When we were kids, we would contrive terrible choice situations and then ask “Which would you rather?” For example, “Would you rather be buried up to your neck in a hill of man-eating African army ants or stand 10 miles away from ground zero of a nuclear explosion?”
Underlying that kind of “lose-lose” scenario is the assumption that you are going to lose; your only choice is how you lose. Our current political/cultural conflicts remind me of that game.
Do you want to be controlled and manipulated by an intolerant “liberal” or by an intolerant “conservative”? Who says I want to be controlled and manipulated?