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4E Elan: Anything is possible when you dont care about whats actually possible!

A lot of people then pointed out that Obi-Wans above statement... is itself very absolute. The usually level-headed Obi-Wan is inexplicably claiming that anyone who deals with an absolute view on anything must be a Sith. Besides being idiotic, it also is ironic when you consider that everything the Jedi Order does is absolute. The rules against marriage, attachment, etc. are all iron-clad, one-size-fits-all rules, that one can be expelled from the Order for not toeing the line on. In essence, hes calling himself a Sith.

In King of the Hill, Hank Hill and his friends cant wrap their head around their neighbor Khan SoMainFalseuphanousinphone not being either Chinese or Japanese, even after he corrects them.

Parks and Recreation: Leslie tried to drum up public support for building a park by phrasing the question, Wouldnt you rather have a park than a storage cility for nuclear waste?

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Conspiracy theorists frequently commit this. Either you accept that their conspiracy is true, or youre a mindless sheep who believes whatever the establishment says. Obviously, its impossible for one to believe the establishment lies sometimes, but they happened to be telling the truth this one particular time.

The act of presenting two options makes there become just two options. Normally With Us or Against Us is a lse dichotomy, but a leader can declare that all non-allies are their enemies. Such a declaration is performative

Reality is rarely so , unforgiving or rigged. Instead of an artificial binary choice vouring an ideology, life offers a diverse landscape of choices and consequences.

Stephen Colbert loves this trope and takes it to the extreme, often asking questions such as America: greatest nation in the world, or greatest nation in the universe? When the interviewee starts to say he/she doesnt want to be quoted as saying either of those, he explains that those are the only options available: So Ill put you down for world, because thats not AS great as universe...

He also divides the supermarket into cheese and non-cheese. Assuming that he classifies everything with cheese in it as cheese, its a real dichotomy… but not a particularly important one. What about cottage cheese and other borderline dairy products?

, also known as either/or reasoning, is when just two options are presented for something when there are actually (many) others. Moreover, the two options presented are rigged to vour one answer. There are two ways of doing this:

False Dichotomy: This is where you say that there are only two choices, when actually there are more. For instance, you might say that someone is either alive, or theyre dead, ignoring the ct that they might be Dracula. Or you might say that if someones not a Democrat, they must be some sort of Republican, ignoring the very real possibility that they may be Dracula.

Lawyer: Thank you. Now: ual deviant or magic picture that if you stare at it long enough, you see something?

Khan: From Laos, stupid! Its a landlocked country in South-East Asia between Vietnam and Thailand, population approximately 4.7 million!

Good Girls Avoid Abortion: When putting the baby up for adoption isnt even mentioned as a possibility.

Polarization. Both choices are unacceptable extremes, the presenter hopes the target will commit to the less-unacceptable option: Kill the children with their own cookies, or only kill half of them.

Extremely common in a Flame War. In ct you can test this yourself; go to any wikia based site and bring up a commonly held but non-verifiable belief, you wont have to wait long to see this kind of argument show up.

Abused by anti-vaccine advocates. Either vaccines are completely safe or they are too dangerous to use. Cost-benefit analysis is rarely used. Ignoring medical cost-benefit analysis is often abused in more sensationalist media coverage. For example, hysterical news articles about how Ritalin (or many other drugs,horse tails usually psychiatric ones) may be damaging the patients prescribed it in some vague, undefined way, or pointing out some of the nastier potential side effects, and calling for its use to be stopped on that basis... while ignoring that for at least some patients, these short term side effects or potential long term risks do not outweigh the benefits of the drug for them.

RPG game Paranoia: if you arent a natic supporter of the oppressive totalitarian regime, a loyal servant of The Computer, you are a death-dealing commie mutant traitor. This one is notable because everyone in Paranoia is a commie mutant traitor at heart, so instead of there being more than two possibilities, it turns out theres only one. Well, some of the commie mutant traitors do love the Computer.

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There really are only two options, even though theres a third (semi-)option that comes from combining (bits of) the other two. This is usually due to a linguistic quirk of English whereby both the Inclusive Or (A or B or both) and Exclusive Or (A or B but never both, often abbreviated xor) are both just or. E.g. the statement Everyone reading this page is brown-skinned or a Troper is true for an Inclusive Or, but not for an Exclusive Or. Naturally, most statements like that are misleading in general speech. See the trope Mathematicians Answer.

