Notes on Democracy: Long

After listening to the babble on the radio talk shows and the shrill whoops and caterwauling of all the new born-again politicians, I was seeking some solace by reading some H.L. Mencken. The following is from his "Notes on Democracy" as printed in "A Mencken Chrestomathy". It could just as well have been written today - rather than in 1926, when Mencken first penned it.


"I have spoken hitherto of the possiblity that democracy may be a self-limiting disease, like measles. It is, perhaps, something more: it is self-devouring. One cannot observe it objectively without being impressed by its curious distrust of itself - its apparently ineradicable tendency to abandon its whole philosophy at the first sign of strain. I need not point to what happens invariably in democratic states when the national safety is menaced. All the great tribunes of democracy, on such occasions, convert themselves, by a process as simple as taking a deep breath, into despots of an almost fabulous ferocity. Nor is this process confined to times of alarm and terror: it is going on day in and day out. Democracy always seems bent upon killing the thing it theoretically loves. All its axioms resolve themselves into thundering paradoxes, many amounting to downright contradictions in terms. The mob is competent to rule the rest of us - but it must be rigorously policed itself. There is a goverment, not of men, but of laws - but men are set upon benches to decide finally what the law is and may be. The highest function of the citizen is to serve the state - but the first assumption that meets him, when he essays to discharge it, is an assumption of his disingenuousness and dishonor. It that assumtion commonly sound? Then the farce only grows the more glorious.


I confess, for my part, that it greatly delights me. I enjoy democracy immensely. It is incomparably idiotic, and hence incomparably amusing. Does it exalt dunderheads, cowards, timmers, frauds, cads? Then the pain of seeing them go up is balanced and obliterated by the joy of seeing them come down. Is it inordinately wasteful, extravant, dishonest? Then so is every other form of goverment: all alike are enemies to decent men. Is rascality at the heart of it? Well, we have borne that rascality since 1776, and continue to survive. In the long run, it may turn out that rascality is an ineradicable necessity to human goverment, and even to civilization itself - that civilization, at bottom, is nothing more than a colossal swindle. I do not know. I report only that when the suckers are running well the spectacle is infinitely exhilarating."

By -H.L. Mencken


Mencken calls it infinitely exhilarating. In a recent post, I called it grotesquely amusing. A bit more somber perhaps but the same point.


The spectacle is only going to get better and the bombast more shrill. Enjoy.


-Zeno

Mencken was a wonderful antidote. I’m tempted to say “especially for his time,” but no journalist today would be allowed to publicly liken religion to “imbecility.” Today we have the yin and yang of unprecedented freedom balanced by a grey monotonous landscape of the Official Word of business (buy this, believe that) and the government it more or less controls, punctuated by filler about tragedies, celebrities, presidential colonoscopies and the like. The world was more exciting when 1,000 more newspapers flourished, although the web gives hope.


Menckenism, however, could be described as sort of a moral-intellectual disease afflicting bright people, especially young ones, that is more prevalent now than in 1926 when he wrote the passage above. It’s characterized by an overriding awareness of one’s superiority in intellect and taste that finds an outlet in the blanket dismissal of people generally while ignoring or downplaying the institutions that shackle them. It’s a kind of narcissistic glorification of oneself and a few deserving (and quietly romanticized) others while limiting most people to objects for amusement, exploitation, ridicule and scorn. You see it a lot in the better poker players (although I'm not attributing this to you personally).


You can’t really discern Menchen’s romanticism from the passage above, but combine the above from this part of his Creed: “I believe in the capacity of man to conquer his world, and to find out what it is made of, and how it is run. I believe in the reality of progress.” Since the progress of his theology couldn’t have resulted from the democracy of morons, he must mean someone at the zenith of something, someone sort of like himself, that, if anything, needs insulation or even protection from the throng.


It’s ultimately an anti-subversive creed by those most capable of subversion. It’s the way that those that benefit the most from entrenched anti-democratic institutions would want other smart people to think, and probably pretty close to the way they think themselves.

In quoting someone you always run the risk of having people believe you completely agree with everything stated in the quote or with everything the quoted person every said. I leave it your (and everyone else's) judgement what the case is here.


I agree that Mencken is a very good antidote and the belly laughs that he can invoke are good for the constitution. For that reason along he is worth reading.


I enjoyed your pithy analysis of "Menckenism". He was influence by Nietzsche (he translated one of his books, I can't recall which one at the moment) and the whiff of his philosophy is evident in some of his thought.


As an aside there is a web page that has Walter Lippmann's review of Mencken's book - Notes on Democracy. It was first published in The Saturaday Review of Literature December 11, 1926. It is, in my view, an excellent analysis of Mencken's thought, writing and influence. Lippmann pokes Mencken in the nose a few times, when he deserves it, but all in all a fair and insightful review. It is worth reading.


-zeno