The Secret Knowledge

by David Mamet

  Frank Lloyd Wright designed an open chess pavilion on the beach at North Avenue, and I wrote my first play (The Duck Variations, 1972), about two old DPs, sitting there, looking at the lake. A DP was a displaced person, and it was my father’s term of opprobrium for an appearance insufficiently put-together. “You look like a DP.” Insufficient for what, you might ask, and the answer was “to get on in the world,” for why else were we in Chicago?

  Across the drive from the Chess Pavilion was Lincoln Park, and I used to sit out there and write in my notebook. I dated a wonderful girl who worked for the Mob. She lived in the Belden Stratford Hotel, and in the summer she would sunbathe in the park across from the hotel, by the statue of Shakespeare, and every hour on the hour a bellman would bring her an iced coffee. She drove a Mercedes 280 convertible, and she never locked the car, as, she explained, anyone who wanted to break in would simply slit the roof, so why antagonize them?

  The back of her car was ankle deep in parking tickets. She would park on the steps of City Hall. And when the tickets got too deep, she’d collect them in a bag, and give them to somebody who would fix them.

  One or two nights a week we would drive to Cicero, and I would watch her doing one of her jobs. She had a ring of keys which let her into the various clubs in which her people were interested. She’d let us in to the deserted clubs, at 4 A.M., and she’d go to the vending machines, open them with the keys on the ring, count and then replace the money, lock the machine again, and we would leave.

  Her boyfriend followed us, now and then, in his car. She told me he had vowed to kill me, but I’d seen him, and I didn’t believe the threat. I don’t think this was particularly courageous on my part; he just didn’t look the type.

  We conceive the world not through indoctrination, but through osmosis: a culture is the amalgam and the sum of the unwritten laws: “This is how we do things here.” And I believe that, in Chicago, I had a very interesting youth. This is how we did things there: one spiffed the mechanic at the cab garage if one wanted to get a working cab to drive; one paid off the cop who pulled you over, as it was much cheaper than going down to 11th and State and paying the fine; the politicians were corrupt—why else would they be politicians? (the absence of this understanding in the minds of the young baffles me); the Governors, regularly, went to jail, how about that?

  And through it all one had to make a living, which meant, and means, learning how to navigate in the wider world—learning to take care of yourself.

  For the Government was going to take care of you at best to the extent that you took care of it: if you wanted X you did Y, if you did not do Y, why in the world would any rational entity give you X?

  You wanted to work for the Park District, you kicked back your two weeks’ pay; you wanted your kid on the Fire Department, you got out the vote.

  The politicians have not changed, but it seems that the electorate cannot locate its ass with a guide dog.

  There was, in Chicago, no such thing as Social Justice, there was the Law, and the Law was both made and administered by imperfect human beings, like ourselves; and the operations of the Law itself could be and were corrupted. There was such a thing as “the underdog,” but anyone demanding that status was merely picking up a convenient club to use in the fight. (cf. Saul Alinsky on being a “neighborhood organizer”: “The third rule is, ‘wherever possible go outside of the experience of the enemy.’ Here you want to cause confusion, fear, and retreat.” Rules for Radicals, 1971.)

  The White Neighborhoods got better snow removal? Of course they did—it was a segregated city and the councilmen were white. And cries for Justice, the blacks knew, would be less effective than getting a dog in the fight, and getting people on the City Council and into City Hall, and letting the Whites gape slack-jawed at the other fellow being unfair.34

  Was it a terrible thing to be a Black in Chicago in those days? Probably. My people came over from Poland to escape the Pogroms, which is to say, fleeing murderers. Did we, the Jews, feel bad for the Blacks? Yes. What did we do about it? We joined the NAACP. Was this effective, appropriate, insulting, paternalistic? How would I know?

