Assholes Are Not Always Wrong
To say HL Mencken was a complicated figure in American history is an understatement. He was an anti-Semite and a misogynist. He was described as racist in earlier works but elitist in later life. Bottom line, like most people, he evolved and changed over his lifetime. While some evolve to a more noble state and others devolve to a more base state, HL Mencken was a complicated man who couldn’t easily be pigeonholed. However one may categorize him, it’s hard not to agree with many of his observations over the 49 years he spent as a journalist, essayist, satirist, cultural critic, and scholar of American English. To some, Mencken was a man ahead of his time. His keen observations of America, Americans and Democracy have proven prescient in so many ways that it might seem he had been transported from current times back to the 1920s to warn Americans of what was to come.
Mencken’s quote above is one I can’t totally buy into it but I see the point. Americans have been so totally inculcated with the notion of “Might makes right and wealth makes right” that they willingly and enthusiastically support any position that doesn’t impinge on their own rights. In other words, Americans are true believers of “I got mine, fuck you” or “Let’s compromise. Just do it my way.”
This particular Mencken quote is further bolstered by another that seems particularly apropos to the current situation:
I think many Americans will agree our current administration (thugocracy) perfectly mirrors the desires of a large segment of the American electorate.
The silver lining here is that Mencken doesn’t forecast what will happen after “a downright moron” is elected to the office of the president of the United States. This leaves open a sliver of hope that the “collective ignorance of individual ignorance” will be shaken so thoroughly that Americans will actually begin to critically think through their choices and decisions. In this era of outright illogic and criminal stupidity, one can hope for the most ludicrous turn of events with a straight face and sincere hope. After all, who would have ever thought fervent fundie-vangie religious whack jobs would believe and support a lying, thieving, convicted felon to become the president of the United States.
If this post seems disjointed, it is because the world has devolved into a fractured, broken caricature of its former self, a meme of a dystopian world.