I am all for clarity, which sometimes means drawing out contrasts and making stark comparisons.
In other words, I often speak in black and white while understanding that the real world has a lot of shades of gray. In many cases, it is important to do this because if you focus on the grays without first making the contours of an issue clear, readers see a blurry and muddled mess.
And, in shorter essays, focusing on the big contrasts gets you closer to the truth of the matter than blabbing about fine lines, gray areas, and minute differences. If you want to get it all, you won’t in 500 or 1000 words. It takes a book or three and a long time to think about an issue.
Simple is good, in other words. But often, it is insufficient when the differences lie in the gray area.
I was thinking about this issue recently when the Right-wing influencers blew their stack about Speaker Johnson’s…
