Manichean thinking is very seductive. Imagining that the world is made up of only good and bad guys simplifies the process of choosing sides. No doubt, we will join the good guys and drive the bad ones into the ground. They are evil and therefore deserve whatever fate they meet.
Part of this scenario is that every smidgeon of wickedness in the world is attributable to the bad guys. They are in league with the devil. Ergo, once we get rid of them, all will be well. With no one left to perpetrate vice, only goodness will remain.
Some religious people think this way. They divide the universe into heaven and hell. The trouble is that they often regard heaven as an absence of hell. It is a place where there is no disease, no starvation, no conflict. How it will be laid out, however, is hazy. It cannot consist solely of singing God’s praises. (Too boring)
The Marxists are even more Manichean. They divide the world into evil businesspersons and blameless proletarians. Given that capitalist selfishness is responsible for mean-spirited exploitation, once they are shoved aside everyone will live in comfort.
In the Marxist playbook, after the revolution, first socialism, but later communism, will take over. Property will be held in common and everyone will be nice to everyone else. Exactly how this will work, they do not say; mostly because they do not know.
The Marxist’s attention is directed almost exclusively toward the bad guys. Their concern is with defeating these rich fiends. Obviously, after they are consigned to the ash heap of history, altruistic workers will automatically do what is right. It is thus unnecessary to foresee how they will accomplish this.
Historically, revolutionaries have sought to eliminate evil elites. Whether they were French aristocrats, Russian boyars, or American robber barons, these villains were to be killed or impoverished. So would any counter-revolutionaries foolish enough to enlist in their ranks.
As the kissing cousins of Marxists, contemporary liberals adhere to a similar narrative. The one-percenters and their Republican allies are currently in their cross hairs. They are certain that once these political troglodytes are reduced to impotence, we will have heaven on earth.
As a result, liberals seldom think things through. Because they assume their niceness will automatically beget niceness, they do not scrutinize impediments to their plans. If the sole obstacle to a loving universe is the bad guys, with them gone there will be nothing to worry about.
The upshot is that we get shovel ready projects that are not shovel ready, ObamaCare that was predestined for a death spiral, and educational reforms that reduce what children learn. Is it a surprise that ideologues who do not look ahead routinely encounter unforeseen complications?
A sterling example of this mentality was the Obama administration attempt to reduce racism by eliminating discipline in public schools. On the assumption that racists were responsible for more disciplinary action being taken against black students than whites, they forbade punitive controls.
It never occurred to these liberals that some students might be more obstreperous than others. It certainly did not occur to them that some differences might be correlated with social class—as opposed to racism. From their Manichean perspective, punishments arose from evil educators who had to be restrained.
This lack of ability to decipher complicated problems or devise appropriate responses is one of the reasons education is in trouble. Simplistic answers based on either/or reasoning have a way of imploding. This also applies to the economy, criminal justice, the family, foreign relations, and gender relations.
At the moment, the biggest villain on the liberal horizon is Donald Trump. In many quarters, he is demonized as Beelzebub himself. Whatever goes wrong—and I mean whatever—he is the evil genius operating behind the scenes. As a consequence, if we impeach him, peace and love will break out everywhere.
Although backward-looking conservatives can also be Manichean, nowadays liberals have made this their specialty. They may brag about their sophisticated intellectual theories, but this is a false front. They likewise boast of their unparalleled compassion, yet their relentlessly crude moralizing refutes this.
Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.
Professor of Sociology
Kennesaw State University
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