Sunday, September 14, 2014
Mencken's birthday
Mencken got most things right, though he had a little too much Nietzsche in his blood. Sometimes he honored the ordinary man and wished governments were more ordinary. Sometimes he showed raw contempt for the "inferior man" who simply wanted security and safety. In other words, he "took his own visions and hallucinations too seriously."
He got this aspect of government exactly right:
The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary. (See ISIS)
But he underestimated what would happen when those idealists with the "urge to save humanity" would get total power:
If, after I depart this vale, you ever remember me and have thought to please my ghost, forgive some sinner and wink your eye at some homely girl.
Try forgiving a sinner or winking in modern America and you'll end up in jail. No trial or evidence needed.
¶ 3:48 AM 
