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David Mamet, no longer brain-dead

I'm sort of a David Mamet fan. I qualify that because it's not as if I leap out and see every single thing he creates. I've never seen one of his plays on stage. If he's ever written a book, I've never read it. But I've seen a fair number of his films, and even the ones with mediocre plots are fascinating. Besides, his wife is smoking hot. Sexist? Absolutely, but she is and that's that.

I've always assumed he was a flaming liberal, and it would appear that I was correct. Despite that, one thing that always attracted me to his work is a sense of a inherent honesty. You watch his film The Winslow Boy and you know a liberal probably couldn't stand the traditions presented within the academy, yet Mamet treats them with due deference and respect. Thus he demonstrated that whatever his personal opinion, he was willing to explore both sides of an issue.

And now I read his startling conversion (as it were) in The Village Voice and there's a sense of kinship. I grew up in a Democrat household. Both my parents would have rather swallowed nails than ever vote for a Republican. While my father was usually mum on the issue, my mother cried out for government intervention, to shut down evil corporations, to stop the horror of capitalism...even while accepting all the benefits that capitalism could provide. My mother was a beautiful contradiction, God rest her soul.

And so from Mamet I read...

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.

And then there was this:

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.

Now I would argue about the accusations made -- against both men -- but the central point remains the same. That any principled look at any president would find much to loathe, yet also much -- if not more -- to admire. And further, that the country continues, that our country is fundamentally good and thrives.

After examining in brief government as a whole, and the military and corporations in particular, Mamet makes the following observation:

[T]aking 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.

Rush Limbaugh couldn't have said it better. This is also is precisely the conclusion I came to not too terribly long ago. And when you reach this conclusion you can't help but be buoyed by an amazing sense of optimism, not to mention pride in our country. Yeah, that's right, we are that good.

I hear accusations of corporate greed and wonder what the accusers would put in place of corporations. They want to tax them at extortion-like rates, but continue to employ the millions that they do. How does that track as honest? Do they even understand how the free market works, how it must work?

The free-market system of the United States has created more wealth and freedom than any other system the world has ever seen. Some day some one may develop a viable replacement. When that happens, I will say, "Hurrah!" Until that happens, I am happy that Mamet's more careful research and soul-searching reaffirms what I firmly believe.

That the United States is a force for good in the world today. That we may stumble and bumble and occasionally not live up to our own lofty ideals, but that those ideals nonetheless allow us to pick ourselves up, dust off the mistake, and move on, all the better for it.

Some day I expect to once again see films and stories that tell this amazing tale. And some of them, I suspect, will be written by David Mamet, former brain-dead liberal, and that's gotta be a very good thing.

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