Just re-read playwright David Mamet's essay in the Village Voice, and found it to reflect what many, in the light of this abysmal administration, probably could have written. And with the 2012 election just around the corner, it's worth considering.
Here's part of his essay.
David Mamet: Why I Am No Longer a 'Brain-Dead Liberal'An election-season essay
1. I wrote a play about politics ("November")
a disputation between reason and faith, or perhaps between the conservative (or tragic) view and the liberal (or perfectionist) view.
The conservative president in the piece holds that people are each out to make a living, and the best way for government to facilitate that is to stay out of the way, as the inevitable abuses and failures of this system (free-market economics) are less than those of government intervention.
2. 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.
3. 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 beenrather charmingly, I thoughtreferring to myself for years as "a brain-dead liberal," and to NPR as "National Palestinian Radio."
4. 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'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 circumstancesthat 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, inspiredin short, human) individuals living under a spectacularly effective compact called the Constitution, and lucky to get it.
5. 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.
6. 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 . [C]lasses 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.
David Mamet: Why I Am No Longer a 'Brain-Dead Liberal' - Page 1 - News - New York - Village Voice
Here's part of his essay.
David Mamet: Why I Am No Longer a 'Brain-Dead Liberal'An election-season essay
1. I wrote a play about politics ("November")
a disputation between reason and faith, or perhaps between the conservative (or tragic) view and the liberal (or perfectionist) view.
The conservative president in the piece holds that people are each out to make a living, and the best way for government to facilitate that is to stay out of the way, as the inevitable abuses and failures of this system (free-market economics) are less than those of government intervention.
2. 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.
3. 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 beenrather charmingly, I thoughtreferring to myself for years as "a brain-dead liberal," and to NPR as "National Palestinian Radio."
4. 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'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 circumstancesthat 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, inspiredin short, human) individuals living under a spectacularly effective compact called the Constitution, and lucky to get it.
5. 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.
6. 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 . [C]lasses 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.
David Mamet: Why I Am No Longer a 'Brain-Dead Liberal' - Page 1 - News - New York - Village Voice
