So, in this rambling, at best semi-coherent article
by David Mamet published recently in the Village Voice, I learn that
David Mamet may write a hell of a play, but can't write a political
essay to save his life.  The thrust of the piece is that Mamet recently
did some soul searching and found that while he's always considered
himself a liberal, he's really a conservative.  To do this, he first
must re-define liberalism.

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.

<snip>

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.

Gee, as a longtime liberal, I'm fascinated that apparently my political philosophy can be distilled to this bumper sticker slogan: everything is always wrong.  David Mamet has masterfully set up what may be the flimsiest straw man I've yet encountered.  How will he ever be able to argue against such a well developed political view as "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.

Okay, so he knocks down us liberals who believe everything is always wrong.  Yet, he then goes on to the next paragraph where his thinking is so muddled it's hard to even read his intent.  He claims that his view that people are basically good at heart conflicts with his other view that everything is always wrong.  But since he just said he doesn't really think everything is always wrong, there is no conflict between the two thoughts.  Certainly he can think both that everything is not always wrong and that people are not basically good, but his choice of logic on how he came to realize his view on the human heart is just irrational given the paragraph that immediately proceeds it.  Moreover, his view that people aren't basically good at heart is contradicted by what he writes immediately after it.

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.

So, if individuals can work situations out to everyone's satisfaction despite their own prejudices and desires and without the help of any higher authority, doesn't that imply some basic level of goodness or fair play?  Not to David Mamet it seems.  And why not?  Because all social interaction is really just a marketplace where we seek to maximize our comfort:

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.

When exactly did conservatives become unable to make any case for their political view which didn't rest on the magical marketplace?  And notice how he can only make his point by dumbing down liberalism until it is no longer recognizable.  Again, we liberals believe that everything is "magically wrong" and must be corrected "at any cost."  I don't know of a single liberal I've ever heard say anything close to that.  The costs of change are certainly considered.  We just don't get hysterical and think that the world is going to fall apart if everybody has health care.

Mamet goes on to call Thomas Sowell "our greatest contemporary philosopher," which should come as news to many of us who think he's a bit of a lunatic.  Moreover, Mamet's contention that individuals can be trusted to work things out by themselves besides disagreeing with his earlier view that people are greedy, deceitful swine, also contradicts his earlier thoughts on the Constitution:

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.

So, people can be trusted, but not really because their lustful and duplicitous, and government should let the market determine everything and stay out of the way, even though our own Constitution admittedly designed government which limited the power of its actors to ensure their greed didn't cause them to work against the public interest.  If the market is good enough for corporations, why isn't it good enough for politicians.  We have elections.  All our politicians are endanger of being thrown out of office on a regular basis if they attempt to overreach their authority, so why put any checks in place?  Let the market sort it out.  But that would be a consistent world-view, which Mamet clearly lacks.  It would also be an asinine idea, which is why nobody would think a government that failed to play different branches against one another would be a good idea.  However, it might not be such a bad idea (given that people will "subvert any agreement" to pursue their own interests) to have a little regulation here and there just to keep the corporations honest.  That seems to be more inline with what Mamet thinks about people.  He just can't seem to see it two feet in front of his face.

And just to be sure that he doesn't leave himself any legs to stand on, Mamet goes on to praise the current state of the nation:

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.

So, keep in mind that this society which he sees unfolding "pretty well" is the society of Social Security, public education, Medicare, Medicaid, the EPA, and a hundred other government programs which facilitate our day to day existence.  In other words, the society that progressives helped build over the course of the 20th century.  Nowhere does Mamet argue for rolling back any of these programs -- hell, he fails to even mention them in the course of discussing liberalism, which is, frankly, a very strange omission.  It's even more strange given that such rollbacks are the central tenet of modern conservatism.  Well, that and illegal government wiretaps.  I'd suggest Mr. Mamet stick to his day job.

--Big Blue

P.S. For more commentary, please visit my personal blog over at The Left Anchor.  Thanks!