The Secret Knowledge

by David Mamet

  33 In the late sixties I was driving a cab, and stopped for a cup of coffee at Mike’s Rainbow Café, the cabdriver’s all-night joint. I began talking to a fellow driver, a man around eighty, who, he told me, had in his youth driven for Robert Todd Lincoln.

  34 Which is the essence of “Affirmative Action,” however else it may be described.

  35 E.g., the U.S. Constitution.

  36 Is this fanciful? Consider the case of Creekstone Farms of Kansas. During the Mad Cow scare of 2003, this beef producer developed and sold to the Japanese its own beef, raised, tested, and guaranteed to be absolutely free of the disease. The United States Government ruled that it was not free to do so. Why? Whom could this ruling possibly benefit, save those meat producers who did not choose so to raise their beef; and why in the world would legislators take up their ridiculously transparent and immoral cause if they were not suborned?

  37 Compare Keeper of the Royal Bedchamber with the Hollywood studio title Director of Development. For the lay reader: No movie has ever been made from “development.”

  38 As the Wrights did in their bicycle shop.

  39 What, detractors might ask, does this prove? Does it mitigate against the “Crimes” and “Colonialism” of Israel, as popularized by the United Nations? I deny these crimes exist, and that Israel is an oppressive or colonialist power (to those interested I suggest the following books: The World Turned Upside Down, Melanie Phillips; What Went Wrong?, Bernard Lewis; and Myths and Facts:A Guide to the Arab-Israeli Conflict, Mitchell Geoffrey Bard.)

  But, let us assume you feel that Israel is neither a laudable precious democracy, nor an ordinary Western country neither good nor bad, but is guilty of all the horrors alleged of it—I assert that you would still fight with every force and argument at your command to get on the Israeli plane, you and every hard Leftist and every head-shaking misinformed One-Worlder and anti-Semite up to and including Jimmy Carter and Noam Chomsky, would, if the issue were his life, suspend his most cherished convictions of Israeli perfidy, and plead for the protection of that state he would then not only acknowledge but assert to be his ally, and further assert, as such, that their intercession in his fate was simple human decency toward their own kind—a member of a Western democracy.

  There is nothing any reader of this book would not say or do to get himself and his family on the Israeli plane. Thus, delight in reviling the Jewish state reveals a certain inconsistency.

  40 What is the Liberal’s dilemma? That he is forced to choose—to weigh rationally two positions, and base his choice upon an honest assessment of his own probable actions under similar circumstances. He is asked, finally, to be moral—the cost, however, of such action, is too high. It is his exclusion from the Group.

  41 The Liberal West “enjoys” the Plight of the Palestinians much as it enjoys the purchase of “fair trade” coffee—it is a stimulant additive—self-righteousness being superadded to the morning’s newspaper and caffeine.

  42 And the video that shows the now smiling child rise and remove his bandage when the still-photographers leave.

  43 The Left’s hatred of the Right is based, as is most hatred, upon fear. The Left truly does not understand what the Right means—the principles of Conservatism are not merely foreign, and not even, primarily, objectionable, to the Left. They are incomprehensible, and so inspire the fear of the unknown. This fear is expressed as hatred of evil. What is the Conservative position the Left is absolutely incapable of understanding? That we have a choice.

  44 “One aspect of social organization is to be found in economic activity, and this, along with the other manifestations of a group activity is to be found in a P.O.W. camp. . . . [T]hrough his economic activity, the exchange of goods and services, [the prisoner’s] standard of material comfort is considerably enhanced . . . he is not merely ‘playing at shops.’ [This is] a living example of a simple economy [and] its simplicity renders the demonstration of certain economic hypotheses both amusing and instructive. . . . But the essential interest lies in the universality and the spontaneity of this economic life; it came into existence not by conscious imitation but as a response to the immediate needs and circumstances.” (R. A. Radford, “The Economic Organization of a P.O.W. Camp,” Economica vol. 12, 1945.) As does and as must any free economic organization.

  45 “Perhaps the first thing a visitor to Cuba notices is the enormous energy level. It is still common, as it has been throughout the ten years of Revolution, for people to go without sleep—talking and working several nights a week . . . it seems sometimes as if the whole country is high on some beneficient kind of speed. And has been for ten years.”

  “Cuban culture lacks any equivalent of the Protestant ethic to draw on; people must be inculcated about matters we take for granted.” (Emphasis added.)

  “Our charge (AMERICAN RADICALS) is seen as not one of forming but of dismantling (emphasis in original) a consciousness . . . hence the anti-intellectualism of the brightest kids: their distrust of books, school.”

  “The sense of community perceived in Cuba was not only nurtured by the political ideology of the system, but had its subterranean reservoirs and supports in the stereotype of the joyful, affirming attitude, attributed to the musically gifted song-and-dance loving natives, their natural and politically engendered vitality” From: Susan Sontag: “Some Thoughts on the Right Way (for Us) to Love the Cuban Revolution,” Ramparts, April 1969.

