A Tragic Legacy: How a Good vs. Evil Mentality Destroyed the Bush Presidency by Glenn Greenwald

attacks on those enemies have become the Bush movement’s defining attribute. That commonality is sufficient to maintain allegiance because, argues Dean, it provides a tonic to a morally ambiguous, uncertain, and complex world—a world they perceive to be filled with dangers in every facet of life. All of these factions, like the devotees of Manicheanism, are in thrall to promises of a comforting and liberating moral simplicity, a framework that provides refuge from a complex, confusing, and frightening world. A unified crusade against Evil enemies bestows purpose, excuses failure, alleviates confusion, and enables sensations of power.
    Not only American political discourse but also American culture generally are suffused with an endless parade of fear-inducing images, of constant warnings of latent dangers—the terrorist “sleeper cells” lurking in every community, the sex predators living covertly on one’s own street, drug gangs and violent criminals and online pedophiles, radical tyrants seeking nuclear weapons. Basic human nature dictates that a world that seems frightening and hopelessly complex always engenders a need for both protection and clarity.
    Religion—a belief in an all-powerful, protective deity and a clear, absolute, and eternal moral code—powerfully satisfies those cravings. True faith in an all-powerful, benevolent God alleviates both fear and anxiety and produces an otherwise unattainable tranquillity and feeling of safety. Identically, a political movement built on a strong, powerful, protective leader—one who claims that the world is morally unambiguous, who insists that it can be cleanly divided into Good and Evil, and who promises “protection” from the lurking dangers of Evil—fulfills the same needs. Those who lead the group—the Protectors—will inspire great personal loyalty, while those who oppose it will be viewed as mortal enemies.
    The Bush administration’s political rhetoric and that of its supporters almost uniformly conforms to a binary framework that sustains allegiance and cohesion and justifies the actions of its leaders. As Dean writes:

Important conservative opinion journals, like the National Review and Human Events, see the world as bipolar: conservative versus liberal. Right-wing talk radio could not survive without its endless bloviating about the horrors of liberalism. Trashing liberals is nothing short of a cottage industry for conservative authors….
The exaggerated hostility also apparently satisfies a psychological need for antagonism toward the “out group,” reinforces the self-esteem of the conservative base, and increases solidarity within the ranks.

    Many of these tactics, including the ongoing use of Manichean rhetoric, have been wielded by the American right wing for decades, but they became particularly effective as a result of the 9/11 attacks and the resulting political power bestowed on President Bush. The terrorist acts of 9/11 were evil, and they were perpetrated by those who truly are enemies of the United States. For that reason, the uncompromising nature of the president’s condemnation of those attacks—and his vows of retribution against the Evil enemy—potently resonated among most Americans, including many who are typically unreceptive, even resistant, to Manichean appeals.
    But the propriety and success of such rhetoric in the context of vowing vengeance against Al Qaeda led to its application in many morally ambiguous contexts increasingly removed from 9/11. Thus, evil and enemy became terms wielded not merely against the terrorists who sought to launch 9/11-like attacks on Americans but also against an ever-lengthening list of others—countries with no current or historical connection to Al Qaeda, groups that were vaguely opposed to U.S. interests but not guilty of anti-American terrorist acts, and finally, to those who, even by peaceful means, opposed the president—whether abroad or at home. As the Los Angeles Times