Ideological clichés are deadly. In 1989, the end of the short twentieth century (1917 – 1989) with all its horrors, I thought this simple proposition was something that had been learned, broadly across the political spectrum . I was wrong, and the evidence has been overwhelming. This was my biggest mistake as a sociologist of the politics and culture.

When Soviet Communism collapsed, I thought it had come to be generally understood that simple ideological explanations that purported to provide complete understanding of past, present and future, and the grounds for solving the problems of the human condition, were destined for the dustbin of history. The fantasies of race and class theory resulted in profound human suffering. I thought there was global awareness that modern magical thinking about human affairs should and would come to an end.

My first indication I had that I was mistaken came quickly, December 31, 1989, to be precise. It came in the form of an op ed. piece by Milton Friedman. While celebrating the demise of socialism in the Soviet bloc, he called for its demise in the United States, which he asserted was forty-five per cent socialist, highlighting the post office, the military (a necessary evil to his mind) and education. He called for a domestic roll back of the socialist threat now that the foreign threat had been vanquished. Friedman knew with absolute certainty that only capitalism promoted freedom, and he consequentially promoted radical privatization as a solution to all social problems. This was an early battle cry for the neo-liberal assault of the post-cold war era.

The assault seemed particularly silly to me, and hit close to home, since I heard Friedman lecture when I was a graduate student at the University of Chicago, and even taught one of his true-believing graduate students when I gave a summer school course there on social problems in American society. Friedman and his student’s absolute conviction that the market is the source of all good perfectly mirrored my Marxist friends’ convictions that it was the root of all evil.

Today neo-liberalism and anti neo-liberalism are in an ideological dance. The Republican positions on taxation of the job creators, deregulation and the denunciation of standard social programs as socialism constitute one sort of magical thinking. Newt Gingrich is particularly proficient in spinning the language of this political fantasy and developing its newspeak (with his concerns about the United States becoming a “secular, atheist” country promoting sharia law, and the like). The criticism of neo-liberalism from the left too often present magic: dismantle capitalism and all will be well. As I see it, both propose a future based on a failed past, often with a certitude that is disarming and dangerous.

I wonder how people can imagine a systemic alternative to capitalism, when there is overwhelming evidence that it has never worked, in Europe or Asia, in Africa or Latin America. I wonder how Republicans can ignore the evidence that the market does not solve all economic challenges and social problems, and that sometimes, indeed, it is the primary cause of our problems, particularly evident in the shadow of the world financial crisis and the great recession.

Friends in the academic ghetto, on the cultural grounds of lower Manhattan and Brooklyn, Berkeley, Ann Arbor and Austin, imagine revolution with little serious consequences. On the other hand, the Republican market fundamentalists pose a clear and present danger. On the right, there is ideological tragedy. On the left, there’s farce, except to the extent that they enable the right.

I didn’t anticipate that market and anti-capitalist fundamentalism would have such a role in the twenty-first century. I also did not anticipate or understand the possibility of the replacement of the secular totalitarian imagination by religious ones, Islamic, but also Hindu, Jewish and Christian. “Religionism” is replacing “Scientism.” I didn’t see what was brewing on the religious/political front. The attacks of 9/11 and the American fundamentalist response forced me to pay attention, which I attempted to deliberately consider in The Politics of Small Things.

Chastened, I have become accustomed to the persistence of modern magic, of ideological thinking and its appeal, but quite uncomfortable. How can a thinking person accept and actually support the Bolivarian Revolution of Chavez? It and he are so transparently manipulative and fantasy based, so clearly squandering Venezuelan resources and not really addressing the problems of the poor. Yet, many critical people in the American left can’t bring themselves to observe that this king of the ideological left, this revolutionary hero, is naked. How can the sober Republicans believe what Gingrich and company say about the economy and also about international affairs? If they do so and prevail electorally, I am pretty convinced that they will preside over the decline and fall of the American Empire, what they claim to be most against. Perhaps that is reason for true-believing anti-globalists to support the Republicans.