  There we have from a supposedly intelligent and observant human being, not only a recitation, but an unconscious confession of her immersion in a fantasy: The workers, though naturally happy, have not seen the potential increase in their joy brought about by continuous work without sleep; they must be inculcated in the new, political reality. American children, likewise, must discard books and schools and intuit their responsibility to dismantle their culture, reverting, thus, to the bliss of the song-loving natives off our coast.

  46 “Never let a good crisis go to waste.”—Rahm Emanuel

  47 For a perfect dramatic representation of this crisis see Alec Guinness in The Bridge on the River Kwai. He has spent the whole film building a bridge for his enemies, the Japanese. It is only at the film’s end, as he is trying to stop its destruction by his own army that he realizes his crime and says, “What have I done?”

  48 The Nazi swastika was a cross. The USSR’s hammer and sickle, just somewhat less identifiably, was one also.

  49 Any theory put into practice may have its failure ascribed to underfunding, insufficient time for results, or the unfortunate, still insurmountable burdens placed upon it by a previous administration—this being the totality of the Obama administration’s explanation of its dismal performance.

  50 Compare Marcus Garvey’s “Up, you Mighty Race, you Race of Kings. You can accomplish what you will.” (recorded 1921)

  51 That the President only wants to cut taxes to those enterprises he deems politically productive is, of course, understandable. This is called “Politics.” It does not, however, synchronize his matter-of-fact admission that tax cuts create jobs with his, then, irrational insistence on helping the economy through raising taxes.

  52 That the West is exploitative, destructive, racist, and finally, unworthy.

  53 May they grow rich through misleading or defrauding the stockholders? Of course—if the first, let them be voted out, if the second, prosecuted.

  54 In my family, as in yours, someone regularly says, “Hey, you know what would be a good idea . . . ?” And then proceeds to outline some scheme for making money by providing a product or service the need for which has just occurred to him. He and the family fantasize about and discuss and elaborate this scheme. Inherent in this fantasy is the unstated but ever-present truth that, given sufficient capital and expertise or the access to the same, the scheme might actually be put into operation (as, indeed, constantly, throughout our history, such schemes have), bettering the lives of the masses and bringing wealth to their creators. Do you believe such conversati
ons take place in Syria? In France?

  55 This is the widely noted fallacy that “work” must contain a physical element of actual labor. That one who merely “writes things down,” or “plays with figures,” is not performing “work,” but is merely “a manipulator.”

  But what of the man who sat on a rock, and came up with the idea of a wheel, or the idea of a bank, or the theory of relativity?

  Is there an element of gambling in the stock market? Of course there is, and you and I participate in it either directly, or through choices and purchases we each make on the basis of our predictions of a likely rise or fall in prices.

  But let us assume a worst case—that the manipulators, beyond aiding any beneficial transaction (buying and selling of futures in order to, potentially, regularize the cost of commodities), or indeed just gambling (buying and selling futures solely to make money from their fluctuations), are engaged solely in “rigging the market,” and other sharp practices.

  “Do you not see abuses,” the Liberal says. “In fact, do you not see inherent abuses in: the money market, the insurance industry, and so on—should they be allowed to continue unchecked?”

  And the Liberal is not wrong in his outrage. But what human agency cannot be abused, and abused to the point of outrage?

  And might not the Liberal, given an ironclad tip on a stock, consider acting on it, whatever his disdain for the stock market’s “practices”?

  The problem is that if Government can be invoked and employed to arbitrate over every outrage, it may be invoked constantly. For outrage is a feeling and its invocation and adjudication subject to no objective test. The job of the Government is only to make and administer Laws.

  The Liberal, in his legitimate, or at least supportable, “outrage,” has, quite literally, had his feelings hurt.

  But if the State is called upon to take more power in such a case—if no “outrage” is to continue unchecked, then, inevitably, Government will sooner or later check everything; it will (as we see) respond to all calls to intervene; not only to control the stock market and health care, but insurance, auto sales, secondhand smoke, and the labeling of the caloric content of food, and so on. Why? Because each intervention increases the power of the respondents.

  Legislators and executives live, quite literally, by their ability to find a “pressing cause”—this buys them the airtime they require for reelection, and provokes the anxiety for which they offer themselves, to the voters, as the only cure. See “Global Warming,” which made Al Gore a billionaire, and the Global Initiative which have done the same for Bill Clinton.

  The Liberal is not wrong to be concerned about malfeasance and sharp practice and misdirection. He is wrong to think that much of it can be controlled by that organization which is the prime exemplar and beneficiary of these methods.

  The question, finally, is, what is the correct and effective and just use of Government power? And the answer is neither contained in nor indicated by the feelings of the affronted. It is the United States Constitution.

  Is it not tragic that x or y has been harmed in such or such transaction?

  Yes. And it is tragic that the blunt but effective tool for the pursuit of justice is as easily exploitable as any other power; and it is tragic that many cannot see it.

  56 If the Government is to protect all citizens from every possible harm deriving from their choices, from every possible “bad” choice, it is not illogical, in addition to refunding money from legal investments gone bad, to refund the purchase price of most cosmetics. A friend of mine, long deceased, fled Nazi-occupied Poland with her family. She came to New York and was, for a while, supported by her fellow Polish Jew, Helena Rubinstein. One day she said, “Helena, how can you sell these inert white creams to the public, you are selling them nothing. Helena responded, “I am selling them the most valuable thing in the world: I am selling hope.” (In conversation with Noma Potok, ca. 1979)

  If the Government were to debar before—and to compensate after the fact for any actions characterizeable as “foolish”—it would, at first examination, have prohibited both the electric light and the toupee.

