David Mamet: Why I am no longer a braind dead liberal

[Rainsford]

Originally posted by: CADsortaGUY

Originally posted by: Rainsford
...

I'm just trying to explain my views on the topic. If you want to think of that as being defensive...I can't really help you.

I understand the confidence inspiring approach of being so sure in your beliefs you never have to explain them, but this being a political discussion forum, that strategy would seem a little counter-productive. Honestly though, the reason I said you're just playing an old conservative trick with your "sensitive/defensive" comments is because I'm really not sure what seems so overly sensitive or defensive about what I wrote.

You seem sensitive because you responded to a GENERIC POST with your usual rhetoric trying to denegrate Conservatives. MY post had nothing even remotely close to that so obviously there must be some sensitivity/defensivness going on.

How was your post "generic"? You said you thought Mamet's essay was "a pretty good read", and I'm saying, given the content of the essay and what I know from your other posts, I'm not at all surprised you thought so. Even if I was trying to denigrate conservatives (which I don't believe I was), doing so in response to praise of an article denigrating liberals hardly seems out of place to me.

BTW, I see you are a mod now. I'll be sure to play nice with you...oh wait...no I won't 😛

Hehe, that's the LAST thing I'd want. Lucky for you, outside of political debate, I'm a lot more objective than "brain dead liberals" are typically given credit for 😀

 

[CADsortaGUY]

Originally posted by: Rainsford

Originally posted by: CADsortaGUY

Originally posted by: Rainsford
...

I'm just trying to explain my views on the topic. If you want to think of that as being defensive...I can't really help you.

I understand the confidence inspiring approach of being so sure in your beliefs you never have to explain them, but this being a political discussion forum, that strategy would seem a little counter-productive. Honestly though, the reason I said you're just playing an old conservative trick with your "sensitive/defensive" comments is because I'm really not sure what seems so overly sensitive or defensive about what I wrote.

You seem sensitive because you responded to a GENERIC POST with your usual rhetoric trying to denegrate Conservatives. MY post had nothing even remotely close to that so obviously there must be some sensitivity/defensivness going on.

How was your post "generic"? You said you thought Mamet's essay was "a pretty good read", and I'm saying, given the content of the essay and what I know from your other posts, I'm not at all surprised you thought so. Even if I was trying to denigrate conservatives (which I don't believe I was), doing so in response to praise of an article denigrating liberals hardly seems out of place to me.

BTW, I see you are a mod now. I'll be sure to play nice with you...oh wait...no I won't 😛

Hehe, that's the LAST thing I'd want. Lucky for you, outside of political debate, I'm a lot more objective than "brain dead liberals" are typically given credit for 😀

My post:

I read this the other day. I thought it was a pretty good read. I am not surprised it ended up here, nor am I surprised by the comments so far.

There is nothing in there that warranted a response post like yours.
The denigration was to the assumed convertees.

Lets hope you are...lets hope you are. It'd be great to <rest censored due to "rules"> 😛

 

[Rainsford]

Originally posted by: CADsortaGUY

Originally posted by: Rainsford

Originally posted by: CADsortaGUY

Originally posted by: Rainsford
...

I'm just trying to explain my views on the topic. If you want to think of that as being defensive...I can't really help you.

I understand the confidence inspiring approach of being so sure in your beliefs you never have to explain them, but this being a political discussion forum, that strategy would seem a little counter-productive. Honestly though, the reason I said you're just playing an old conservative trick with your "sensitive/defensive" comments is because I'm really not sure what seems so overly sensitive or defensive about what I wrote.

You seem sensitive because you responded to a GENERIC POST with your usual rhetoric trying to denegrate Conservatives. MY post had nothing even remotely close to that so obviously there must be some sensitivity/defensivness going on.

How was your post "generic"? You said you thought Mamet's essay was "a pretty good read", and I'm saying, given the content of the essay and what I know from your other posts, I'm not at all surprised you thought so. Even if I was trying to denigrate conservatives (which I don't believe I was), doing so in response to praise of an article denigrating liberals hardly seems out of place to me.

BTW, I see you are a mod now. I'll be sure to play nice with you...oh wait...no I won't 😛

Hehe, that's the LAST thing I'd want. Lucky for you, outside of political debate, I'm a lot more objective than "brain dead liberals" are typically given credit for 😀

My post:

I read this the other day. I thought it was a pretty good read. I am not surprised it ended up here, nor am I surprised by the comments so far.

