Word: manichaeanism
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...present "culture wars" do not exist in liberal democracies on the other sides of the Atlantic or the Pacific. The intolerance of these clashes is aggravated by the deep anguish that descended on America after it won the cold war and found itself no better off. The Manichaean universe, divided between right (us) and wrong (Soviets), dissolved. The apocalyptic scenario, so frightening and yet so consoling, fizzled. But the mind-set it fostered remains, particularly since America is the only country in the Western world with a strong, and vengeful, current of Fundamentalist apocalyptic religion. With the death of communism...
...this picture, which opened last week in one New York City theater; stark, iconic, black-and- white Ukrainian movies, especially when their subject is "the hidden Holocaust," have limited mall appeal. But in its meticulously brutal imagery, in its theme of humanity enslaved and justice outraged, in its Manichaean categorizing of people as holy victims or soulless villains, Famine-33 has important similarities to Hollywood-financed pictures coming this Christmas to a 'plex near...
...wrong to expect too much coherence from any quarter, writers on foreign policy warn: with the end of the cold war, the world is formless -- no | longer Manichaean, no longer organized around two neat poles of ideology. America's conception of its national interests and its moral role abroad, to say nothing of its idea of itself at home, is disheveled. It is therefore natural that in trying to find its way through problems like, say, Bosnia and Somalia, the Administration can see no farther than the range of its low-beam headlights...
...respect, at least, the century provided a complete, old-fashioned story, one with a beginning, a middle and an end. The collapse of the Soviet Union in late 1991 settled the cold war, that long, Manichaean, superpower struggle between two opposing philosophies of governance. The suppression of individual liberties in the service of a common good stood exposed as hollow, inefficient and, most damning of all, corrupt...
...more common calumnies was that cold warriors carried on against the Soviets because of some desperate psychological need for an enemy. Indeed, went the charge, Ronald Reagan and his ilk demonized the Soviet Union -- "evil empire" was a designation received with scorn in better circles -- to satisfy a deep Manichaean need for a world of black and white...