[Peace-discuss] H.L. Mencken

[C. G. Estabrook]

But the truth is that Bush is not in any literal sense a moron, and neither are 
the people around him, as you admit.  They're vicious, not stupid, and that's 
different. If you want to use "moron" as a simple term of abuse, or to redefine 
it, of course you may.

And of course ethics subsumes politics, as Aristotle pointed out long ago.  The 
quest for human excellence or satisfaction (ethics) requires community 
(politics). Human happiness is fundamentally an activity, the state of a person 
who is living without hindrance the life that is becoming to a human being.  And 
that is necessarily done in community. "No man is an island, entire of itself; 
every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main..."

It is surely an ethical affirmation masked as a definition "that anyone who 
prioritizes his/her own short-term profit or power over the survival of the 
planet is an idiot."  I.e., one shouldn't do that sort of thing, and you'll 
label those who do with a term borrowed from psychology. Bush (and others) are 
making that particular moral error and therefore earn your particular term for 
it, even if they don't fit the usual definition of the term. Fine.

But I still don't understand how, as you cry up the undoubted elitist Mencken, 
you decide that I, who unlike you disagree with him, am the elitist.  If the 
shoe pinches, wear it, so to speak.

Of course I agree that "it's morally wrong for me to think that my life is 
somehow of more value than yours, or vice versa." But as to wanting "the most 
competent people running things," it's probably the case that the most competent 
  20th-century regime, administratively and militarily, was that of the nazis -- 
e.g., they solved the Depression much better than the New Deal did. But I prefer 
Jefferson's democrats, who "consider [the people] as the honest and safe 
depository of the public interest, if not always the most wise."

And therefore our society spends a lot of money misleading them.  The 
misleaders, not the misled, deserve our scorn. --CGE