There is nothing in there that warranted a response post like yours.
The denigration was to the assumed convertees.

Hmm...I think I see the problem, I took "I thought it was a pretty good read" to mean that you agreed with what was really a pretty insulting article. My response was more directed at the content of the article, my assumption being that you agreed with all the content. If that's not the case, then you're right...my response probably wasn't warranted.

Lets hope you are...lets hope you are. It'd be great to <rest censored due to "rules"> 😛

 

[cwjerome]

Originally posted by: Rainsford

Originally posted by: cwjerome
What is this practical liberalism Rainsford speaks of?

The kind of liberalism conservatives do their darndest to pretend doesn't exist 🙂

Seriously though, I think the word "practical" is a little redundant, but I want to distinguish it from the fabricated liberalism conservatives have been bad mouthing since Reagan discovered you could make a very good political living doing so. But the basic idea is that idealism can work outside of a philosophy or political science lecture, that one can deal with reality while trying to improve it instead of wallowing, as Mamet does, in the sense that the world we've got is the best we're going to do. That there are alternatives to broken government besides no government at all...that the conservative strategy of amputation before diagnosis is not a very good approach to running the world.

All Reagan did was acknowledge that the welfare state wasn't the way to go, and America agreed... and we're better off because of it.

The only time I've ever heard of the term "practical liberalism" was years ago in reference to the New Deal/Great Society type of nanny liberal governance. Sounds like you're just sorta re-inventing it, dressing it up, and putting a fresh spin to the old idea of statism with modern terminology and fluffy idealism. And if your so-called practical liberalism holds that conservative strategy (whatever that means) is "amputation before diagnosis," then it's an interesting insight into the weirdness of your ideology.

 

[Rainsford]

Originally posted by: cwjerome

Originally posted by: Rainsford

Originally posted by: cwjerome
What is this practical liberalism Rainsford speaks of?

The kind of liberalism conservatives do their darndest to pretend doesn't exist 🙂

Seriously though, I think the word "practical" is a little redundant, but I want to distinguish it from the fabricated liberalism conservatives have been bad mouthing since Reagan discovered you could make a very good political living doing so. But the basic idea is that idealism can work outside of a philosophy or political science lecture, that one can deal with reality while trying to improve it instead of wallowing, as Mamet does, in the sense that the world we've got is the best we're going to do. That there are alternatives to broken government besides no government at all...that the conservative strategy of amputation before diagnosis is not a very good approach to running the world.

All Reagan did was acknowledge that the welfare state wasn't the way to go, and America agreed... and we're better off because of it.

The only time I've ever heard of the term "practical liberalism" was years ago in reference to the New Deal/Great Society type of nanny liberal governance. Sounds like you're just sorta re-inventing it, dressing it up, and putting a fresh spin to the old idea of statism with modern terminology and fluffy idealism. And if your so-called practical liberalism holds that conservative strategy (whatever that means) is "amputation before diagnosis," then it's an interesting insight into the weirdness of your ideology.

It hardly sounds like I need to spin anything, you're doing enough spinning of my idea for both of us. 😉

All I'm saying is that there is room for an ideology somewhere between head in the clouds idealism and a desire to take a chainsaw to the government. Call it practical liberalism, call it compassionate conservativism, call it whatever you like...the point is that there is a place between the two extremes that folks like David Mamet (and people trying to make political hay) are intent on ignoring.

 

[Vic]

Originally posted by: Tab

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

Excuse me? This guy wasn't a brain-dead liberal he was just brain-dead to begin with...

Originally posted by: Vic

Originally posted by: Moonbeam
Very nice article. A good example of a person who went from being a brain dead liberal to being a real liberal.

Yep. Excellent article IMO. If you ever want to achieve peace with yourself and the world, then eventually you have to reconcile your pie-in-the-sky ideology of perfection with objective reality.

I swear to god someone must have hacked your account and typed this.

Did you read past the first page, Tab? 🙂

 

[Tab]

Originally posted by: Vic

Originally posted by: Tab

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

Excuse me? This guy wasn't a brain-dead liberal he was just brain-dead to begin with...

Originally posted by: Vic

Originally posted by: Moonbeam
Very nice article. A good example of a person who went from being a brain dead liberal to being a real liberal.

Yep. Excellent article IMO. If you ever want to achieve peace with yourself and the world, then eventually you have to reconcile your pie-in-the-sky ideology of perfection with objective reality.

I swear to god someone must have hacked your account and typed this.

