Saviors or Satan

How the Mainstream Media Uses All-or-Nothing Thinking to Distort how Americans think

Note: I had planned to write this article for months, but it always got put on the back burner. The attempted Trump assassination makes it more relevant to confront how the media has sets us up to think.

What is “all or nothing thinking”? It’s also known as “black and white thinking”, “categorical thinking”, ‘binary thinking”, or “dichotomous thinking”. It’s a way of viewing the world as if things fall into two categories, such as “good or bad”. The categories are almost always on the opposite side of the spectrum. It’s a distorted way of thinking. It strips a person from having a wide range of ideas and thoughts. Black and white thinking can prevent people from making rational choices, since most of life is complex and full of nuance. It’s considered a factor that can lead to mental health issues such as depression and anxiety.

What if large swaths of our society view the political system like this? And what if it is very institutions that people rely on for news are the worst offenders in provoking such thinking? Well, they do, and it has had dire effects. The mainstream media uses it strategically and social media amplifies it.

There are two types of characters in the mainstream media, good and bad. Sublime or Evil. Saviors or Satan. There is no grey area. News stations tout their preferred candidate as perfect, flawless, impeccable. Every move they make must be worshipped as godly. Any criticism of the preferred candidate is the work of heathens, despicable people. They are Putin puppets, antisemites, far-left, far right, Antifa members, Hitler, Mao, white supremacists, deplorables or snowflakes. Their candidate is divine, and the news station is the church where they are worshipped.

The other candidate, however, has no redeeming features. They are pure evil. Saying anything bad about the preferred candidate is as bad as saying something good about the opponent. They are both equally offensive and repellent.

Black-and-white thinking is not just reserved for candidates. Political issues are framed in the same way. You either support Israel or you are an antisemite. You either support Ukraine or you are a Putin puppet. The idea of a nuanced view, where we can oppose or support both sides and disagree with their policies is not considered acceptable. Being an independent thinker is almost considered treason. Oppose a policy of the Democrats and you are deemed a hardcore Republican and vice versa.

The same thinking applies to foreign policy. The “correct” policy is that the United States is hated throughout the world because we are free and prosperous. Our wars are either to defend ourselves from evil or as the great scion and beholder of democracy, we gift and enlighten other with our ways. No other interpretation is valid.

Ron Paul, a former US representative from Texas, challenged the official view of the roots of the 9/11 attack at the 2012 Republican Presidental debate. The official reason given was that 9/11 was based on Islamic Extremism combined with their jealously of US freedom and prosperity. Paul said the unsayable:

“We are under great threat because we occupy so many countries. We are in 130 countries, we have 900 bases around the world, we are going broke”

He was greeted with boos, and the other candidates were staring at each other as if Paul had touted some wild-eyed, tinfoil-hat conspiracy theory.

Why does the media do this? Specifically for all the negative effects that black-and-white thinking causes. It discourages people from evaluating situations. It keeps the scope of debate narrow and under wraps. It keeps the public from pondering what other factors could be at play. Once you are told that someone is the new Hitler, there is nothing left to discuss, nothing to ponder or question. The only rational response is to support the war.

Below is a video of intellectual and historian Stephen Cohen is trying to have an adult conversation with Max Boot. Cohen lays out a well thought out case about Russia, and Boot’s response is to call him a “Russian apologist”. There is no such thing as a rational conversation about Russia on CNN. The action starts around 3:37.

Intentionally provoked black-and-white thinking strips people of choice. It infantilizes their brain. It makes people judgmental and close minded. Since the media only presents one side of the story with most issues, mainstream viewers are left without a counterargument, only ad-hominem attacks.

Why do people fall into this type of thinking? The human psyche is remarkably complex and there are assuredly certainly many reasons people get trapped in this. One reason is that black-and-white thinking can be seductive. It avoids the anxieties of uncertainty. Nobel prize laureate and cognitive scientist Daniel Kahneman gave some valuable insight into this human condition. In his book Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgement, he writes that humans have a tendency to create “rules” in their minds to help them make decisions. He refers to these rules as “heuristics”. These rules can often oversimplify and lead to poor decision making, especially when the rules are based on limited information. As humans, we are all suspectable to this type of thinking.

These tendencies are cultivated by the media. One strategy, of course, is to repeat it over and over until the message becomes naturalized in people’s minds. Another way, as mentioned is to only present one side of the story. Debates held by mainstream news tend to be small in scope and variation on the accepted theme. For example, a debate about the Ukrainian war may have one debater calling for more money to give the Ukraine, another would say that NATO should get involved directly, a third may scream for Putin to be removed. There won’t be an anti-war voice because anyone who disagrees with the war is immediately cast as a Kremlin agent.

A last strategy is to remove any context or history behind major issues. For example, the Ukranian war is described as a sudden rise by Putin to take over the Ukraine and march through Europe, without providing any history of how it got to that point. The role of the US and NATO is never discussed, nor are attempted peace treaties or the bombing of the ethnic Russians in Donbas. Similarly, the Israel-Palestinian war is said to have begun on October 7th, 2023, rather than a conflict that goes back to the 1940s.

Nobody can rationally blame an attempted assassination of a former president on a single media head or even a news station. That’s an unfortunate game that is played whenever a mass shooting happens. Glenn Greenwald calls it “who radicalized the shooter?”. This of course, is another ploy, trying to pin the blame on one party or the other.

While you can’t blame the media directly for the assassination attempt of Trump or other shooters, they can’t get a free pass either. The media sows discontent and creates the pot for it to simmer. The language gets stronger and stronger as the nation is coaxed into a frenzy, all to keep people glued to their TV sets begging for more. This has to take its toll on people.

Undoubtably the mainstream media and social media creates an unhealthy and toxic environment for many. It runs on division and hatred. It runs by a constant flow of “existential threats” and highly exaggerated claims. We are all about to be overrun and killed by immigrants; Trump will be a dictator; Russia is going to march through Europe; criticizing Israel is antisemitism.

There has a been a downturn of rhetoric since the attempted assassination. Maybe media elites have realized the danger of their ways. Maybe it’s just a temporary situation, maybe not. An analogy that comes to mind comes from the book/movie “lord of the flies”. A group of schoolboys end up on a deserted island during a WWII evacuation. They have no adults with them. They start out fairly well-intentioned but descend into chaos. They get wilder and wilder and descend into madness and violence (a few kids get killed). When they finally get rescued by a British Naval Officer, they are wearing body paint, barely dressed and carrying spears. They suddenly recognize the sordid behavior they participated in, and there is dead silence among them. The look of guilt among them is palpable. Is the media having a “Lord of the Flies” moment? Have they realized the effect of such harsh language? It’s hard to know, but time will tell.