David Mamet: "America..will go one with Nineveh and Tyre. But not today."

David Mamet: the America-in-decline narrative is akin to
Israel's 40 years in the wilderness. (image from Medium)

Pulitzer-winning playwright David Mamet says that America's decline, prior to the November election, was due to individuals' fear of challenging the dominant narrative: [bold added]

Yet half of America not only abides but fervently supports a codependent decline to poverty, crime and a nascent police state. Why? The leftist politicians and their media courtiers and designated beneficiaries profited from the perks of power. But why did the everyday American endorse them and their fear mongering? The actual threat wasn’t global warming, Islamophobia, the Supreme Court, the police, Immigration and Customs Enforcement or Mr. Trump. It was exclusion from the herd.

An existential secret is one whose revelation would destroy the group. If dad is a drug addict or a sex criminal, acknowledging it would shatter the family. The protection of the secret becomes the family’s unifying endeavor. If anyone says anything, it might reveal that everyone is in on the secret. The sick family devotes all necessary energies to collusion—to mutual and self-censorship.

During the past four years, American politics has been dominated by a coalition each of whose members, like codependent kin, has its own investment in group integrity and the power it derives therefrom. The superrich, academia, Islamists, Marxists and the media have colluded to suppress the true and impose the false.

We know that their perfidies, lawfare, slander, blacklisting and civil persecution were practiced on conservatives and Republicans, particularly on Mr. Trump. But the suppression was targeted primarily at their own voters.

To remain unthreatened by reason, the liberal populace had to be convinced to endorse various lies and fantasies: Black Lives Matter, Israel’s perfidy, unlimited abortion as a woman’s right, men’s right to compete in women’s sports, the abolition of the police, Mr. Trump’s demonic power and so on.

Why would rational people vote to destroy their borders, their cities, their jobs and their children? For the same reason the sick family must tolerate its dysfunction: The co-opted liberal electorate was terrified that any deviation would result in destruction of its protective unit. As it would.

While a reader may disagree with David Mamet's list of "lies and fantasies," there is no denying that Democratic voters were asked to accept abrupt reversals of positions this year--from President Biden's sudden cognitive decline to the newfound acceptability of fracking, law enforcement, and Christianity.

Even the one theme that they stuck with to the end--Trump is Hitler--was cast overboard the day after the election by Democratic politicians who promised to work with the President-elect and opinion-writers eager for an interview.

The important lesson, IMHO, is not the wrongness of Democratic policies but the fact that their thought leaders didn't even believe their own arguments. They look like people who will say anything to acquire power, and, if I were a follower, I wouldn't believe anything they had to say.