Did you read past the first page, Tab? 🙂

No. I read all of them. 🙁

 

[Vic]

LOL

 

[shira]

Originally posted by: Rainsford

Originally posted by: daniel49

Originally posted by: Lemon law
Why is it after reading only one page of this tripe, I want to pull a Norman Mailer and point out the Mamet was brain dead before and brain dead after words. Being liberal or reformed liberal has nothing to do with it.

I always distrust someone who says they are turning over a new leaf. The new Nixon was exactly like the old Nixon, except the new Nixon was older than the old Nixon.

I think that was your problem the last four pages were much better.

No they weren't, they were just better WRITTEN. David Mamet is a (very good) screenwriter, that's what he does. He paints a great picture. But don't confuse that with making a good argument.

Actually, his choices of words and phrasing in this article bothered me. He breaks up his sentences into multiple phrases, with stops and starts and little "look how clever I can be with words" embroidery. His writing style is "choppy," not "smooth", and comes across as kind of pseudo-intellectual.

I've had that same reaction to a few of his movies, where his actors mouth words in what has seemed to me a rather artificial manner. Check out Joe Mantegna's final scene in "House of Games" (probably Mamet's most critically-acclaimed film) to get a good sense of the "Mamet style" of dialog - superficially quite clever, but completely false when you really get down to it. In limited quantities, that "style" is entertaining, but after a while, one gets the sense that Mamet thinks the style gives his works some sort of intellectual cred.

I'm not familiar with any of Mamet's plays, but I wouldn't be surprised if the writing resembles that of his films.

It's doubly ironic that he brings up the writing of John Simon (in his paragraph describing his "ironic" prize for winning the perfect-10 contest) as being supercilious and savage. Simon - unlike Mamet - was and is a true master with words. Simon's greatest fault is that he has extremely high expectations for quality, and he's second to none in effectively expressing his dislike for works that fall short. But when Simon DOES praise, it's just a memorable.

I give credit to Mamet for performing what seems like genuine political soul-searching - I wish everyone could periodically step back and question their own assumptions. But that article is so filled with Mamet's ego, I just end up feeling irritated.

 

[Vic]

David Mamet

 

[Moonbeam]

Originally posted by: Vic
David Mamet

Ah, I wonder what his book , The Wicked Son, a study of Jewish self-hate, might be about.

Also from Wiki:

"Proposed psychological basis (of Jewish self-hate)
Professor Sander L. Gilman of the University of Chicago defines self-hatred as:

...the internalization of the negative stereotypes about who you are--the identification with the reference group's image of you as 'the other' in society. The person who is labeled as different wants to find out why he or she fits the stereotype, or to prove that he/she does not. But the more one attempts to identify with societal definitions in order to fit in, the more one accepts the attitudes of the determining group, the farther away from true acceptability one seems to be." Obviously this statement could be applied to any group which is the subject of bigotry.[7]
Many psychologists who have attempted to explain this phenomenon.[8][9][10] According to some theorists,[11] Jewish self-hatred may result from feelings of inferiority brought upon by antisemitism they have suffered in the past. This can lead to attempts to distance themselves from their Jewish identity by avoiding activities and styles of dress and appearance currently or traditionally associated with Jewish people.[citation needed] They may also attempt to adopt the behavior patterns and characteristics more predominantly associated with Gentiles. In some cases a Jew will not only distance themselves from other Jews but actually engage in discrimination against other Jews. A famous instance of this phenomenon was the case of Dan Burros, who concealed his Jewish background and joined the Ku Klux Klan, eventually rising to Grand Dragon status; Burros committed suicide after The New York Times reported that he was Jewish.[12] The film The Believer was loosely based on his life. This phenomenon may also contribute to what has been dubbed the Silent Holocaust of modern assimilated Jews in free societies."

If we look carefully and with honesty we can see our own story. But it's important while looking to realize and understand those feelings of inferiority were inculcated by other sad self-haters who saw that your safety was contingent on your conforming, that you did so as your only option to survive, and that what you were taught and conformed to was a total lie. A proper awakening doesn't lead to suicide but to freedom and joy.

 

[Moonbeam]

Originally posted by: Lemon law
Why is it after reading only one page of this tripe, I want to pull a Norman Mailer and point out the Mamet was brain dead before and brain dead after words. Being liberal or reformed liberal has nothing to do with it.

I always distrust someone who says they are turning over a new leaf. The new Nixon was exactly like the old Nixon, except the new Nixon was older than the old Nixon.

