David Mamet on Politics

...we in the United States get from day to day under rather wonderful and privileged circumstances-that we are not and never have been the villains that some of the world and some of our citizens make us out to be, but that we are a confection of normal (greedy, lustful, duplicitous, corrupt, inspired-in short, human) individuals living under a spectacularly effective compact called the Constitution, and lucky to get it

(from Village Voice).