Even this is a lse dichotomy, as some of the most outlandish conspiracy theories (such as reptoids secretly controlling the earth via the Illuminati) can be rejected by someone who believes the establishment is always lying.

Donnie: Well, life isnt that . I mean, who cares if Ling Ling returns the wallet and keeps the money? It has nothing to do with either fear or love.

Classic. One choice is an unacceptable extreme, the presenter hopes the target will commit to the not-unacceptable-extreme option: Kill the children, or buy their cookies.

When Darkwing Duck is attempting to improve his PR, Nega Duck sabotages him by asking him if hes stopped digging potholes on Main Street. Caught up in the flow of questions, Darkwing answers yes right before realizing the nature of the question.

Occurs in comic. Similarly, Would you say you worship Satan, or do you simply respect his no-nonsense approach to discipline?

A popular joke on YouTube is to comment on a video by reciting the number of dislike ratings the video has at the time of commenting and accusing all of them of something; common examples include [X] people missed the like button, [X] people had no childhood, [X] people are Justin Bieber ns, or some kind of threat. Such comments tend to be found in the highest rated comments, but luckily, subversions and parodies are replacing them in that spot (a common version referencing something in the video or relevant to it).

Civil War vs Revolution: It all depends on who wins. If the government wins, it is a civil war. If the citizens win, it is a revolution.

In Dragons: Riders of Berk, Hiccup must choose between beating Snotlout at The Thawfest Games or letting Snotlout win, with it being shown that if Snotlout doesnt win, hes in for hell from his ther (of breaking the mily streak) to the point of Snotlout outright panicking when he thinks itll happen. Its never brought up that maybe Snotlouts dad is taking this too seriously, shouldnt have his love for his son based on a game, or anything of the sort. It also doesnt help that Snotlout is an obnoxious winner, not even realizing that Hiccup threw the race for him, when part of Hiccups dilemma was if he was just winning to be a jerk (he Took a Level in Jerkass so they could wonder that, too) instead of helping out a friend.

America - Love It Or Leave It is a popular lse dilemma in the USA, though its not exactly unique to them. The dilemma suggests that a true patriot must embrace everything ever done by America, or . However, since America as a nation was founded on the concept of respectful political dissent, one must doubt the premise of this lse dilemma very seriously.

The Battle of Wits from The Princess Bride presents this. The Man in Black puts two goblets between them and asks, Where is the poison? Vizzini goes through dozens of justifications and possibilities for why one would poison either one, trying to stall for time. Either way, he never considers that

Political Correctness vs Unfortunate Implications. Implies that anyone who criticizes PC thought must be a racist/ist/homophobic/bigot of some form.

Theres a standard joke about someone moving to Northern Ireland and being asked by the locals if theyre Protestant or Catholic: when they explain that they are in ct atheist/Buddhist/Muslim/other, the locals respond Yes, but are you a Protestant or a Catholic atheist/Buddhist/Muslim/other?

Donnie: Okay. But youre not listening to me. There are other things that need to be taken into account here, like the whole spectrum of human emotion. You cant just lump everything into these two categories and then just deny everything else.

The Love It or Hate It trope. There is a group of middle-of-the-road viewers/readers/players, but they are generally ignored. (However, the reason its a trope in the first place is because that middle-of-the-road group is r smaller than for most ndoms.)

The debate between religion and science is itself an example. Putting aside the ct that religion isnt even a single thing, it isnt actually at war with science. The whole concept is outright bizarre when you consider how many mous historical scientists were priests (and a good number of modern ones), the papal bulls protecting free inquiry, the funding of science, the many historic universities with religious founders, and the ct that the Vatican itself has a science department (the Pontifical Academy of Sciences), along with several labs. Even if the Theory of Evolution were disproven, Creationism would not automatically take its place. These arent even mutually exclusive as species may be created but still evolve over time, otherwise known as Theistic Evolution

This binary approach is also a common media trope. Simply put: it is a lot easier for an audience to understand a story where characters are villains or heroes. In the r romances, it is more straightforward if characters exhibit a transcendent love, or an excoriating hate. Contrast Golden Mean Fallacy. Necessary for someone to be able to Take a Third Option (though, of course, doing that instantly subverts this trope by revealing the lsity of the dichotomy.) Compare and contrast the Semantic Slippery Slope Fallacy.

