Word Soup

David Mamet, now aged and plump with revenue, writes a piece for the Village Voice that's supposed to be an insightful treatise on politics. Like Dennis Miller, now that he's got some bank, he's apparently shaking off the unenlightened positions of his youth, namely idealism, the zany idea that most corporations are out to fuck you, and the ludicrous concept that avoiding war leads to richer cultural paths.

I think he intended the piece as an insightful (though clearly trolling given the title) essay highlighting his own capacity for intellectual change. It seems that Dave, in his later life, has come to realize that, well, everybody he meets is pretty much "good folk," so therefore progressive ideas of social political justice are apparently now irrelevant, because such good people clearly aren't capable of institutional injustice.

Or at least that's my take on it, he lost me once he narrowed his definition of "liberal" to include anyone with empathy and started nibbling the earlobe of Milton Friedman.

I think the piece is supposed to be smart, but it comes across as the verbal masturbatory ramblings of soft late life privilege and isolation. You'll see Dave almost, but not quite identify that the protection of his own wealth spawned his "epiphany", but he quickly brushes the thought aside with a lovely paragraph on the pursuit of the American dream:

"Do I speak as a member of the "privileged class"? If you will—but classes 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."

That obviously works in Dave's head, but not so effectively say in New Orleans or on the streets of Baltimore.

I think it's cute that once some individuals get what's theirs, and have securely fenced off their piece of the pie in middle-age, they suddenly throw formerly held ethos into the fire like so much used luggage and pretend that it's personal growth. Mamet's essay isn't about liberalism or conservatism, it's about justifying his newly found political apathy to himself now that his finances have freed him from the pesky ethical questions that arise from direct contact with social injustice.

The man makes a buck, reads Milton Friedman, and then suddenly agrees with the lobotomized free-marketeer belief that profit comes before people at all costs, and this desire should at all times be left unopposed by government OR dirty hippies stinking of humanism and empathy. That's insulting enough, but dressing it up as an intellectual effort to bridge the partisan divide teeters on obnoxious.

Not too surprisingly, people don't much like it when you point out that their entire, supposedly sophisticated philosophical and political identity is really just a phony construct designed to justify their own greed.

If I write this kind of inane prattle when I'm sixty from the comfort of my Manhattan townhouse and vintage whiskey buzz, please come, kick me in the fucking teeth, and take me on a forced refresher tour of the real America -- because I've clearly lost sight of the truth buried neck deep in my own bullshit and benjamins.