While I don't agree with your diagnosis after just one page, I do agree with your suspicion of the reformed, and especially the reformed liberal. Liberal is for the young and inexperienced and conservative for the older and more experienced.

What this amounts to, in my opinion, is the fact that the joy and love of life proper to a person created in the image of God is strongest in those not so deeply damaged by the inevitable experience that arises in life with the exposure to others filled with self hate. The young are closer to their true nature, but less armored and less protected with massive ego rationalizations and thus less emotionally dead, the only place other than real understanding, that offers any freedom from the potential for conscious pain.

As the Zen master said, 'before I began the journey mountains were mountains, but after I began there weren't mountains any more. But when I arrived mountains were mountains again. We travel from joy to misery to joy again. We are born perfect, dumped on and turned into shit, and find our way back again.

Look at what Vic pointed out:

"Yep. Excellent article IMO. If you ever want to achieve peace with yourself and the world, then eventually you have to reconcile your pie-in-the-sky ideology of perfection with objective reality."

In that stage of the journey characterized by 'misery longing for lost joy' there is rage depression and need upon need, a demand that the world fix our problems. This creates and drives the political man, the reformer of conserver who will make all things right. When you can see the danger in that you can stop. But to say there's no perfection at all is to misunderstand. The perfection isn't out there, but in here, in your own human heart, in the deep realization of who you really are, it the joy of being in the now.

 

[Drift3r]

So basically he is going from one extreme to another. Going to the other side of the same extremist political coin. When rabid liberals go conservative they usually go to the extreme right, same goes with rabid conservatives going liberal. I have yet to see someone who has had extreme views (left or righ) try and go for the center to find some reasonable ground.

 

[Rainsford]

Originally posted by: shira

Originally posted by: Rainsford

Originally posted by: daniel49

Originally posted by: Lemon law
Why is it after reading only one page of this tripe, I want to pull a Norman Mailer and point out the Mamet was brain dead before and brain dead after words. Being liberal or reformed liberal has nothing to do with it.

I always distrust someone who says they are turning over a new leaf. The new Nixon was exactly like the old Nixon, except the new Nixon was older than the old Nixon.

I think that was your problem the last four pages were much better.

No they weren't, they were just better WRITTEN. David Mamet is a (very good) screenwriter, that's what he does. He paints a great picture. But don't confuse that with making a good argument.

Actually, his choices of words and phrasing in this article bothered me. He breaks up his sentences into multiple phrases, with stops and starts and little "look how clever I can be with words" embroidery. His writing style is "choppy," not "smooth", and comes across as kind of pseudo-intellectual.

I've had that same reaction to a few of his movies, where his actors mouth words in what has seemed to me a rather artificial manner. Check out Joe Mantegna's final scene in "House of Games" (probably Mamet's most critically-acclaimed film) to get a good sense of the "Mamet style" of dialog - superficially quite clever, but completely false when you really get down to it. In limited quantities, that "style" is entertaining, but after a while, one gets the sense that Mamet thinks the style gives his works some sort of intellectual cred.

I'm not familiar with any of Mamet's plays, but I wouldn't be surprised if the writing resembles that of his films.

It's doubly ironic that he brings up the writing of John Simon (in his paragraph describing his "ironic" prize for winning the perfect-10 contest) as being supercilious and savage. Simon - unlike Mamet - was and is a true master with words. Simon's greatest fault is that he has extremely high expectations for quality, and he's second to none in effectively expressing his dislike for works that fall short. But when Simon DOES praise, it's just a memorable.

I give credit to Mamet for performing what seems like genuine political soul-searching - I wish everyone could periodically step back and question their own assumptions. But that article is so filled with Mamet's ego, I just end up feeling irritated.

I suppose those bolded phrases are more what I meant. He knows his audience for a particular piece of writing and does an excellent job tailoring his material to appeal to that auidence. In this case, even though his word choice is admittedly overly clever at the cost of readability, he does a good job at conveying genuine soul searching rather than prepared ideas.

Stream of consciousness style prose is all the rage in OP-ED type articles these days, and the reason is that it allows us to be awed by the clever wordplay while at the same time feeling like we're reading a private diary rather than a prepared piece. Mamet's attempt here isn't to make a sound argument so much as it is to get us to empathize with his "journey", and that only works if he seems smart enough to be worth listening to, but not so prepared that it feels like he's trying to pull the wool over our eyes rather than simply sharing his feelings and ideas with his closest friends.