  57 Here is a sad story. I was due to return to this university, recently, to teach for a few days, but I came down with the flu, and at the last minute had to cancel my trip. Here is what I missed. The students referred to above had provoked or been provoked by a professor to file a complaint against me, for making “racially derogatory comments.” This complaint had been picked up by the school newspaper, which announced that a campus-wide “town hall meeting” was being convened to vote on whether or not I was to be barred from appearing on campus. That’s not funny.

  58 We were told, as young literary students, that Robert Frost had a lover’s quarrel with the world. Better had he had an actual fight.

  59 “If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you, if you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, but make allowance for their doubting, too . . .”

  60 Many anti-Zionist Jews feel “outrage” at Israeli “enormities.” That the identity and true nature of these supposed “enormities” vanishes upon investigation or contemplation is beside the point. The actual and truly disquieting enormity of Israel is, to them, its existence—because of which a largely anti-Semitic world forces them to choose. They, as opposed to non-Jews, are forced to have an opinion on a difficult and dangerous topic; and they would rather not. They are angered not at Israel nor at world anti-Semitism, but at “the Jews.”

  61 The Jew feels dislocated as his lived life is different from that which he imagines he lives. He is indelibly a Jew, associates with his kind, and denies his essential nature, his heritage, and his co-religionaries in their distress. “To summarize, contrary to the claim that is constantly reiterated, Israel has no right to use force to defend itself against rockets from Gaza, even if they are regarded as terrorist crimes.” (Noam Chomsky, “ ‘Exterminate All the Brutes’: Gaza, 2009”) Of course Mr. Chomsky feels that all is not right with the world—his hobby is promoting the cause of people who want to kill him.

  62 I do not hate women. I do not like that woman.

  63 “So the life you describe—one of responsibility, looking after your family, contributing back to the community—that’s what we want to reward,” President Obama, to a working-class questioner at a town meeting, September 20, 2010.

  A study of Black “Toasts,” that is, song-sagas, records a couple of ditchdiggers singing, while, above them, a folklorist makes notes on their quaint ways. The folklorist tires, takes out a pocketknife, and, absently, begins throwing it into the ground. One of the ditchdiggers interpolates, into the toast, “We’re down here, and we’re ’most dead. He’s up there playing mumblety-peg.” (Bruce Jackson, Get Your Ass in the Water and Swim Like Me)

  64 And note, Ms. Steinem, that it is not the job of an actor to “express her real self.” (Which of us knows what his real self is?) It was her job to entertain the audience. That was her job. And she did it as well as anyone who ever acted. What entertainment has ever come from your beloved solipsism? Would you go to see such a performance—an evening of someone “expressing her true self”?

  65 Senator Clinton wrote that it takes a village to raise a child. But she, as the good mother she appears to be, would not consider having her daughter raised by a village, which she would, correctly, see as a dereliction of duty as the kid’s mom. A village neither can nor should raise a child. That, as the Senator knows, is the job of the Family. Further, where are these supposed villages the Senator would like to reconstitute as orphanages? We are no longer a rural population, and the small communities the Senator names as the village’s assigns have, in the main, been destroyed by Government good intentions.

  66 The B.P. Gulf oil leak, that is, was bad. The leak of thousands of classified military documents by Julian Assange on Wikileaks was good. Why?

  67 Amity Shlaes, The Forgotten Man; see also Milton Friedman and Thomas Sowell.


  68 Which word’s most basic meaning is “awareness.”

  69 If the distribution of benefits according to a person’s genes is wrong, if absolute renunciation of such is a hallmark of a just society, then affirmative action must be as injust as chattel slavery. Is it less pernicious? For the moment, yes; is it less unjust? No. It is a distortion of law, which is to say, of conscience, in the name of sympathy—it is the sin of Nadab and Abihu.

  70 How could it be otherwise? There is only so much money, and the government cannot provide “aid” to everyone. Whose claim, then, will be smiled upon? Only that which enhances the power of its administrators. What human being, in office, would do otherwise? He who is pure-of-heart? How in the world would he have been elected?

  71 These laws are the great possession of the American people, and they change as the ethos of the time changes, the fugitive slave law being superseded by the Fourteenth Amendment, for example.

  72 No one would say of a firefighter, hired under rules reducing the height requirement, and thus unable to carry one’s child to safety, “Nonetheless, I am glad I voted for that ‘more fair’ law.”

  73 As, indeed, they are, or, in the best case, to those among the applicants claiming eligibility most capable of framing, supporting, or bribing their claims to the front of the line. All claims cannot be met. The politicians and bureaucrats discriminating between claims will necessarily favor those redounding to their individual or party benefit—so the eternal problem of “Fairness,” supposedly solved by Government distribution of funds, becomes, yet again and inevitably, a question of graft.