  Did they do it because they felt “guilty”? The suggestion would have been greeted as psychotic. What did my parents’ generation have to feel guilty about? They came here with nothing, sixty years after slavery’s abolition, fleeing their state in Europe as slaves or semislaves, and scant years ahead of Hitler’s assassins. They supported the NAACP out of a sense of tzedakah, which is to say “righteousness.” Was their response insufficient, or misplaced? No doubt. But it was not risible. And the South Shore Country Club, eight blocks from my house, and Restricted, allowing No Jews, was eventually bought by Elijah Muhammad, restricting all whites, and life goes on.

  But I believe I benefited from the absence of sanctimony.

  10

  MILTON FRIEDMAN EXPLAINED

  Each party alleges, and its enthusiasts agree, that it has never done anything wrong, and its opponent has never done anything right. Any failures, catastrophes, or absurdities during its tenure are blamed on late-appearing aftereffects of its predecessor’s enormities.

  Most officeholders and candidates are both politicians and lawyers, and so labor under the double anecdotal taint of—I will not say, “mendacity,” but “looking on the bright side.” The bright side is, of course, that which favors their particular interests and aspirations. If bread, it may be identified by the presence of butter.

  Let us assume that in all close elections each side will endeavor to steal it (a safe assumption, as it is the case); for what unpatriotic soul would not in the service of National Interest wish to lessen the vagaries of chance?

  Let us assume, then, that each party partakes equally of the human capacity for good and bad, for corruption, for misguided compassion, and of overweening cupidity; and that each will suffer failures of projects both good-willed and merely monstrously self-serving.

  The question, as posed by Milton Friedman, was not “What are the decisions?”—any human or conglomeration is capable of decisions both good and bad—but “Who makes the decisions?” Shall it be the Government, that is, the State, or shall it be the Individual?

  In some cases it must be the Government, which is, in these, the only organ capable of serving and protecting individual liberty and freedom: notably, in defense, the administration of justice, and maintenance of and oversight of Federal Infrastructure, e.g., Roads, Interstate Travel, Waterways, Parks, and so on. But what in the world is the Government doing meddling in Education, Health Care, Automobile Production, and the promotion of dubious, arguable, or absurd programs designed to bring about “equality”? Should these decisions not be left to the Individual, or to a Free Market, in which forces compete, to serve the Individual who will be the arbiter of their success?

  But but but, some will interject, “Look at the abuses.” Well, some abuses fall afoul of the laws, in which case the provision has been made for their correction which, if not forthcoming, is in the right of the public to demand. Others fall afoul of custom, and will or can be corrected by censure, withdrawal of custom, or attempts at criminalization. Some must be borne, as they would under any system of government, business, or administration: someone eventually, inevitably, makes what someone else might characterize as “an error.”

  But which system, Free Enterprise, or the State, is better able to correct itself?

  For this is the essence of the difference between the Free Market (constrained) and the Liberal (unconstrained) view of the world—to use Friedrich Hayek’s terms. It is not a difference of preference for plans or programs—in which either side may not only differ but, equally, be wrong. It is a difference in appreciation of structure.

  The constrained view is that neither human beings, nor any conglomeration into which they may form themselves, are omnipotent, nor omniscient, nor omnibenevolent. We are incapable even of knowing, let alone of implementing, engines to alleviate the true causes of, and i
ndeed of understanding the true nature of, many of the problems besetting us. This is, as Hayek says, the Tragic View. We are not only wrong, but most often wrong. The treasured values of one generation (slavery, phrenology, lobotomy, physical discipline of children, women as property, et cetera) are seen now not only as vile but as absurd. As, eventually, will many of the cherished ideas of today. This is tragic, but inevitable.

