Recessional

Recessional by David Mamet

Mamet was once the quintessential leftist in the quintessential leftist industry. Then, something happened. He had an awakening like many had in the various waves of leftists who had their eyes opened about the nature of their political allegiance. Regular floods of leftist immigrants have enriched the right: ex-Communists repulsed by the show trials; ex-Stalinists disoriented by Kruschev's “Secret Speech”; Ex-leftists disturbed by the New Left tearing down American military preparedness during the 1960s; and, now, redpilled leftists who see the totalitarianism implicit in leftist per se. Many of these people connect their journey from their totalizing political religion to a rediscovery of their faith in God.

In these essays, we can see these tropes at work. Mamet has left the left and taken up his ancestral Judaism. He exposes the tricks and mindset of the former and shares the insight of the latter.

The essays are not particularly tightly organized. They skip around. At just the moment, we might think “I want to know more about this,” Mamet moves on to a new topic.

This can be frustrating but the reader is rewarded with gems of clarity. For example:

“The terrified individual in the group submerges his reason in unanimity. Having lost his mind, he is reduced to a near-animal state and will choose extinction in company over exclusion. Armed forces officers carried pistols into combat, not as an offensive weapon, but to shoot mutineers, because mutiny, in a terrified group, spreads on the instant. The Left blacklists, cancels, and indicts contrary opinion for exactly the same reason. Not in opposition to dissent, but to dissuade from mutiny—that is, to behavior that threatens the existence of the group. The Left identifies the group as Humanity, but, finally, it is just the Left.

Mamet, David. Recessional (pp. 212-213). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

The habit of groupthink, absorbed in schools, is perpetuated in their graduates. For questioning, to the Left, is shunned as a very real psychic threat. They are infantilized by fear of exclusion, becoming like the abused infant, toddler, youngster, to whom to recognize abuse is to lose the only home he knows. Public officials mandated the wearing of masks, then openly flouted their own regulations. Why did the Left not object? If the masks were essential to preservation of life, even the most depraved and corrupt of officials would, one would think, obey that law. If they are, thus demonstrably, not necessary to preserve life, why did the solons pass the laws?

Mamet, David. Recessional (p. 20). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

“He wrote of the brilliance of the Nazi salute under Fascism. All were forced to give the salute. Many did it out of fealty, some as a mere convention, but many found the Nazis an obscenity. They nevertheless were, at first, risking and, later, forfeiting their lives for the failure to give the salute. They were forced to give the salute hundreds of times a day.
Bettelheim observes that the human mind cannot stand the constant performance of hypocrisy, which is to say of self-indictment. One could not remind oneself, throughout the day, “I'm giving the salute as I must, but I abhor that which it represents.”
The salute is first performed with a mental reserve; constant repetition requires performance without the drudgery of reservation; the salute now becomes an automatic response. But see the psyche's capacity for accommodation: not only is the salute now performed automatically; it is attended by the individual's (unconscious but quite real) gratitude for the alleviation of the previous mental struggle. This gratitude, because it occurs when the salute is given, is associated (again unconsciously) with that entity to which the salute is performed. The person has thus become a Nazi sympathizer, which is to say a Nazi.

Mamet, David. Recessional (p. 63). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.