P.S. As it turns out since 1989, I have been bombarded with evidence that ideological thinking is a persistent component of modern politics. It seems that everywhere I look its importance and its dangers are to be observed, but so are its limits. I am thinking again about my big mistake as I reflect on Occupy Wall Street and its prospects, and its extension to the New School. As Andrew Arato pointed out in his critique of the idea of occupation, there is a danger that when people, who speak ideologically for the 99%, will turn themselves into the 1%.  True-believers are convinced, but the rest of us in the end aren’t. Sooner or later the insights of ’89 prevail. On the bright side, from my political point of view, I think this is likely to apply to the Republican Party, with its true-believing, fact-free ideology. This is the major reason why I think that the Republicans will fail in the upcoming elections. I think this is why the Republican field is so dismal, as Paul Krugman has cogently observed. But I am trusting that ideology will end again.

But summer ‘11 is different. Unlike most Julys, this is not the Silly Season. The fresh crop of Republicans has that most dire of all political virtues: sincerity. It is not that these freshmen are insane or are terrorists, as flame-throwers on the poetic left suggest. Rather they share a perspective on government that, even if it is not always explicitly or candidly presented, is certainly a legitimate view of how a quasi-libertarian state should be organized. As boisterous tea party rebels, they are children of Ron Paul and, with less intellectual gravitas, of Milton Friedman. It is the task of Speaker John Boehner to hide their deep desires – currently unlikely to be enacted – from the public. These politicians wish broad principled cuts. Call them “radical” if you reject them, but, after all, this rhetoric mirrors the self-enhancing distinction: I am firm, but she is stubborn. As the Speaker’s plans evolve, it is increasingly unclear when and where these billions of cuts will derive. One can’t but imagine that this is a shell game with the American public as the marks. Boehner is the adult in the room, but like so many parents, he tries to misdirect his offspring’s attention hoping against hope that the promises will be forgotten.

Still, there is no doubt that whoever wins this financial drama (and it may prove to be a lose/lose opportunity, benefiting only gold bugs), the libertarian right has won the rhetorical debate. The President and Harry Reid are playing on the Tea Party turf, even if they are attempting to con without being caught. There are a lot of things that might describe the whole debate, and mendacity is surely high among them. Majority Leader Harry Reid’s ploy to count planned defense reductions as new cuts was too clever by half, unpersuasive to all and revealing just how much he scorns the Tea Party rubes.

But ultimately it all comes down to the President. Despite his intelligence, Obama has revealed himself to be, unlike Carter or Clinton, a man who prefers to out-source economic policy to those with partisan interests. This was the tragedy of the Stimulus Package (Porkulus, as christened on talk radio). Rather than use the stimulus for a grand civic purpose, such as rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure, the money was sprinkled about, landing on the desks of tenured faculty to support their research assistants, as well as for other cheery, but not quite essential, purposes. Perhaps it prevented a Depression, but in contrast to FDR’s alphabet agencies, the country looks no different now that the money is spent.

And this brings us to our grave week. It is fair to speak of balance, but what does this mean? We have a clearer sense of how Obama would increase revenues, raising tax rates on those millionaires and billionaires earning over $200,000. “Today this planless plan seems burdened as public policy by its absence of detail.” But we know less where and when, specifically, he would cut. Might 2017 be a good place to start? Is this more smoke and mirrors, more peas and shells. For this reason Congressional Republicans argue, sensibly from where they sit, that the cuts must occur now, there must be spending caps in place, and a constitutional amendment requiring a balanced budget be sent to the states. Once burned, twice shy. Ten times burned, we don’t shy from financial calamity.

Today the adults in the room are all wearing capes, waving wands, and pulling rabbits from hats. But the kids have seen it all before. What they hope for, but are unlikely to receive, is reality television. The Tea Party movement was sparked by Rick Santelli’s rant on CNBC, and perhaps it will be on that same financial channel where we will all end. Promises are no longer enough for those who have been plied with – and played as – suckers. Now is the time for the adults to tell what will be cut and how will we verify. Today it is the adults who are playing games.