Greenwald’s new book A Tragic Legacy: How a Good vs. Evil Mentality Destroyed the Bush Presidency has been getting a lot of internet play in the last week. As the subtitle suggests, the problem is the Good vs. Evil mentality that is at the heart of Bush’s "Manichaean" vision of the world. We can debate whether or not Manichaean is the best word–my term for it is "naive idealism", and I wrote a post about it in October 2005. Check it out if you’re interested in my two cents about this subject.
Americans, of course, are not the only ones infected by it. It’s a disease that’s either in remission or in full outbreak anywhere in the human species. Unfortunately it’s in full outbreak among both American and Islamic religious fundamentalists, and it’s a problem insofar as the rest of us have let them get hold of the levers of power. As with any such virulent disease the means must be found to isolate and contain it when it breaks out.
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