When I was just a child, I remember my parents asking my pediatrician for help disciplining my 3-5 year old younger brother. Something about "he won't listen to us. We try to discipline him, but he just disobeys." The doctor suggested giving him a binary option: "Son, either stop throwing your food or go to your room. . . Either put your dishes away or no more of that food." When offered, even my barely post-toddler brother was able to escape the binary riddle.
"Neither," he defied more matter-of-factly than angrily. My parents nodded a silent, but hilarious, defeat they still talk about to this day.
I so, so tire of news anchors on both sides of the proverbial aisle attempting to set up their overmatched guests with binary choices. "It's a simple yes or no question! Do your friends know that you're a liar? Do your parents condone you being a criminal?" Then the guest attempts to explain himself and the anchor, with melodramatic incredulity, sets the trap again. "It's a yes or no question!!" I've managed to tune most of this nonsense out, but there's another person with actual legislative power (swoon!) preaching binary choice now.
If you've been following the news cycle (which I know you have), then you've seen Congressman Paul Ryan refer a few times to the certainy of a "binary choice" (most recently in health care). A link provided to catch up - http://www.rollcall.com/news/politics/paul-ryan-returns-binary-choice-rhetoric
Now, actually, it's true that the world is made up of many, many SMALL binary choices. 1s and 0s in a seemingly infinite program of life. The word "SMALL" is capitalized here for a reason. "How to federally regulate healthcare" is not one of these small binary choices.
The disconnect here, if people accept this binary choice, is that (analogous to above) the Congressman/constituent relationship is not a parent/child relationship. "Listen little constituents, the Congress is very complicated so I will break it down to two choices for you. Us or them. Now I know those choices aren't very different, but just keep sending the money in, and I will work on it for you."
It seems very convincing at first (when delivered properly), if you're timid enough to accept it. And it's not surprising that a lot of us do because most of our lives we are taught to accept this inevitability of order-following ESPECIALLY by our GLOOOORIOUS educational institutions. Listen to your teacher; listen to your boss; listen to your congressman.
But people need to realize (especially in a free society) that we all can create myriad options. We aren't just bound by the options of people doing things "way more complicated than we can understand."
Any congressman should be informed by his constituents that if he wants to follow national party line (us or them, Democrat or Republican) instead of proposing and implementing solutions that work for his voters that he can have a binary choice. He can either honor his ideals and promises that voters elected, or he can be unemployed.