Strawberry, Chocolate, and Everything in Between
How a berrylicious pint of ice cream encouraged me to focus on a spectrum of possibilities, rather than extremes.
Hello friends, and Happy Sunday! I hope you had a great week.
Time for a short anecdote. Last weekend, my wife and I split a pint of Ben & Jerry’s on Mother’s Day. It was a new flavor we’d never tried before: Chocolate Covered Strawberry. As strawberry ice cream fans, we were both quite excited. After all, when someone asks me if I prefer vanilla or chocolate, I’m the guy who always answers “strawberry.” Yeah, I’m a wild and craAazZy guy.
Honestly, it isn’t significant that we shared the pint on Mother’s Day. It’s not like we have any reason to celebrate the holiday in our home. Our parents live hundreds upon hundreds of miles away, and in opposite directions, to boot. And we don’t have any children of our own…. well, not any human ones.
I just wanted to give the impression that sharing a pint of ice cream with my wife is something we only do on special occasions, like Dog Mommy’s Day, Independence Day, birthdays, or Arbor Day, and NOT something we might do on any random Sunday… or weekday evening.
This ice cream was described as “strawberry ice cream with a strawberry jam swirl and fudge flakes.” And in its strictest sense, it was indeed strawberry ice cream. But it also wasn’t. Because to me, the entirety of a frozen delight's ingredients makes up the ice cream’s flavor.
This concoction was more than just strawberry-flavored ice cream with chocolate pieces. Through the transitive property of semi-solid melty foods, there was definitely some chocolate flavor infused within the ice cream part.
As such, I think it would be appropriate to say the flavor was neither strawberry nor chocolate, but some flavor on a spectrum between the two. Let’s call it strawcolate.
That’s what I actually want to talk about today.
No, not strawcolate-flavored ice cream. That just sparked my thinking.
I want to talk about spectrums. And binaries.
We are often asked to make choices that are presented to us as binary options, even when they’re more than that.
Vanilla or chocolate? Why not strawberry? Or Moose Tracks for the adventurous.
Democrats or Republicans? Those aren’t the only guys with answers. Give someone else a chance.
Cats or dogs? Why choose between them? I love both.
Capitalism or socialism? Both have their drawbacks and advantages, and they are not mutually exclusive.
And as for Us or Them? Does there have to be a winner and a loser? I’d rather get to win-win.
But let’s face it. While overly simplistic, binary decisions are simpler. They require less effort and less nuanced thought. And they can be useful in certain contexts, for instance, when a quick decision is needed, when exploring if/then situations, or when seeking clarity and simplicity.
One of the first things I tell my social work students, however, is that there is seldom a clear, straight-forward right or wrong, yes or no choice in a practice scenario; more often than not, the answer is “it depends.” Context is everything.
Binary decision-making and, more broadly, binary thinking, are tools whose value relies heavily on the context to which they are applied. When inappropriately applied to complex and nuanced situations, overreliance on binary thought processes becomes problematic.
Binary thinking is a mental shortcut that helps to minimize decision fatigue, but it also encourages us to lean towards extreme positions and obscures important shades and degrees of difference. When we think only in binaries, we miss important details, distinctions, and opportunities.
Thinking and reasoning in stark binaries is so limiting that psychology has identified it as a pattern of distorted thinking.
This thought distortion, known as “all-or-nothing thinking” or “black and white thinking,” occurs when a person is able to see an issue only in binary terms—in extremes and absolutes (Hofmann et al., 2013).
An over-reliance on binary thought processes is problematic because, for the most part, the world we inhabit and the choices we face don’t lend themselves to binary thinking. They require us to recognize the existence of continuums or spectrums that offer a range of experiences, ideas, interpretations, and possibilities.
Since strict binary thinking is not only limiting but also inclines people towards extremism, it’s easy to see how it contributes to many of the social and political struggles we face today. Strict binary thinking creates the conditions that allow people to be viewed as either all good or all bad, with no space for anything to exist in between.
Now, consider how this administration is both leaning into its own binary thinking and weaponizing other people’s tendencies toward binary thinking.
Administration 47 wants us to believe that every undocumented immigrant, perhaps every immigrant, is 100% bad. As far as they are concerned, the same description can be applied to every single (non-white, non-conservative) immigrant: violent, criminal, and an enemy.
