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Thursday, March 13. 2008

More on Mamet

If you decide to revisit the now-famous Mamet Village Voice essay, read the comments too.

I value his essay for two reasons: first, because he put into words something close to what I experienced many years ago and, second, because Mamet's cultural status might offer some folks "permission" to take a fresh look at their views.

Posted by The Barrister in Politics at 12:12 | Comments (4) | Trackback (1)

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We believe deeply that the denial of 'life's dark side in ourselves' is the key to what's wrong with the utopianist left world view, we wrote the first time we featured Max Ernst's 'L'Ange du Foyeur ou le Triomphe du
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Tracked: Mar 13, 16:15

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I guess you could call me a Rush Baby. Although I was already a young adult when I first listened to him extensively. What got me was his optimism. Shows like the one he does for Labor Day- about reaching for your own potential. He is definitely one of the reasons I pushed myself to get a college degree instead of driving trucks, although he would say I did it myself.

This sentiment pretty much draws the line in the sand for me: (from Mamet)

"This is, to me, the synthesis of this worldview with which I now found myself disenchanted: that everything is always wrong."

This is where the butterfly looks around and says, let's get out of this damn cocoon.
#1 Phil on 2008-03-13 16:03 (Reply)
I slogged through the basically stream of consciousness article from Mamet. Were he on no ones radar screen it would have never been , nor should have been published.

The overweening thought while experiencing this painful piece was that Mamet would have been better served in life by reading the classic philosophers, thus saving us the time wasted on listening to his exhaustive growth from liberal to conservative.

I am no longer amazed, as I was in my youth that such ignorant people could make such a handsome living. I just have to remind myself that for every Mamet who finds his way there are a thousand fold who will never even question their path, assured in every way that liberalism/progressism is the truth and that only cretins and the ignorant of the great fly over adhere to conservative values.

I'm glad he made the trip successfully. Now does he have the guts to eschew the liberal glitterati and scold them for their ignorance, or will he be content to be a closet conservative? My bet is heavily on the latter.
#2 Habu on 2008-03-13 16:36 (Reply)
I wade back in here as either the lithium shipment has come in or the banjo done broke its last string...

My advice is don't look a gift-horse in the mouth. For every Mamet a fissure forms and we are one step closer to seeing those "thousand fold" folding. After 2 or 4 years of Dems screwing things up more than they are now, the sheep will follow their former icons back to something that resembles rational perception. Theses former lib icons will be needed for that purpose as we (ok I) don't want to wait for an entire generation to die off, as the vast majority of libs will not change their minds individually. They just don't work that way. The job of Republicans (or hopefully some new entity that is more true to what Repubs have traditionally stood for) is to use this time wisely to focus on evangelizing, for lack of a better word, the ideas of limited government, local control of government, and holding the nutcase conspiracy theorists (both 9/11 and Berkleyite fellow travelers) responsible for their positions in the future. Wasting ammo on minor corruption issues like Whitewater or the latest sexual peccadilloes wasn't/isn't helping the cause. Think of Bunker Hill...Don't fire until you see the whites of their eyes.
#2.1 KRW on 2008-03-13 23:06 (Reply)
When I first read the essay by Mamet, I purposely avoided reading the comments. I didn't need the agitda (sp.?). Well, I took your advice and went back and read some of the comments. I was right the first time by staying away from the comments. I,ve had too many discussions with leftists to not know what to expect.
Pray for Mamet.
#3 sean on 2008-03-14 11:16 (Reply)

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