Below is an excerpt from a political essay by David Mamet in the Village Voice. The article is entitled Why I Am No Longer a 'Brain-Dead Liberal'
Mamet's piece is great read that I think begins to bridge the divide between left and right. And, in my humble opinion, extremes are never a good thing. I would go as far as to say that the only people who "get it" understand that finding the middle way is the means and the end wrapped up in a nice neat package. Take, for instance, the case that Buddhism sets forth. In Madhyamaka, the middle way is the only true way. The Buddha himself recognized that aestheticism was not the correct means for finding personal liberation. The Buddha, however, still took it upon himself to push to the extreme, which he realized was ineffectual. Likewise, Lao Tzu recognized the importance of "The Way" which sought to find balance in a world of extremes.
On one final note before you (hopefully) begin reading Mamet's entire article, I think it is appropriate to quote the words of one of the great Christians of his time. William Perkins (1558-1602), a revered reformed pastor, provided the world with some much needed middle ground, specifically in terms of equity, mercy, and justice. Perkins provides:
"And I make this distinction of the law of the land and the word of God because we are to know this for a rule: that every extremity which a law in the strictest acception doth afford is not warrantable to be urged by the word of God; and yet notwithstanding, it is good, convenient, and requisite that the extremity be warranted by the law, because in some cases it musts needs be executed."
Here is the excerpt from Mamet's piece that I found to be most interesting. You can find the whole article here.
"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.
For the Constitution, rather than suggesting that all behave in a godlike manner, recognizes that, to the contrary, people are swine and will take any opportunity to subvert any agreement in order to pursue what they consider to be their proper interests.
To that end, the Constitution separates the power of the state into those three branches which are for most of us (I include myself) the only thing we remember from 12 years of schooling.
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.
Rather brilliant. For, in the abstract, we may envision an Olympian perfection of perfect beings in Washington doing the business of their employers, the people, but any of us who has ever been at a zoning meeting with our property at stake is aware of the urge to cut through all the pernicious bullshit and go straight to firearms.
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.
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.
And I began to question my distrust of the "Bad, Bad Military" of my youth, which, I saw, was then and is now made up of those men and women who actually risk their lives to protect the rest of us from a very hostile world. Is the military always right? No. Neither is government, nor are the corporations—they are just different signposts for the particular amalgamation of our country into separate working groups, if you will. Are these groups infallible, free from the possibility of mismanagement, corruption, or crime? No, and neither are you or I. So, taking 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."
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