In general, America's cultural and political perspectives on the world outside of itself (spurred on by decades of its political and cultural isolationism on the part of the mass public) has produced a situation where good and evil are the defining, moral and cultural categories that are applied to make sense of a multitude of political situations both here and abroad. The simplicity of these categories forces us into a specific way of seeing the world, one which is metaphysical rather than political and with connotations of the supernatural rather than the sociological. Of course, it is arguable that such folk ways of seeing the world have been common to a mass public and that it has been the task of journalists and of intellectuals to melt away such fuzzy thinking through explanation and critical analysis. But the weeks following the tragic bombings at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon have shown that dividing the political and cultural universe into good and evil may be more pervasive and dangerous than previously expected.