#1801 - David Mamet

David Mamet (0:04)

The Joe Rogan Experience. I'm great, happy to be back in the United States, up in California for the last...

Joe Rogan (0:21)

The People's Republic of California?

David Mamet (0:23)

Yeah, exactly so.

Joe Rogan (0:25)

Yeah, it's an interesting turn of events. California has become a strange new place.

David Mamet (0:31)

Yes, it has.

Joe Rogan (0:32)

Almost unrecognizable.

David Mamet (0:33)

Yes. Well, it'd be recognizable to George Orwell.

Joe Rogan (0:37)

Well, yeah, right? Even he probably been like, wow.

He was probably... If you could get George Orwell from, you know, the time he wrote 1980, when did he write 84?

David Mamet (0:48)

Oh, that's pretty good.

I don't know, I think it was the late 40s. We can look it up.

Joe Rogan (0:53)

And then to see, you know, in 2022, he was in the neighborhood. He definitely was pretty close.

David Mamet (1:01)

He was off, like, 1.2%.

Joe Rogan (1:03)

There it is, 49 Wow, interesting.

David Mamet (1:06)

You know, George Orwell said he was an interesting guy. He was a cop in Burma. Really? Yes. He was a colonial cop, and then he was a roustabout, and he wrote Down and Out in Paris and London. He was a bum.

And he said when thought control comes, it will come not from the right, but from the left.

Joe Rogan (1:26)

I wonder why he thought that.

David Mamet (1:29)

Well, because he got around. I mean, that guy had seen a huge bunch of life, and he looked at what things were from every angle, right? He was a well-brought-up Englishman, and then he was a tramp and a dishwasher and a cop, and he saw it all. He saw it clearly.

Joe Rogan (1:46)

But it's when, classically, when we think about depictions of totalitarianism and authoritarianism, when I was a kid, we always thought of it as being a right-wing thing.

There was always a right-wing dictator-type character that imposed censorship and authoritarianism. You didn't think of it as something that would be coming from the left.

David Mamet (2:11)

Well, but who was Stalin, who was Trotsky and Lenin? They're certainly the left.

And Pol Pot and all of the Chinese. Also, if you look at the history of this country, that Woodrow Wilson imposed strictures against talking about the war. Anybody who talked about the war and said anything that could be construed as unfavorable was thrown in prison.

Joe Rogan (2:36)

Really?

David Mamet (2:37)

Oh, yes.

A lot of people were thrown in prison. A lot of people had their businesses wrecked.

Joe Rogan (2:41)

What year was this?

David Mamet (2:43)

Wilson would be 1917 1917, 1918

Joe Rogan (2:47)

They were throwing people in jail.

David Mamet (2:48)

Yes, they were.

Joe Rogan (2:49)

For talking badly about World War I.

David Mamet (2:52)

Yes. And then, of course, Roosevelt did the same thing.

Joe Rogan (2:58)

Really?

David Mamet (2:59)

Yeah, sure. And we'll look at it. Also, he tossed all the Japanese Americans in prison.

He said, go into a concentration camp. By the way, all of our loyal German Americans in New York and Yorkville were going to leave them alone because they're white. Meanwhile, the Yorkville, New York and Baltimore were full of Nazi spies. They were, you could see the shipping being torpedoed from the beach at Coney Island because they were giving away all that information.

The left has always believed that the idea of fascism means a bundle. Everything's together. Everything's for the state. Nothing against the state. Nothing outside of the state, as Mussolini said. And with the exception of those particular fascists, the Nazis, it's always been the left because they don't believe in the individual.

Joe Rogan (3:51)

So you think that that's the root cause of it, not believing in the individual, believing in the collective, that that automatically lends itself to erasing individual rights?

David Mamet (4:05)

Yes. I mean, it also goes back to the enlightenment, to the idea that God doesn't exist and the idea that the human being is the measure of all things. Well, if the human being is the measure of all things, what does that mean, our reason? And our reason is completely flawed. All of us do things every day which are unreasonable, sinful, wrong, and absurd, right? And the reasonable person says, wait a second, why did I do that? What do I have to refer to in my confusion and my self-loathing?

Well, the Bible was a pretty good bet, you know, for the Hebrew Bible for 6,000 years, right? The Christian Bible for 2,000 years, pretty good bet. Say, wait a second, let's talk about human nature. You really aren't that smart. You really aren't in charge of the world. You really aren't.