A lefty buzzword has become Scaramucci's "favorite" word, and the Columbia Journalism Review endeavors to explain it to us.

Do you know the word? Had you noticed Scaramucci relying excessively on any particular word )or words)?

The word is "binary."

Now, when I first saw — in "The meaning behind Scaramucci’s favorite word" — that the word was "binary," I thought it must be that Scaramucci is using it to destablize a question. Some interviewer tries to pin him down, and he distances himself from the question by calling it "binary." Actually, the issue is complex and multifaceted. And then he can explain why and work his way toward something he is willing to say.

But, no. Scaramucci uses the word like this:

“Tomorrow I’m going to have a staff meeting,” he said on the CBS program Face the Nation. “And it’s going to be a very binary thing.…If they want to stay on the staff, they’re going to stop leaking.” A few seconds later, he said, “But if you’re going to keep leaking, I’m going to fire everybody. It’s just very binary.”

He's not using the word to inject complexity. He's the one imposing the clarity. Either you're with us or you're against us. 

I associate the word with the left because, as Columbia Journalism Review puts it:

[R]ecently, “binary” has been applied to gender, with the traditional view being that biological sex is binary, only male or female. Many people, though, identify themselves as “nonbinary,” meaning they don’t think of themselves as either male or female, or as only male or female, and the concept of the “gender binary” is often questioned.

Searching this blog's archive, I'm seeing the word used in various things I've quoted. For example, in March 2015, I quoted a Slate writer who said:

Dividing the world into males and female is such a big part of the culture that it can seem impossible, and perhaps even aggravating, to try to think outside those categories. This is not only a problem for squares stuck in a binary way of thinking — many of the terms associated with genderqueerness end up referring back to masculinity or femininity in some way, which is a bit tricky if the ideal is to move beyond the gender binary entirely.

But just a couple weeks ago, "binary" came up in the context of good and evil. I quoted the Wikipedia entry for "Goofus and Gallant":

Philosopher Theodore Sider used the characters [Goofus and Gallant] in an argument against the notion of a binary Heaven or Hell conception of the afterlife. Sider conceived of Goofus and Gallant as near-equals, with Gallant only marginally better than Goofus, in arguing that sending the former to Heaven and the latter to Hell is antithetical to God's justice.

So the word has been used, I observe, to disparage those who see things simplistically in black and white. Sophisticated people are not stuck in a binary way of thinking.

And now, here comes Scaramucci. He may have put some sophisticated thought into what he's doing, but as he delivers the message, he's out-and-proud binary. Very binary.

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Scaramucci used "very" with "binary" both times in that quote at the top of the post. If you're the kind of usage stickler who frowns at "very unique," you should see the problem with "very binary." You shouldn't say "very unique," because "unique" already means only one. There's no way to be more one than some other one. The same goes for "binary." It means exactly two. Just as there's no way to be more one than one, there's no way to be more two than two.

But I see the argument on the other side. When we speak of people who have a binary way of thinking, we mean that they have a tendency to think in terms of opposites that seem clearly distinct to them. The strength of the tendency can vary. Scaramucci would like us to think that he is a binary thinker of the most intense sort. I'm the kind of person who imagines that he probably has nonbinary reasons for wanting us to think that's how he operates. There's some 3-dimensional chess in there, won't you agree?