[lit-ideas] Re: David Mamet: Why I Am No Longer a 'Brain-Dead Liberal'
- From: "Mike Geary" <atlas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 12 Mar 2008 12:50:17 -0500
"Aha," you will say, and you are right. I began reading not only the
economics of Thomas Sowell (our greatest contemporary philosopher) but
Milton Friedman, Paul Johnson, and Shelby Steele, and a host of
conservative writers, and found that I agreed with them: a free-market
understanding of the world meshes more perfectly with my experience than
that idealistic vision I called liberalism.<<
Aha! Another liberal discovers greed and likes it!
Of my seven uncles, six came home from the war and went to college on the GI
Bill (read: social welfarism), got rich, became Republicans and screamed
against social welfarism. The sixth got drunk instead, but he became a
Republican anyway after Johnson's Civil Rights Bill. They looooovvvvved
their money (and white skin). They hated everything else. Seems that way
with most conservatives, but not all, not all.
To each his own. I prefer to work towards a just society. Let Mamet wallow
in his justification of injustice on the grounds that he's got his, so
what's the big deal? Yes, he's got his. And he probably lives a life as
full of meaning as mine is, but I have absolutely no desire to live in his.
He's welcome to every inch of those neon screaming stretches of the coin-op
culture. Let them who can stand the stink kiss the asses of country
clubbers. I prefer to dance with the winos (yes, they often stink, too, but
so do I).
Mike Geary
Memphis
---- Original Message -----
From: "Eric Yost" <mr.eric.yost@xxxxxxxxx>
To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Wednesday, March 12, 2008 10:51 AM
Subject: [lit-ideas] David Mamet: Why I Am No Longer a 'Brain-Dead Liberal'
all the resources of capitalism would be reigned against him?
Here's an interesting essay from the Voice. An excerpt given below, but
the full text more interesting for literary blokes. Responds both to
Mike's post and Andy's pessimism. -EY
_____
David Mamet: Why I Am No Longer a 'Brain-Dead Liberal'
[from: http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0811,374064,374064,1.html/full]
John Maynard Keynes was twitted with changing his mind. He replied,
"When the facts change, I change my opinion. What do you do, sir?"
<snip>
I took the liberal view for many decades, but I believe I have changed
my mind.
As a child of the '60s, I accepted as an article of faith that
government is corrupt, that business is exploitative, and that people
are generally good at heart.
These cherished precepts had, over the years, become ingrained as
increasingly impracticable prejudices. Why do I say impracticable?
Because although I still held these beliefs, I no longer applied them in
my life. How do I know? My wife informed me. We were riding along and
listening to NPR. I felt my facial muscles tightening, and the words
beginning to form in my mind: Shut the fuck up. "?" she prompted. And
her terse, elegant summation, as always, awakened me to a deeper truth:
I had been listening to NPR and reading various organs of national
opinion for years, wonder and rage contending for pride of place.
Further: I found I had been—rather charmingly, I thought—referring to
myself for years as "a brain-dead liberal," and to NPR as "National
Palestinian Radio."
This is, to me, the synthesis of this worldview with which I now found
myself disenchanted: that everything is always wrong.
But in my life, a brief review revealed, everything was not always
wrong, and neither was nor is always wrong in the community in which I
live, or in my country. Further, it was not always wrong in previous
communities in which I lived, and among the various and mobile classes
of which I was at various times a part.
And, I wondered, how could I have spent decades thinking that I thought
everything was always wrong at the same time that I thought I thought
that people were basically good at heart? Which was it? I began to
question what I actually thought and found that I do not think that
people are basically good at heart; indeed, that view of human nature
has both prompted and informed my writing for the last 40 years. I think
that people, in circumstances of stress, can behave like swine, and that
this, indeed, is not only a fit subject, but the only subject, of drama.
I'd observed that lust, greed, envy, sloth, and their pals are giving
the world a good run for its money, but that nonetheless, people in
general seem to get from day to day; and that we in the United States
get from day to day under rather wonderful and privileged
circumstances—that we are not and never have been the villains that some
of the world and some of our citizens make us out to be, but that we are
a confection of normal (greedy, lustful, duplicitous, corrupt,
inspired—in short, human) individuals living under a spectacularly
effective compact called the Constitution, and lucky to get it.
For the Constitution, rather than suggesting that all behave in a
godlike manner, recognizes that, to the contrary, people are swine and
will take any opportunity to subvert any agreement in order to pursue
what they consider to be their proper interests.
To that end, the Constitution separates the power of the state into
those three branches which are for most of us (I include myself) the
only thing we remember from 12 years of schooling.
The Constitution, written by men with some experience of actual
government, assumes that the chief executive will work to be king, the
Parliament will scheme to sell off the silverware, and the judiciary
will consider itself Olympian and do everything it can to much improve
(destroy) the work of the other two branches. So the Constitution pits
them against each other, in the attempt not to achieve stasis, but
rather to allow for the constant corrections necessary to prevent one
branch from getting too much power for too long.
Rather brilliant. For, in the abstract, we may envision an Olympian
perfection of perfect beings in Washington doing the business of their
employers, the people, but any of us who has ever been at a zoning
meeting with our property at stake is aware of the urge to cut through
all the pernicious bullshit and go straight to firearms.
I found not only that I didn't trust the current government (that, to
me, was no surprise), but that an impartial review revealed that the
faults of this president—whom I, a good liberal, considered a
monster—were little different from those of a president whom I revered.