  The question is which of two systems is better able to discard the failed and experiment to find the new; and the answer is the Free Market. It is not perfect; it is better than State Control; for the Free Market, to a greater extent, must respond quickly and effectively to dissatisfaction and to demand—if a product or service does not please, to continue in its manufacture in the Free Market is pointless. (Compare Government persistence and expansion of programs proved to have failed decades ago—farm subsidies, aid to Africa, busing, urban renewal, etc.) On the other hand, in a Free Market, every man, woman, and child is scheming to find a better way to make a product or a service which will make a fortune. The garage mechanic, the housewife, the tinkerer, the scientist, the artist, and their kids—everyone is always looking for a better way. (Compare the Government employee sitting at his desk. Why is he not looking for a better way to do his job? Why should he? A more efficient way might possibly eliminate his job, or that of the superior to whom he owes allegiance.)

  Nothing is free. All human interactions are tradeoffs. One may figure out a way to (theoretically) offer cheap health insurance to the twenty million supposedly uninsured members of our society. But at what cost—the dismantling of the health care system of the remaining three-hundred-million-plus? What of the inevitable reduction, shortages, abuses, delay and injustice caused by all State rationing?

  There’s a cost for everything. And the ultimate payer of every cost imposed by government is not only the individual member of the mass of taxpayers who does not benefit from the scheme; but likely, also, its intended beneficiaries (cf., welfare, busing, affirmative action, urban planning).

  Well, you will say, it’s not Either/Or. And, of course it is not. All civilizations need, and all civilizations get Government. Many have inherited, had forced upon them, or in fact demanded a real or obviously potential dictatorship (Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy)—these, and their like, began as Welfare States, dedicated, supposedly, to distributing the abundant good things of the Land to all. But they, and all the Communist States, and Socialist States, operated at a cost, for everything has a cost. The cost of these benevolent dictatorships was shortage, famine, murder, and the eventual dissolution of the State. Hayek calls this utopian vision The Road to Serfdom. And we see it in operation here, as we are in the process of choosing, as a society, between Liberty—the freedom from the State to pursue happiness, and a supposed but impossible Equality, which, as it could only be brought about by a State capable and empowered to function in all facets of life, means totalitarianism and eventual dictatorship.

  Is the State to decide for the individual, or is the individual to insist upon a reduction of State powers to that point at which this power is reserved only for application in those cases, as specified in law, where one individual or group abridges the liberty of another?

  The latter is the revolutionary understanding of government spelled out in that Constitution elected officials swear to defend. They are elected as public servants, the public granting them only that freedom of action necessary to fulfill that oath. Is it not time for a return to that revolutionary understanding?

  11

  WHAT IS “DIVERSITY”?

  It is a commodity. Parents purchase it for their children; for as much as they might pay to achieve and brag about their children’s membership in a “wonderfully diverse” setting, they all eat in restaurants whose clientele looks just like themselves. As do we all. This is “Pediatric Diversity,” or diversity-by-proxy.

  Once, in my younger days, I was asked to help out at some fund-raising event for some good cause. The event was to raise funds to alleviate hunger. All the attendees bought a ticket, but the tickets were numbered one, two, or three. Those getting number one were entitled to all they could eat; the twos, to a meal consisting of five hundred calories (the supposed caloric intake, for the evening meal, in the area to which the funds were supposed to be sent); the threes got nothing at all. I was passing out tickets at the head of the line. I collected the money from a fellow there with his young son. He leaned in toward me and asked me to give them both a three.

  I went home after the event and felt something of a fool. What, I wondered, was this charade in which I was participating? If the fellow wanted his son to know what it felt like to miss a meal, couldn’t he have played that charade at home? If everyone had, the event would have had no overhead costs, and everyone would have been able to send all the ticket costs to the hungry. But this fellow was practicing Pediatric Socialism: he, rightly, as a loving father, never wanted his son to be hungry; but, like a loving but overindulgent father, he wanted to purchase for him an approximation of the experience, which, he thought, might make his son a better person.

  But how would the two possibly be connected? For the son had not only noticed that a point was made that some people were hungrier than others, and that it was (supposedly) a matter of chance, but that one could appreciate and learn from this unfortunate fact by purchasing a ticket at a game show; and, perhaps (more likely), the son had observed that money and influence could buy anything, even a charade of poverty.

