One thing that bugs me is people saying "Would you like to _____?" except that only a yes answer is acceptable. They only put it in the form of a question because they trust you to answer yes. But sometimes I only figure out the situation after answering no!
Or when your parents ask you, "Have you washed your hands?" and you say yes, but they don't believe you and make you go wash them anyway. Which begs the question: Why didn't they just tell you to wash your hands in the beginning? I guess it's their instinct to ask a question just to put the ball in your court.
In the movie Little Big Man there's a scene where Dustin Hoffman, who's been growing up with a First Nations tribe, has been captured by the cavalry and handed over to a preacher to raise. The preacher asks him, "Do you know how to skin mules?" Hoffmann answers yes because he guesses that's what the man wants to hear. But he says, "Being raised by Indians you wouldn't know how to skin mules. We'll have to whip the lies out of you!"
There's a passage in Uncle Tom's Cabin involving Topsy, formerly an abused slave girl but now being raised by kinder people. She breaks a dish or something, then when questioned denies it, which gets her into trouble for lying. So later on, under similar questioning, she confesses to a similar act when she actually hasn't done it! For her, figuring out the right answer to give is a matter of guessing what your "master" wants to hear. That's a legacy of being enslaved and beaten and subject to arbitrary power.
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