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Manichaeanswas a favorite derogatory way to describe GOP President George. W. Bush and his Iraq war supporters in the mid-2000s. The term referred to the followers of Mani, a third-century Persian prophet who founded a highly successful religious movement that rivaled Christianity. Mani was a dualist who believed that the world was divided between the forces of light and good, and the forces of darkness and evil, both locked in a never-ending conflict. Christians, who believe that despite the existence of evil, God and his creation are good, deemed Manichaeism heresy.

On Jan. 30, 2002, not long after 9/11, Bush gave a speech in which he described the war on terror and the looming Iraq war as a conflict between good and evil. There is no middle ground like none. The people we fight are evil people. The day before, in his State of the Union address, Bush had designated Iraq, together with Iran and North Korea, the Axis of Evil.

With the speed of a wildfire, the word Manichaean spread through the liberal punditry to characterize Bushs supposedly simplistic and intellectually challenged analysis. Princeton bioethicist Peter Singer promptly ground out a 2004 book about Bush, The President of Good and Evil. On a book-tour stop at UCLA, Singer accused the president of engaging in a childish reading of moral rules. Singer traced that notion to Bushs evangelical Christian beliefs, arguing that evangelicals had never managed to eradicate the Manichaean heresy from their primitive mind-sets.

Vox founder Ezra Klein, then a Washington Post columnist, published an online essay in the American Prospect titled The Manichean War. President Carters formernational security advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, used the phrase Manichaean paranoia in 2007 with reference to Bush when he was interviewed by Jon Stewarton The Daily Show. Veteran journalist Glenn Greenwald capped it all off with a 2008 book, A Tragic Legacy: How a Good vs. Evil Mentality Destroyed the Bush Presidency. The book was all about Bushs simplistic Manichaean world view.

The idea was that truly sophisticated thinkers which is the way liberal pundits like to viewthemselves have a far more nuanced view, seeing the world not in terms of darkness and light but in terms of infinite shades of gray. The words complexity and ambiguity were said to be more intelligent than good and evil to describe moral questions and assess moral character moreGame of Thrones rather than Lord of the Rings. Never mind that, for all the fact that the Iraq war turned out to be a huge mistake, there might actually be some forces out there that could be accurately described as genuine forces of evil such as, say, Islamic State.

Then 2016 arrived, and with it, Donald Trumps winning run for the White House. Suddenly the words complexity and ambiguity not to mention nuanced disappeared from the vocabularies of the so-called sophisticates, washed away in the swirling high tide of the return of that simplistic word: evil.

Here is Brian Beutler, writing for the New Republic on Nov. 10, two days after the election: The depth of potential horrors in Donald Trumps presidency is nearly bottomless. The headline on Beutlers essay reads: Donald Trump and the Evil of Banality.

A couple of weeks earlier, the Washington Posts Jennifer Rubin had written: It matters not at all whether there is some diagnosable problem with Trump or whether he is simply evil. Theres that e-word again.

At Politico, Joe Keohane wrote in April 2016 about the sad mind and evil media genius behind @realDonaldTrump. Steve King sputtered this in an article titled Donald Trumps Undeniable Evil for Death and Taxes magazine: He is a cancerous tumor devoid of any redeemable quality, slowly infecting and corrupting everyone and everything around him. Billionaire entertainment mogul Barry Diller told CNBC that Trumps candidacy was an evil miracle. No nuance there.

Since the inauguration, the sinister president theme is only metastasizing: Narcissist or evil genius? asked the National Catholic Reporter.Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin: The plutocratic evil twins opined the headline on a Paul Rosenberg piece in Salon.

Strange, isnt it, that when the tables are turned, the liberal pushers of moral ambiguity are as absolutist as any fundamentalist preacher associated with George W. Bush? Theres a lesson or two to be learned here. With all due respect toBrzezinski, the right doesnt have a lock on paranoia. And dualism our side good, your side evil is actually baked into human nature and doesnt really have much to do with how smart you are or how many shades of moral gray you think you can discern.Whenever you let loose your moral indignation at high decibel, someone somewhere will be laughing.

So who are the Manichaeans now?

Washington-based Charlotte Allen writes about social and cultural issues.

Follow the Opinion section on Twitter@latimesopinionandFacebook

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When it comes to Trump, liberals can't see shades of gray - Los Angeles Times