David Mamet - The Secret Knowledge

Al Sharpton and those calling (under whatever name) for reparations for ancient crimes are, in effect, suing for crumbs from those they, by that suit, designate as their (somehow) superiors. But they have no superiors. There is no one home. The slave owners, along with the robber barons, and “the interests,” have left the building.

Reverend Al Sharpton, in Chris Rock’s wonderful documentary Good Hair , takes on the overwhelming Asian ownership of hair salons in Black communities. He calls this ownership “exploitation.” But who is exploiting the Black community, the Asians who, perceiving a need, are catering to that need, or the Reverend Sharpton?

The Asians, like the Jews, immigrants one hundred years ago, saw both a market and a vacuum of power, and responded. They saw in effect that no one was there .

My father bluffed his way into Northwestern Law on the GI Bill, having (perhaps) finished two years of community college. He graduated first in his class. I asked him what his secret was, and he explained that he didn’t realize how little was required of him .

President Obama announces every day (and his presidency could, indeed, be reduced to this announcement and its results) that the West is finished: with capitalism, with Democracy, with self defense, and that anyone who wants it can have it. Will our opponents, those declared and those indeed stunned into wakefulness by our lassitude, be any less likely to respond to opportunity than the Asians in Harlem?

The same rules governing commercial real estate must govern geopolitics—how could it be otherwise, as each are only expressions of the universal nature of human interaction?

If the other fellow has damaged his property, if he has mismanaged it, and depressed or miscalculated its value, if he does not engage in its supervision and upkeep, it becomes a Bargain, and the bargain will be snapped up by the observant.

Where do these conditions of mismanagement and unconcern apply more frequently than in the case of property that is inherited (“shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations” being proverbial)?

Our forebears struggled and fought and died to establish and to preserve and broaden those freedoms they bequeathed us, and which have made us the most prosperous country in history. To denigrate our culture and traditions, to turn our back on our place and duty in the world—to, in effect, live off the interest and call it Humanism, or One-Worldism, or re-distribution of wealth, is an act of folly like that of any thoughtless and weak (not to say ungrateful) inheritor of wealth.

But the Liberal West must hide from itself its dysfunction, noting only those trends and occurrences indicative not only and not even primarily of the success of its theories 49but of their rationality .

To defend the practice of the irrational consumes any organism’s energy and, as with the Reverend Sharpton’s cry of “exploitation,” blinds the irrational to better uses of his time and power. What is to prevent African Americans from either opening their own hair salons, or, like the Asian Americans, casting about for a need to fill and filling it (as Reverend Sharpton has)? Nothing. 50And those who do so are rewarded according to the rules of the free market: “Give me something I want or need and I will pay you for it.” Mr. Rock’s film, in fact, contains a striking instance of a successful Black-owned business, Dudley’s Hair Care & Cosmetics, which produces and distributes a vast amount of hair, skin, and makeup products to the African American community.

To defend the irrational or inconsistent becomes, in the dysfunctional organization, the prime goal—and any other use of energy secondary—for the dysfunctional organism’s life, that is, its ability to function as constituted, depends on the devotion, among its members, to fantasy.

Here is an example. President Obama, in a speech in July 2010, declared that the Government should be ready to support Green Business—that if anyone wanted to create these jobs, the Government would be there to help.

What was the help? He was offering rebates. But what are rebates but tax cuts?

To suggest that giving back (to approved entities) some of the money drained from them in taxes, and to characterize this as “help,” is like a mugger pausing in administering his beating and characterizing this pause, to his victim, as assistance.

If, as President Obama announced perceptively, cutting taxes creates jobs (as it does; as anyone not blinded by theory knows: when taxes are raised, businesses close), then why not cut all taxes? 51

This inconsistency is ignored only by those who benefit from it (the administration), and the confused (Liberals).

Why not, O Liberals, vote to cause the Government to keep its filthy hands off the possessions of its citizens, and let those citizens and their country thrive?

It’s not the largess of Government which is required (the money existed before they confiscated it—it simply was not theirs ) but its reduction. This can only be brought about by reducing taxes, for government and taxes are each the secret name of the other.

To whom is this, in his sober moments, other than evident?

To defend and continue the practice the irrational, and thus necessarily destructive, consumes energy and time which cannot be expended on production, innovation, actual revision, or on anything else. For the dysfunctional group—a state or family—congeals around and must spend increasing amounts of its energy defending a lie.

The lie may be that Daddy is not abusing little Susie, or it may be that increased taxes, Government intervention, and One-Worldism somehow bring stability to our country, and bring to its citizens not only health and prosperity, but Salvation (called, in 2008, “Change”).

The dysfunctional State and the dysfunctional Family have in common an emergency tool for dealing with, defusing, or indicting outbreaks of reason. The sick family employs the mechanism of the Designated Criminal. It is this person who is always doing something wrong, which is to say contrary to his family’s interests and destructive of its peace. His thoughts, behavior, attitude, and loyalty may always be called into question; and he is punished, mocked, marginalized, or ignored, as circumstances warrant, which responses in themselves unite and strengthen the threatened organism. How is this Designated Criminal selected, he whose actions and demeanor are all that stands between his family and Happiness? He is chosen by his health. He is invariably the most clearheaded member of the household.

He may be designated because he is passive, or weak, but more usually, because he is not.

For the more clearheaded, healthy, and strong the child is, the more likely he is not only to question, but to rebel against unreason, thus increasing his utility as a recipient of scorn, his condign punishments standing in support of the original proposition of his perfidy.

It is no great leap to discern, in the Family of Nations, this same mechanism—denial and coalescence around a lie. 52No reader need waste reflection in identifying the cause of the West’s woes—the Designated Criminal State—it is done for us constantly by the United Nations.

23

GREED

Greed is a sin. It is mentioned in the Ten Commandments, where it is called covetousness, which is to say the wish for that which another possesses. As such it is allied to envy and resentment.

But there is a nonsinful wish for more, and it is called ambition.

How is the sin of covetousness to be differentiated from a legitimate desire for gain?

The Torah cautions us not to go astray after the evidence of our eyes and our hearts “which we are whoring after”—a good harsh word to describe covetousness. Should we go astray, that which was a sin may fall from the moral world into the judicial realm—sin may become crime and, as such, the legitimate concern of the community. The community must protect itself not from ambition, neither from covetousness, but from crimes committed in their pursuit. And the criminal act, as opposed to the merely distasteful or, indeed, immoral, must be clearly delineated, or else there can be no justice. A democratic system and civilization punishes those who take that which does not belong to them according to law.