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March 13, 2008
David Mamet, Child of the Sixties
ow! You gotta read this! I've never quite read anything like it. AND it was printed in the Villlage Voice. Check it out here:
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.
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Okay, actually I have read something quite like this, in of all places the San Francisco Chronicle, here:
Nightfall, Jan. 30. Eight-million Iraqi voters have finished risking their lives to endorse freedom and defy fascism. Three things happen in rapid succession. The right cheers. The left demurs. I walk away from a long-term intimate relationship. I'm separating not from a person but a cause: the political philosophy that for more than three decades has shaped my character and consciousness, my sense of self and community, even my sense of cosmos.I'm leaving the left -- more precisely, the American cultural left and what it has become during our time together.
I choose this day for my departure because I can no longer abide the simpering voices of self-styled progressives -- people who once championed solidarity with oppressed populations everywhere -- reciting all the ways Iraq's democratic experiment might yet implode.
My estrangement hasn't happened overnight. Out of the corner of my eye I watched what was coming for more than three decades, yet refused to truly see. Now it's all too obvious. Leading voices in America's "peace" movement are actually cheering against self-determination for a long-suffering Third World country because they hate George W. Bush more than they love freedom.
Posted by witnit at March 13, 2008 9:16 AM
Comments
I completely missed this update! I will edit my bookmark.
In the same vein here is a link to Frank Miller's 'That Old Piece of Cloth' :
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5784518
Do continue, please?
Posted by: Ecclesiastes at March 18, 2008 7:40 PM
..... dude...... you have to be more verbal!......
Posted by: Eric at March 21, 2008 7:37 PM
Not all is as it seems to be. Iraqi voters may have risked their lives to 'endorse freedom and defy fascism,' but that's not what they're getting. The U.S. is building an embassy compound in Bagdad's Green Zone that's bigger than the Vatican. This will necessitate a long term U.S. military occupation, which is exactly what the terrorists want and the Iraqi people don't want. So there goes their freedom. With companies like Halliburton rebuidling infrastructure and Blackwater providing armed security and policing services, having committed atrocities, the Iraqis are now contending with a different kind of fascism, a variant more akin to Musollini style fascism.
The Left is good at venting their hatred on the Bush Administration, but the Left has its own agenda. It wants the powers and privilege Bush Administration has managed to secure for itself and then try to prove to the world that it can do a better job with those powers.
Still, very few people question whether our changing government leaders should be assuming so much power, if at all.
Posted by: Broadlighter at April 6, 2008 11:47 AM
Just read Mamet's Village Voice article in Village Voice. At first I bristled at the early mention of John Maynard Keynes, who's economic model, I believe is the most destructive influence on human liberty in America, but as I read through I found more and more agreement with Mamet's march away from liberalism. To put it succinctly, the more people can get along by making and honorning agreements with one another,the less need there is for 3rd party intervention, a la government. I hope he'll discuover that big government isn't just the nanny state (read welfare). It also includes the warfare state. The two often go together.
Posted by: Broadlighter at April 6, 2008 12:15 PM
In a similar vein:
http://www.michaelbauman.com/chronicle.htm
Posted by: Michael Bauman at April 9, 2008 7:07 AM
Good stuff, Prof. Bauman and Broadlighter.
Just so you all know, I'm having trouble posting comments to my own site.
Posted by: WitNit at April 15, 2008 9:54 AM
