Posted on 01/14/2026 6:57:03 PM PST by CondoleezzaProtege
Reading David Mamet’s new book of essays, The Disenlightenment: Politics, Horror, and Entertainment, I was reminded of how loosely jointed and shape-shifting an essay can be...
Mamet, whose political conversion to conservatism was announced in 2008, has turned full-on MAGA. He believes the United States is in decline but remains hopeful, saying, "Trump is a hero, and his heirs will, God willing, increase the longevity of the American Experiment."
What’s behind our political sickness, according to Mamet, if I read him correctly, is a compound of human failings.
First, there is the mendacity of politicians whom he compares to the shill in a game of three-card monte—the shill being a person who pretends to be a player, encourages others to risk their money, but is working in cahoots with the dealer.
Next is the gullibility of voters about whom it can be said that they basically want to be lied to. Here the similarities between politics and entertainment begin to stand out.
"The lights go down on stage or screen and we are involved in a complicity. We will suspend our disbelief in return for being told a story," Mamet writes.
Finally, there is the all-too-human desire to be accepted into the tribe. Mamet psychologizes this as a misguided attempt to fit in and survive.
"Membership in our various correct-thinking groups is actually an unconscious attempt to reconstitute the family—the group which might offer protection." This natural urge has been cranked into overdrive by the rise of the internet and those devices that keep us connected to it. "The addictive ‘connectedness’ offered by the computer awakens our human instinct for constant connection to the group." Mass psychology takes over and people begin denying their own individual or subgroup identities."
(Excerpt) Read more at freebeacon.com ...
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bfl
It's a great read. I'll read anything Mamet writes.
Interesting! Sounds like it belongs next to “Return of the Strong Gods” by RR Reno. (He discusses the Open Society movement’s “Therapies of Disenchantment” designed to destroy believe in the Transcendent and metaphysical, and fight “Facism” which is pretty much anything that we would call “Woke”, and to replace “Truth” with “meaning”, and remove strong opinions and convictions).
How could the man who write GGGR be anything but conservative?
Yuri Bezmenov said the same thing. He was taught this in the KGB "propaganda school" (I don't know what they actually called it).
One of the threads that runs through Mamet’s work is his fascination with the con.
I’ve probably watched that movie 20 times by now.
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