President Bush is commonly at fault for having flawed logic. He is known for saying phrases like, “You’re either with us or against us” “when Iraqi troops stand up, American forces will stand down.” He puts everything into an “either” “or” categories. To put it simply, Bush seems everything in extreme opposites, black and white, ignoring shades of grey. This method of thinking is easy; instead it draws distinctions and creates problems.
Professor Burton, author of Artists of the Floating World, addresses this issue by trying to draw connections instead of separations. Burton discusses the connections between Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. He writes that the religions, “double back on one another, in several important ways: in their monotheism, in their embrace of Abraham, Moses, and Jesus as singular prophets, in their commitment to similar moral codes of political and social behavior, and in their adherence to the revelation of God’s Word and the literalness of the Scriptures,” (130). Burton looks to the similarities, which unites the differing groups.
I think Burton trying to find commonalities between seemingly different groups, is a very good start in trying to move from the “one versus the other” model to the “one-in-the-other” model. If groups feel connected to one another, they proactively problem solve instead of place the blame upon another. In theory, uniting and exploring similarities instead of focusing on differences is a lovely idea. However, in practical application, with the flaw of closed-mindedness (Bush) the concept of celebrating our similarities as well as our differences falls upon deaf ears.
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The idea "you are either with us or against us" is very dangerous because there is lack of balance between us and them. I think that the idea is too extreme as a president of the United States.