. The reverse was true for the Democrats, although their hypocrisy wasn't challenge to the same extent. People who maintained their view of the same law regardless of the party attached made up a small minority of the population.

I could go on about political hypocrisy. Keep in mind that a vast majority of criticism aimed at Trump could have also applied to Obama.

There is another example that I wanted to provide. It's still related to politics, but this is a little different. Both Trump and the media have been called out for dishonesty. The media has frequently cited polls that say people trust the media more than Trump. The idea behind this argument is that the media is embracing an us versus them mentality. In this case, the media views Trump as their opposition.

For those of us who reject this us versus them mentality, this is an incredibly weak argument. There are reasons that both the media and Trump have had issues related to trust. Neither one is trustworthy. Both sides lie. The idea that we have to consistently trust one over the other just because they are against each other is absurd.

While I hate either-or arguments, us versus them stands out as a particularly troubling form. This looks beyond a simple issue. People feel obligated to stick with a side as they shift to ideas that are not closely related. In the case of politics, the Constitution, LGBTQ+, climate, personal responsibility, deficit spending, socialism, health care, patriotism, and education (or anti-educational schooling) are all very different topics. We should not be expected to pick an overall preference and then embrace political conformity.