They’ve obliterated the spectrum.
Why? Because they are desperate for us to believe them. It’s crucial to their plans.
They know that if people see all immigrants as bad, violent, and dangerous (an “all-bad”), it makes it easier for people to think they deserve whatever happens to them. Easier to dismiss their rights, not just to due process, but to any other human or civil rights this administration chooses to violate.
And once they have convinced people to apply the all-bad label to immigrants, or any other group of people, it becomes an easy excuse they can use to rationalize the dehumanization of those people. After they’ve successfully dehumanized a person or group, it becomes easier for them to justify not just the violation of those people’s rights, but also the attempt to erase their very entitlement to those rights.
This is what Nazi propaganda did to the Jewish people. It encouraged and allowed people to see Jews—and all the other “undesirables” the Nazis targeted—as less than human. This is how you go from threatening language to property destruction, to shuttering businesses, to forcing people into ghettos, to transporting them to work camps like cattle, to performing experiments on them and murdering them in gas chambers.
Not to be outdone by the Third Reich, Administration 47 has added a modern twist to its final solution.
On Friday, multiple reputable news sources, including the Wall Street Journal, CNN, and HuffPost, reported that Kristi Noem and the Department of Homeland Security were in the beginning stages of work with reality show producer, Rob Worsoff, the producer of Duck Dynasty, to create a reality TV show where immigrants compete against each other in challenges to receive the ultimate prize of fast-tracked citizenship.
To even consider this is shameful, disgusting, and disgraceful.
We live in the real world, not the fictional dystopias depicted in The Running Man or the fucking Hunger Games. Fiction lets us craft cautionary tales that explore scenarios and situations that should never occur in real life. It’s not a road map to travesty.
Disadvantaged and marginalized people should never be forced, coerced, or even enticed to sell their human dignity for the entertainment of the cruel and depraved elite, or the hateful, clamoring masses. It’s an abuse of power, an abuse of privilege, and an abuse of one’s God-given free will.
What's next on Channel 47’s production schedule? A show where starving and undernourished people whose SNAP benefits have been eliminated compete to have a food bucket strapped to their faces? (Knowing the proclivities of the orange authoritarian, McDonald’s would be a major sponsor.)
Noem has repeatedly demonstrated that she has absolutely no shame, no morals, and no regard for human life. Only for those she deigns to consider human.
In MAGAland, you’re either an infallible all-good (an unwavering, sycophantic loyalist) or a despicable all-bad (pretty much everyone else). And once they’ve labeled you an all-bad, that allows them to make you less than human. After that, they can do whatever they want to you. And people accept it. Because who wants to support and protect an all-bad?
That’s how they attempt to advance their perverse, twisted, authoritarian fantasies.
But here’s the thing: even if someone somehow is 100%, no question, an all-bad, they are still entitled to every civil and human right imaginable, including due process. They are still owed their day in court. The King can’t just do whatever he wants to do to people. That’s been a principle of Western civilization since the Magna Carta was issued in the 13th century.
We live by the rule of law, not by the whims of an Emperor.
Oh, and one more thing to consider.
What happens to people like us—people who desire to create good in the world—when we allow ourselves to see our opponents as an all-bad? What happens when we buy into the extreme binary?
In a previous essay, I referred to White House policy advisor, Stephen Miller, as MAGA’s answer to Nazi Germany’s Joseph Goebbels. And I think he is. But does that make him an all-bad?
When I consider this question through my strengths-based, social work lens, I have to accept that Miller, as well as all the other crooked MAGA zealots, cannot be viewed as entirely, 100% all bad. If you place one of them on a good-bad spectrum, they might register as 1% good and 99% bad, but the 1% good still exists.
When we Lead with Love, we must remember to seek that good. We may not know what it looks like, or even be permitted to glimpse it, but it is still there.
Was there a loving moment in Noem’s life? Most likely. A kind gesture in Miller’s? Probably. An altruistic thought in Goebbels’? Doubtful, but the possibility exists.
[Fun aside. I asked AI how to make Goebbels possessive, and I half expected it to tell me to put the moves on his girlfriend. Microsoft Copilot has no sense of humor.]
Miller, Noem, and the rest of Administration 47 seek to dehumanize everyone they see as their enemy. And they want us to support, or at least accept, rather than resist, this dehumanization.