John W. wrote:
> At 07:06 PM 3/31/2008, C. G. Estabrook wrote:
> 
>> Why is it so important to believe that Bush is a moron?
> 
> Truth is always preferable to falsehood, is it not?  Why is it important 
> for you to believe that Bush, and neocons like him, are NOT morons, Carl?
> 
> 
>> He obviously isn't -- e.g., he went to as good a school as you: were 
>> you at school with many morons?
> 
> I was at school with quite a few students who were legacies with rich 
> daddies like Bush, had partied their way through prep school, and barely 
> got passing grades in college while spending most of their time at the 
> fraternity.  And there were plenty more who got decent grades, but 
> weren't necessarily street-smart or sophisticated at what we might call 
> "moral reasoning".
> 
> I think what confuses the issue is that, when we debate politics, 
> there's always an element of morality involved.  It isn't math or 
> science, which can for the most part be proven empirically.  But I will 
> reiterate - logically, leaving morality aside to the extent possible - 
> that anyone who prioritizes his/her own short-term profit or power over 
> the survival of the planet is an idiot.  I don't care where s/he went to 
> school.
> 
> 
> 
>> Is it that he seems less threatening that way?
> 
> Au contraire.  I think Bush is a monster, as I said.  And doubly so 
> because so many ordinary black-and-white-thinking Americans are, even to 
> this day, taken in by him.
> 
> But so is Cheney a monster.  They're just different types of monsters.
> 
> 
>> One thing Mencken ignored in his estimate of the American populace is 
>> the one great invention of American society -- public relations.  A 
>> greater percentage of US GDP is devoted to forming the American mind 
>> -- "marketing," in all its forms -- than in any other country.  The 
>> result is a sort of more or less willing control that no 20th-century 
>> totalitarianism could achieve.
> 
> Yes.  And....???  Does this make the American people more intelligent 
> somehow, because they are gulled by "public relations" or "marketing" 
> (just other terms for "propaganda", which is not so terribly new) and 
> incapable of seeing through it?
> 
> 
>> Yes, the FF were elitists, but elitism is wrong,
> 
> Well, it is and it isn't.  It's morally wrong for me to think that my 
> life is somehow of more value than yours, or vice versa.  (Which YOU DO, 
> incidentally, and it can be proven empirically, but we probably don't 
> want to go there.)  But don't you want the most competent people running 
> things, assuming that they possess a reasonable degree of integrity and 
> understand the concept of the "common good"?  Wouldn't you prefer that 
> voters be intelligent, knowledgeable, educated, and informed?
> 
> 
>> and the Enlightenment contained the seeds of its destruction, perhaps 
>> most evident in the conflicted Jefferson -- "all men are created 
>> equal..."
> 
> There's a seeming paradox there, certainly, but there's also a simple 
> resolution of the paradox.
> 
> EVERYTHING on this earth carries the seeds of its own destruction, 
> anyway.  None of us gets out alive, and I'm sure that includes empires 
> as well as individuals.
> 
> 
>> (Of course, as the Lukan passage indicates, historically the real 
>> enemy of elitism is Christianity, as Jefferson recognized in his bible.)
> 
> Christianity rightly interpreted and conscientiously practiced, 
> absolutely.  We agree on at least ONE thing...though you'll find some 
> women and blacks who will vehemently disagree.  :-)
> 
> 
>> In his later years, observing what was happening, Jefferson had rather 
>> serious concerns about the fate of the democratic experiment. He 
>> feared the rise of a new form of absolutism that was more ominous than 
>> what had been overthrown in the American Revolution, in which he was 
>> of course a leader. Jefferson distinguished in his later years between 
>> what he called "aristocrats" and "democrats." The aristocrats are 
>> "those who fear and distrust the people, and wish to draw all powers 
>> from them into the hands of the higher classes." The democrats, in 
>> contrast, "identify with the people, have confidence in them, cherish 
>> and consider them as the honest and safe depository of the public 
>> interest, if not always the most wise."
> 
> Yes, you've quoted this many times.  I'll agree with Jefferson and 
> continue to side with the democrats, albeit with reservations which are 
> only partially addressed by his disclaimer there at the end.
> 
> 
>> The aristocrats of his day were the advocates of the rising capitalist 
>> state, which Jefferson regarded with much disdain, clearly recognizing 
>> the quite obvious contradiction between democracy and capitalism, or 
>> more accurately what we might call really existing capitalism, that 
>> is, guided and subsidized by powerful developmental states, as it was 
>> in England and the U.S. and indeed everywhere else.
> 
> You'll get no argument from me here, except to say that there are other 
> economic systems besides capitalism where aristocracy/elitism can rear 
> its haughty head.  Re-read "Animal Farm".
> 
> 
>> Mencken (and the Pharisee) saw himself as such an aristocrat. --CGE
> 
> So do a great many people, Carl.  Many, many people.  I'm reminded of 
> Oliver Wendell Holmes father, who wrote "The Autocrat at the Breakfast 
> Table".  If we narrow down our scope sufficiently, we're ALL 
> aristocrats, at least in our own mind.  Your point?
> 
> John
> 
> 
> 
>> John W. wrote:
>>
>>> At 01:09 PM 3/31/2008, C. G. Estabrook wrote:
>>>
>>>> It's more comforting to think that Bush is a moron -- he isn't --
>>>
>>> You and I will always disagree on that, I guess.  I'll concede, 
>>> reluctantly, that some of Bush's HANDLERS are not morons, although 
>>> one could convincingly argue that ANYONE who is more concerned about 
>>> short-term profits than about the long-term survival of the planet is 
>>> a moron of incalculable dimensions.  But Bush himself is most 
>>> definitely a moron by any definition.  He's absolutely incapable of 
>>> nuanced thought, as he has demonstrated on any number of occasions.  
>>> "Big Business good....Evildoers bad."  He's a Neanderthal, a 
>>> Frankenstein monster.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>> than to admit that we are responsible for the crimes of the American 
>>>> government.  Elite interests, contrary to those of most of us, are 
>>>> "most peculiarly attended to" (Adam Smith's phrase), and we remain 
>>>> quiet, behind a false front of democratic forms without substance.
>>>
>>> I'll concede that we in America exist behind a false front of 
>>> democratic forms without (much) substance, and that most citizens are 
>>> complicit by their silence.  Does that complicity not represent "the 
>>> inner soul of the people", as Mencken said?  Perhaps the average 
>>> citizen's ignorance is willful, arising from fear.  You're still 
>>> making Mencken's point.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>> Mencken's contempt for the idea of democracy (and perhaps his 
>>>> admiration for the "first-rate man" with the "force of his 
>>>> personality" -- what was elsewhere called "the leadership 
>>>> principle") was bound up with his admiration for German society, in 
>>>> both its imperial and national socialist forms.
>>>
>>> I'll concede, having read the Wikipedia entry, that Mencken was 
>>> something of an elitist, and was influenced by certain German 
>>> philosophers of the day.  But as an elitist he's in some very good 
>>> company - Socrates and Plato, most of our nation's Founding Fathers, 
>>> and W.E.B. DuBois, to name just a few political philosophers off the 
>>> top of my head.  You'll probably disagree with me about the Founding 
>>> Fathers.
>>> In practice just about everyone is an elitist, and they all think 
>>> that THEY occupy a position among the elite.  :-P
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>> Mencken seems to occupy the position of the famous Pharisee of Luke 
>>>> 18.  --CGE
>>>
>>> And you don't?  Hahahaha!  (I assume you're referring to verses 10-14.)
>>> Thanks for the laugh there at the end, Carl.  :-P
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>> John W. wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> In searching for the source of this quote - "No one ever went broke 
>>>>> by underestimating the intelligence of the American people" (a nice 
>>>>> double negative in its own right) - I came across this gem by Mencken:
>>>>>
>>>>>     "The larger the mob, the harder the test. In small areas, before
>>>>>     small electorates, a first-rate man occasionally fights his way
>>>>>     through, carrying even the mob with him by force of his 
>>>>> personality.
>>>>>     But when the field is nationwide, and the fight must be waged
>>>>>     chiefly at second and third hand, and the force of personality
>>>>>     cannot so readily make itself felt, then all the odds are on 
>>>>> the man
>>>>>     who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre ­ the man who
>>>>>     can most easily adeptly disperse the notion that his mind is a
>>>>>     virtual vacuum.
>>>>>
>>>>>     "The Presidency tends, year by year, to go to such men. As 
>>>>> democracy
>>>>>     is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the
>>>>>     inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some
>>>>>     great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach 
>>>>> their
>>>>>     heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a
>>>>>     downright moron." (/Baltimore Evening Sun/, July 26, 1920)
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Thank goodness we haven't reached that point YET in America, huh?  :-p
> 
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