Bush got us into Iraq, JFK into Vietnam. Bush stole the election in
Florida; Kennedy stole his in Chicago. Bush outed a CIA agent; Kennedy
left hundreds of them to die in the surf at the Bay of Pigs. Bush lied
about his military service; Kennedy accepted a Pulitzer Prize for a book
written by Ted Sorenson. Bush was in bed with the Saudis, Kennedy with
the Mafia. Oh.
And I began to question my hatred for "the Corporations"—the hatred of
which, I found, was but the flip side of my hunger for those goods and
services they provide and without which we could not live.
And I began to question my distrust of the "Bad, Bad Military" of my
youth, which, I saw, was then and is now made up of those men and women
who actually risk their lives to protect the rest of us from a very
hostile world. Is the military always right? No. Neither is government,
nor are the corporations—they are just different signposts for the
particular amalgamation of our country into separate working groups, if
you will. Are these groups infallible, free from the possibility of
mismanagement, corruption, or crime? No, and neither are you or I. So,
taking the tragic view, the question was not "Is everything perfect?"
but "How could it be better, at what cost, and according to whose
definition?" Put into which form, things appeared to me to be unfolding
pretty well.
Do I speak as a member of the "privileged class"? If you will—but
classes in the United States are mobile, not static, which is the
Marxist view. That is: Immigrants came and continue to come here
penniless and can (and do) become rich; the nerd makes a trillion
dollars; the single mother, penniless and ignorant of English, sends her
two sons to college (my grandmother). On the other hand, the rich and
the children of the rich can go belly-up; the hegemony of the railroads
is appropriated by the airlines, that of the networks by the Internet;
and the individual may and probably will change status more than once
within his lifetime.
What about the role of government? Well, in the abstract, coming from my
time and background, I thought it was a rather good thing, but tallying
up the ledger in those things which affect me and in those things I
observe, I am hard-pressed to see an instance where the intervention of
the government led to much beyond sorrow.
But if the government is not to intervene, how will we, mere human
beings, work it all out?
I wondered and read, and it occurred to me that I knew the answer, and
here it is: We just seem to. How do I know? From experience. I referred
to my own—take away the director from the staged play and what do you
get? Usually a diminution of strife, a shorter rehearsal period, and a
better production.
The director, generally, does not cause strife, but his or her presence
impels the actors to direct (and manufacture) claims designed to appeal
to Authority—that is, to set aside the original goal (staging a play for
the audience) and indulge in politics, the purpose of which may be to
gain status and influence outside the ostensible goal of the endeavor.
Strand unacquainted bus travelers in the middle of the night, and what
do you get? A lot of bad drama, and a shake-and-bake Mayflower Compact.
Each, instantly, adds what he or she can to the solution. Why? Each
wants, and in fact needs, to contribute—to throw into the pot what gifts
each has in order to achieve the overall goal, as well as status in the
new-formed community. And so they work it out.
See also that most magnificent of schools, the jury system, where,
again, each brings nothing into the room save his or her own prejudices,
and, through the course of deliberation, comes not to a perfect
solution, but a solution acceptable to the community—a solution the
community can live with.
Prior to the midterm elections, my rabbi was taking a lot of flack. The
congregation is exclusively liberal, he is a self-described independent
(read "conservative"), and he was driving the flock wild. Why? Because
a) he never discussed politics; and b) he taught that the quality of
political discourse must be addressed first—that Jewish law teaches that
it is incumbent upon each person to hear the other fellow out.
And so I, like many of the liberal congregation, began, teeth grinding,
to attempt to do so. And in doing so, I recognized that I held those two
views of America (politics, government, corporations, the military). One
was of a state where everything was magically wrong and must be
immediately corrected at any cost; and the other—the world in which I
actually functioned day to day—was made up of people, most of whom were
reasonably trying to maximize their comfort by getting along with each
other (in the workplace, the marketplace, the jury room, on the freeway,
even at the school-board meeting).
And I realized that the time had come for me to avow my participation in
that America in which I chose to live, and that that country was not a
schoolroom teaching values, but a marketplace.
"Aha," you will say, and you are right. I began reading not only the
economics of Thomas Sowell (our greatest contemporary philosopher) but
Milton Friedman, Paul Johnson, and Shelby Steele, and a host of
conservative writers, and found that I agreed with them: a free-market
understanding of the world meshes more perfectly with my experience than
that idealistic vision I called liberalism.
At the same time, I was writing my play about a president, corrupt,
venal, cunning, and vengeful (as I assume all of them are), and two
turkeys. And I gave this fictional president a speechwriter who, in his
view, is a "brain-dead liberal," much like my earlier self; and in the
course of the play, they have to work it out. And they eventually do
come to a human understanding of the political process. As I believe I
am trying to do, and in which I believe I may be succeeding, and I will
try to summarize it in the words of William Allen White.
White was for 40 years the editor of the Emporia Gazette in rural
Kansas, and a prominent and powerful political commentator. He was a
great friend of Theodore Roosevelt and wrote the best book I've ever
read about the presidency. It's called Masks in a Pageant, and it
profiles presidents from McKinley to Wilson, and I recommend it
unreservedly.
White was a pretty clear-headed man, and he'd seen human nature as few
can. (As Twain wrote, you want to understand men, run a country paper.)
White knew that people need both to get ahead and to get along, and that
they're always working at one or the other, and that government should
most probably stay out of the way and let them get on with it. But, he
added, there is such a thing as liberalism, and it may be reduced to
these saddest of words: " . . . and yet . . . "
The right is mooing about faith, the left is mooing about change, and
many are incensed about the fools on the other side—but, at the end of
the day, they are the same folks we meet at the water cooler. Happy
election season.
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