chocolate and vanilla: the ice cream parable

Politics is like unto a restaurant that has a fancy dessert menu.

Three customers come into the restaurant after the show for a sweet before going home. All three receive a dessert menu and decide to have pie.

The waiter arrives “Have you decided on a dessert yet?” The first customer orders apple pie, but is advised by the waiter that there is no apple pie. Surprised, the customer glances back at the menu briefly and decides on cherry pie. Again, the waiter advises there is no cherry pie.

Now annoyed, the customer asks for a moment, and finally half-heartedly settles for peach pie. And again, is told there is no peach pie. “Pumpkin?” No. “Pecan?” No. “Coconut cream, key lime, rhubarb?” No, no, and No!

“Well what do you have?” he demanded.

“We have delicious ice cream” the waiter said. “You can choose chocolate or vanilla!”

“You only have ice cream? Why do you have pie on the menu?” the customer asked.

“Because our customers want pie on the menu!” the waiter stated “We give our customers what they want!”

The first customer shook his head incredulously and stood up and told the waiter “You are liars. You pretend to have many choices but don’t have any!” The waiter replied that there was a choice for chocolate ice cream and also a choice for vanilla ice cream.

“But it’s all just ice cream!” the customer protested before declaring “I will not be back!”

The waiter then asked the second customer if he had decided on a dessert? “Well, I guess I’ll take ice cream” the customer mumbled. He didn’t really want ice cream, but he wanted SOMETHING, so he decided just to take what they had.

The third customer, however, was not convinced. “I was here just the other day” he said. “You had all kinds of pie! Are you sure there is no pie?”

No pie, the waiter advised.

The customer then said “maybe you don’t know about the pie, maybe you got too much ice cream, maybe you are saving it for someone else… But I think you have pie!” And the customer then stormed into the kitchen and started looking in cases, under shelves, and in the ovens. He then threw open a cooler and Ah ha! There they were, the pies!

“Mmmm” he said as he ate the hidden pie. “I knew they had pie here!”

And then the cops came and threw him in jail for breaking into the kitchen and calling the waiter a liar.