Triumphal Manicheanism. If the tragic Manichean’s accoutrements are v-neck sweaters and the Collected Poems of Pablo Neruda, the triumphal Manichean’s are varsity jackets and the collected works of Glenn Beck. This archconservative elder to his sunken-chested baby brother similarly traffics in either/or dichotomies of political thought, believing that everything his own government or society does is right and all those who criticize it—even from within—are radical communists. This may be because the triumphal Manichean once was one himself.
Indeed, the trajectory from left to right is typically charted by those with every intention of changing the substance but not the style of their ideology. Yesterday’s fresh-faced Trotskyist screaming revolution in the street will be tomorrow’s wizened Tea Bagger screaming revolution in the street.
The progression can work in the other direction, too, with triumphal Manicheanism being the starting point. Andrew Sullivan, a Thatcherite conservative import to these shores who has since made the steady creep toward hysterical conspiracism, was capable of writing, shortly after 9/11, “The decadent Left in its enclaves on the coasts is not dead—and may well mount what amounts to a fifth column.” Having since repudiated this allegation, he now believes, predictably, that the actual fifth column came from neoconservatives within the Bush White House.
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