Revolution: In The Dark Tower, gets shot in the gut by a coil gun and is bleeding out. Rachel Matheson tries to convince Team Matheson to just leave her behind and turn the power back, and herself even urges them to leave her. However, Charlie Matheson intervenes and flat out states that this is not an either-or situation and that they can both turn the power back and get to an infirmary. So, Aaron Pittman and Rachel go on to get the power back on, and Charlie and Miles Matheson go on to get to an infirmary.

To say nothing of that this llacy can easily be turned back on those who use it, i.e. declaring that nobody who truly loves America would allow it not to fix its current problems, thus implying that those who use the llacy dont really love America (in a mature way) by thinking its perfect and can do no wrong, that is, enabling it.

Lawyer: Mr. Griffin, which of the following two phrases best describes Brian Griffin: problem drinker or African American haberdasher?

so its not llacious and thus isnt a lse dichotomy, even if the reasoning that leads someone to say it is. Its rarely a good idea under most circumstances, however.

A has Holmes called upon to judge which of two violins is the one Davy Crockett played at the Alamo. He quickly identifies one as a ke, but realises

Bella believes she must either be with Edward or with Jacob. She also believes she must either become a vampire or grow old. Later, she believes that . Bella thinks only in absolutes throughout the series. Another example would be when Edward leaves her in the second book. To her, her only options are being happy with Edward, or being miserable without him. Being happy without Edward never once occurs to her, no matter how often its suggested to her.

The st form of this is to make the choices A or Not A. In this case, Not A encompasses everything that isnt A, even if that category is massive. For example, Youre either a Conservative,false tails or not a Conservative, does include all possibilities, even though Not a Conservative includes liberals, libertarians, anarchists, or any other political philosophy that isnt simply conservatism by another name.

The concept of False Consciousness is this in spades. It assumes that anyone who doesnt share the views of the users worldview must be stupid/brainwashed/mentally ill/evil/a sellout/etc.

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During the initial promotion for Civil War, Marvel released a pair of message board signature images reading either Im with Captain America or Im with Iron Man. Within days, ns were creating their own versions by the dozens, the most popular being: Youre all ed when the Hulk gets back or THOU ART NO THOR!

Layla from Sky High, asked to demonstrate her powers, claims that the hero/sidekick dichotomy is a lse one, but is cut off by Boomer declaring her a sidekick.

In the American Dad! episode Son of Stan, pt. 2, Stan and Francine argue over whether the proper way to raise Steve is to be totally strict, or totally permissive.

Many, many debates about alignment in the D&/p>4E Haley: Yes. I used the power of abandoned verisimilitude!

Called out in the Fantasy theme of Irregular Webcomic!: When one of the Player Characters asks the DM Would you rather have campaign progress or character development? the DM promptly replies It is not a dichotomy! In the accompanying rant, it is commented, Of course not. In a dichotomy, you do get one of the options.

Please dont bother to do this without saying what the issue is in the box above. No issue, no action.

The 1967 cartoon The Bear That Wasnt (based on the book of the same name) has a bear told by ctory managers that hes not a bear but a silly man in a fur coat that needs a shave. They tell him this over and over, but the clincher comes when the ctorys president is brought in. The president takes the bear to the zoo and explains that bears belong in the zoo. Since the bear was not in the zoo, he could not be a bear. The bears in the zoo even agree, saying that a real bear would be in the zoo with the other bears!

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A Few Good Men: Colonel Jessup, after having been accused of killing one of his own men (admittedly by accident): I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom I provide, then questions the manner in which I provide it! Id rather you just said thank you and went on your way. Otherwise, I suggest you pick up a weapon and stand a post. (You are either at war or not a soldier, used against a Military Lawyer)

Sub Tropes:

. Theres vastly more genetic variation within so-called races than there is between them, and the net differences between races are meaningless and/or superficial. A kidney is a kidney is a kidney. Health differences in particular are often attributed to race when they are in ct the product of socio-economic circumstances

Homophobia vs LGBTQ support. Either you support gay marriage because youre gay yourself, or youre against it because you hate gay people. Theres quite a good deal of in-between groups that rarely get heard from,Horse hair fly whisks-No.5, such as unionists who believe gay marriage is wrong, but should not be banned because marriage is an intrinsic right, or straight people who have no problem with gay marriage.

Racial Eugenics vs Racial Extinction (taken seriously for a few decades, but race doesnt actually exist...)

Similar joke: an atheist is asked but is asked to clarify ...is it the Protestant God or that Catholic God you dont believe in?