David Mamet, beloved playwright and director, has declared in the Village Voice that he - in his words - is no longer a brain-dead liberal.
More about that below. First though, it's interesting to note that in all of the arm-flapping over this stunning defection, few may remember the origins of that phrase. It was first used during some very public hearings about the crime problems in in New York City that had worsened to a breathtaking degree, and which weren't being solved by the type of progressive liberal ideas for which that city is generally famous. In fact, the practical street-level reality of Gotham turned towards law-and-order "conservatism" (some would argue pragmatism) to clean things up.
Brain-dead make-nice platitudes - the kind routinely emitted gaseously from the benevolent ultraliberals, do not add up to any workable governing philosophy. But Mamet , clever fellow that he is, strikes at the heart of it, worth quoting at length and cleaned up just enough to maintain my family rating:
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 f*** 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.
He goes on to explain rather elegantly how said Constitution provides a remarkably successful hedge against the vile side of human nature by distributing power among the branches and ultimately giving it to the mostly-decent people of the United States, where it should reside, and with maximum liberty. And this stands in stark contrast to a worldview which wants to centralize schoolmarmish federal power because people are stupid and endlessly in need of help.
He will be pilloried as out of touch, affluent, and (per the bumper sticker) not paying attention enough to be outraged. He will be schooled in all of the disinfopedia factoids one is supposed to have internalized in order to wake up in the morning seething properly about how "everything is always wrong". Many people will disavow any play or film he creates from this day forward.
Never mind that he makes it clear that there are plenty of at-hand examples of Rightward leaders and policies that he abhors. Never mind that he is simply taking the very centrist position that a country functions better as a marketplace than a schoolroom, and that we have, as a nation, made the world better with our ideas and culture and even (sacrilege!) our products and corporations. Everything is not always wrong - and perhaps if you cannot see our national, cultural good,
you're the one not paying attention.
I intend to buy a ticket to his next production.
I look forward to his next play.