  How fashionable to wear clothes which are distressed. The young on the Westside of Los Angeles dress themselves in jeans worn, sanded, and razored to resemble something a six-month castaway might crawl ashore in. Why? They are trying to purchase a charade of victimization, as the ethos of the Liberal West holds that these victims are the only ones of worth. But how to go about it? For the jeans can cost over one thousand dollars (one might buy them at Goodwill for two bucks, but, I am informed, they would be “seen through” and, though a closer approximation to true poverty, they are ineffective as a concomitant display of wealth).

  It beats me all hollow.

  Look at those Old Rich Guys in their Porsche, the young might say; but the Porsche is perhaps not an attempt to display wealth, neither to recapture youth, but to enjoy that which some years of labor have permitted as an indulgence.

  I think quite a bit about higher education, which, to me, partakes of the ethos both of bottled water and of an “evening of poverty”: bottled water because, at least in the Liberal Arts, it is useless; and Ticket Number Three, as the rather universal absence of rigor in courses devoted to “Identity” abandons the children to fantasies of their own omnipotence and oppression (a bad mix). This allows, indeed, encourages them to criticize and dismantle a culture they, in their adolescence, are equipped neither to understand nor to participate in—any more than the young chap receiving Ticket Number Three would have, thus, become an expert on Global Inequality.

  I believe the incredible wealth of this country will allow it to survive quite a while on its hundreds of years of production and upon its natural resources and historic culture of productivity. But the Change which Obama’s rhetoric referred to preceded and will follow him, accelerated by him and his policies, accepted by a drugged populace and a supine press. It is the unfortunate descent of a productive nation into socialism, which, as I understand it, is robbing Peter to pay Paul. I don’t think it’s any more complex than that.

  12

  THE MONTY HALL PROBLEM AND THE CONTRACTOR

  There was, and still may be, a television game show called Let’s Make a Deal. Its MC, Monty Hall, brought the contestants down to guess behind which of three closed doors the Grand Prize lurked.

  The contestant made his guess (e.g., Door One). Now Monty opened one of the two remaining doors (e.g. Door Two) to show that it did not conceal the prize, and asked the contestant if he wished to stay with his original guess, One, or choose the third door, Three—which had neither been or
iginally guessed, nor subsequently revealed.

  The audience would then scream out its intuition: “Change! Don’t change! Don’t change! Change!”

  This seemed a logical choice—between option One and option Two—the odds being ostensibly 50 percent of picking a winner; a decision to change or stand pat, resting, then, but upon sentiment. But the odds were not now 50 percent, but two to one, actually, in favor of change.

  A mathematician acquaintance of mine explained this to me some years ago, and though convinced, I, when the conversation was over, reverted immediately to my previous, logical perception: There was a choice between two doors. Door Two had been revealed a blank—the prize must therefore be behind Door One or Three. The odds had to be 50 percent.

  Over the years, I would see the mathematician at parties, and ask him to convince me again, and I would again be convinced during the time of our chat.

  The problem, called the Monty Hall Problem, I learned, was quite famous in mathematic circles, and had formed the basis for much new and interesting investigation and speculation regarding probability and perception. For it pertained not only to mathematics, but to cognition. It could be proved mathematically, and demonstrated empirically, that the odds were two to one in favor of change, and yet, the lay mind (mine) remained unconvinced. There were two choices; I had picked Door One, Monty revealed Door Two was a blank, and I was offered the choice between my Door One, and Door Three.

  But no, I was told, I was offered a choice between Door One, and all the other doors.

  But “All the other doors,” I said, “were only one door, Door Three.”

  One day, I figured it out for myself. For I thought about it not as a mathematical proposition, but as a confidence trick: Having picked my door, Monty was going to reveal that one of the two remaining was blank. But of course one of the two remaining was blank. One of the two remaining had to be blank, as there was only one prize.