That’s a pretty shitty way to be. You can’t sugarcoat it.
But just because they seek to dehumanize others doesn’t mean we have to dehumanize them.
Instead, we must actively strive to humanize them; to remember that no matter how awful we believe they and their actions are, they are still people. Someone loves them. They have (or had) a mother. And a father. They breathe. They bleed. They may be the worst of us, but they are us.
And if we are ever fortunate enough to remove them from office one day and hold each one of them responsible for their actions, each one will be entitled to their day in court.
No person—NO ONE—deserves to be confined in a facility like CECOT, especially without due process or trial. No one deserves to be stripped of their basic human and civil rights.
No matter the provocation, no matter the cause, we do not commit atrocities.
We do not reduce people to something less than human.
We respect the rights with which all people are endowed and to which all civilized societies commit.
We cannot and WILL not be like them. If we dehumanize our opponent, we are no better than they are.
So, we remind ourselves, despite everything they have done, they are still human and should be treated as such.
And by doing so, we preserve our own humanity.
It’s all too easy to succumb to hatred, anger, and cruelty. The atrocities being perpetrated by this administration practically beg it.
Don’t let these people destroy your humanity.
More importantly, don’t let them make you destroy your own humanity. No matter how despicable their actions.
You don’t have to play their binary all-good/all-bad game. This is our playing field. Our America. Our reality. Not the fake reality being pushed by this administration. The world and the rules we live by are what we make them.
Don’t fall for the binary choices being presented to you. Don’t believe in their inhuman all-bad.
When we dehumanize each other—when we harm each other—we bring harm to ourselves. Very real, spiritual, and metaphysical harm.
Such behavior rends our very souls. Don’t let it. You deserve better than that.
Peace and love. ✌️💛
References:
Hofmann, S., Asmundson, G. & Beck, A. (2013). The science of cognitive therapy. Behavioral Therapy, 44(2), 199–212.
This Week’s Moment of Unconditional Love
Today’s moment of unconditional love comes from friend, colleague, and Words over Swords reader, Jen B. She’s been kind enough to share a photo and some words about her sweet girl, Gigi.
A fun fact about Jen B: I have only ever watched one episode of Gray’s Anatomy, and I watched it with Jen. It was the episode with the shooter in the hospital, and I found it ridiculously traumatic. On the plus side, though, it gave me a frame of reference to understand the Gay’s Anatomy skit they did in the 12th season of RuPaul’s Drag Race.
See? Nothing is either all good or all bad, even Gray’s Anatomy. 😊
Your favorite furry friends can be featured in the Moment of Unconditional Love, too. Just email photos to jeffreyafeldman2015@outlook.com. I’ll work them into the weekly mix, and just maybe, share a little something special about you and your pet, too.
Tough, tough topic but needed in these tough times.
You inspire me to think, and to include pets (first my own) in my posts. Thanks for both.
A great post!
In order to dehumanize people, you have to move from innuendo to shaded truth to outright lies. It is disturbing to see how easily people accept this process. There are names for the faulty logical processes involved but in plain terms you can see it's true because HE said it, it's true because many people believe it, it's true because it's true. One way to look at things is to ask why? Then ask why to that answer. Keep asking why until you get to something that is indisputable (at least as far as our knowledge is concerned).There is also the confusion of possible for and possible that. Possible for is bounded only by the laws of the universe in that something COULD happen. Possible that means you have evidence pointing to the likelihood that a condition can occur.
It is sloppy thinking. Part of it is due to the internet and social media, and our inability to use this power correctly - technology has outstripped our moral sense. The person yelling nonsense on a street corner soapbox now has a megaphone to the world.
Fear is a natural survival instinct. Authoritarian leaders throughout history have learned to weaponize that fear into a power base. An interesting case pinpoint. Emperor Palpatine in Star Wars maneuvered the senate into granting him excessive power to fight the clone war, totally unaware that it was he himself controlling both sides to consolidate power. In a scene that I found memorable, he (in his Darth Sidious persona) was discussing doing something with his "enemy"allies. One asked but is that legal? Palpatine replied I will make it legal. This is akin to what Trump had the Supreme Court do when it ruled that he could do just about anything he wanted as long as it was ïn the performance of his presidential duties". One his most heinous acts is now trying to get rid of habeas corpus - for immigrants. And he could only that by dehumanizing them.