I'd heard of H L Mencken, but confess I had never read anything by him although I've seen plenty of his quotes. Someone recently mentioned him on a blog and I took the trouble to read one of his books called: "Notes on Democracy" (HERE) written in 1926 although it might have been written last year about Brexit. He is very good, an antidote for our times and wickedly funny. Every word is a gem, I thoroughly recommend it for the jaundiced democrats among you who think all our problems began in 2016.
Mencken had very fixed and rather cynical ideas on the perils of democracy and doubted, if that's the word, that plain people going about their humdrum, everyday lives could in some magical way, suddenly, every few years when given the chance, come up with or choose between competing solutions to the great and complex issues facing the nation, and offered by demagogues on both sides.
Listen to this, which is surely aimed at the idea ordinary voters in June 2016 not only knew what they were voting for, but could be relied upon to produce a clear and resounding answer to our centuries old but problematic relationship with Europe:
"It remains impossible, as it was in the eighteenth century, to separate the democratic idea from the theory that there is a mystical merit, an esoteric and ineradicable rectitude, in the man at the bottom of the scale - that inferiority, by some strange magic, becomes a sort of superiority nay, the superiority of superiorities.
"What baffles statesmen is to be solved by the people, instantly and by a sort of seraphic intuition. Their yearnings are pure; they alone are capable of a perfect patriotism; in them is the only hope of peace and happiness on this lugubrious ball. The cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy!"
Or this:
"Everywhere in Christendom it is now official, save in a few benighted lands where God is temporarily asleep. Everywhere its fundamental axioms are accepted: (a) that the great masses of men have an inalienable right, born of the very nature of things, to govern themselves, and (b) that they are competent to do it. Are they occasionally detected in gross and lamentable imbecilities? Then it is only because they are misinformed by those who would exploit them : the remedy is more education.
He was a master of producing writing that could and would be quoted long after his death in 1956 and I thought it would be good to add a "This week's H L Mencken quote" to this blog. Let me begin though with this one, again seemingly written for Brexit:
“Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance. No one in this world, so far as I know—and I have researched the records for years, and employed agents to help me—has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby.”
I said he was good didn't I?
If you're interested, more quotes (HERE) but I'll pop a new one on the blog each week to keep the memory of a great man alive.
Update: I should note that Mencken was a terrible anti-semite and recognised for it too. He has been described as being as unforgivable as he was unforgettable and I think that sums him up. I don't want anyone to think I condone his views in any way whatsoever. He is probably in the same category as Rudyard Kipling. Brilliant and gifted men but with a very flawed view of the world.
