We have seen that a negative message is not a negative philosophy. Now we shall see that a negative message is not a negative personality.
Much misunderstanding of Mencken is due to the common belief that pessimism and cynicism are personality traits rather than, and instead of, results of reason. Mencken committed contributory negligence to his legacy by occasionally misrepresenting the cynical point of view with improbably pessimistic statements.1 But the pessimism he believed in was actually founded on probabilities of the most justified and reasonable kind.2
Instead of going through the reasons for his pessimism and cynicism, we will see that pessimism and cynicism can be enjoyably held, which is the crux of the misunderstanding, as it is a barrier to even considering his historical knowledge and libertarianism.
Just as many people consider ignorance to be exciting, immaturity to be cute, senility to be wise, stupidity to be heroic, people lacking sense of humour to be funny, error to be educational, aimlessness to be freedom, physical discomfort to be exercise, boring commonplace occurrences to be comforting and crime to be newsworthy, so Mencken found some good in what is commonly considered bad: he scoffered fools gladly. Here are some proofs:
The fraud of democracy, I contend, is more amusing than any other … 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 government, not of men, but of laws – but men are set upon benches to decide finally what the law is and may be … What grotesque false pretenses! What a parade of obvious imbecilities! What a welter of fraud! … Go into your praying-chamber and give sober thought to any of the more typical democratic inventions. Or to any of the typical democratic prophets. If you don’t come out paled and palsied by mirth then you will not laugh on the Last Day itself, when Presbyterians step out of the grave like chicks from the egg, and wings blossom from their scapulae, and they leap into interstellar space with roars of joy … I confess, for my part, that it greatly delights me. I enjoy democracy immensely. It is incomparably idiotic, and hence incomparably amusing … the spectacle is infinitely exhilarating … I am … a somewhat malicious man: my sympathies, when it comes to suckers, tend to be coy.3
And:
Has the art and mystery of politics no apparent utility? Does it appear to be unqualifiedly ratty, raffish, sordid, obscene and low down, and its salient virtuosi a gang of unmitigated scoundrels? Then let us not forget its high capacity to soothe and tickle the midriff, its incomparable services as a maker of entertainment.4
Mencken was once asked, “If you find so much that is unworthy of reverence in the United States, then why do you live here?” He responded, “Why do men go to zoos?”5 Elsewhere, he elaborated:
Life in America interests me, not as a moral phenomenon, but simply as a gaudy spectacle. I enjoy it most when it is most uproarious, preposterous, inordinate and melodramatic. I am perfectly willing to give a Roosevelt, a Wilson, a Fall, an Elder Hays, an Andy Mellon or a Tom Heflin such small part of my revenues as he can gouge out of me in return for the show that he offers. Such gorgeous mountebanks take my mind off my gallstones, my war wounds, my public duties and my unfortunate love affairs, and so make existence agreeable.6
And:
[T]here is no [other] country on the face of the earth wherein a man roughly constituted as I am — a man of my general weaknesses, vanities, appetites, prejudices, and aversions — can be so happy, or even one-half so happy … it is a sheer physical impossibility for such a man to live in These States and not be happy — … it is as impossible to him as it would be to a schoolboy to weep over the burning down of his school-house … And here, more than anywhere else that I know of or have heard of, the daily panorama of human existence, of private and communal folly – the unending procession of governmental extortions and chicaneries, of commercial brigandages and throat-slittings, of theological buffooneries, of aesthetic ribaldries, of legal swindles and harlotries, of miscellaneous rogueries, villanies, imbecilities, grotesqueries, and extravagances — is so inordinately gross and preposterous, so perfectly brought up to the highest conceivable amperage, so steadily enriched with an almost famous daring and originality, that only the man who was born with a petrified diaphragm can fail to laugh himself to sleep every night, and to awake every morning with all the eager, unflagging expectation of a Sunday-school superintendent touring the Paris peep-shows …
[T]his glorious commonwealth of morons … is incomparably the greatest show on earth … What could be more delightful than the endless struggle of the Puritan to make the joy of the minority unlawful and impossible? The effort itself is a greater joy to one standing on the side-lines tha[n] any or all of the carnal joys that it combats … I never get tired of the show. It is worth every cent it costs.
That cost, it seems to me is very moderate. Taxes in the United States are not actually high. I figure, for example, that my private share of the expense of maintaining the Hon. Mr. Harding in the White House this year will work out to less than 80 cents. Try to think of better sport for the money: in New York it is has been estimated that it costs $8 to get comfortably tight, and $17.50, on an average, to pinch a girl’s arm. The United States Senate will cost me perhaps $11 for the year, but against that expense set the subscription price of the Congressional Record, about $15, which, as a journalist, I receive for nothing. For $4 less than nothing I am thus entertained as Solomon never was by his hooch dancers.7
The happiness of Mencken was not taxed by government; it was subsidised. If government did not exist, you could not voluntarily pay money to create it, even if you had millions to spare; for if you were not forced to pay for it, then the presumptuousness and arrogance that makes government so amusing would disappear. It would be water off a ducks back rather than a tickling of the ribs. For a conservative, government cannot be bought.
Although Mencken did not respect government, he had plenty of time for it. Government might not always be pleasant, but it is, for lack of a better word, captivating. Prison, for example, is just a place where selected criminals and innocents are given free — worse: coercively sponsored — shelter, food, clothing and leisure-time; it is a holiday from responsibility, a resort for those who resort to crime. Who can blame people for fighting to get in, and the subsequent high security to prevent overcrowding?
During Prohibition, Mencken swallowed his pride and gulped in amazement, doing what he could to decrease the availability of alcohol. His support of government is more than happy indifference; it is provocative heckling. He is sincere, but he is not aiming to support government — at least not any more than laughing and enjoying the badness of a film is a sign of supporting the film. It is supportive of the film, but it is also a sincere cajoling criticism. Mencken’s support of government would be considered insulting by almost all government members and supporters. His appreciation of government was not out of respect for his enemy, but out of schadenfreude. Government was more an amusement than an enemy. But, nonetheless, government was still an enemy. He did not laugh with it; he laughed at it. He patronised government.
Mencken was neither indignant nor apathetic. He thought government pathetic, obscene and criminal; but not hideous, intolerable or unsightly. He did not believe in government; but he was enchanted by it. To him society did not consist of sinners to be scalded, psyches to be searched, citizens to be subjected, soldiers to be sent, situations to be solved, or souls to be saved; but of sordidness to be savoured. He considered politics a genre of entertainment rather than a safeguard or sector of society. He treated the corruption of politics merely as ad breaks. He saw people falling over themselves to benefit from a fallen world, and, like a good student of slapstick, found falling funny. Civilisation going to the dogs, for him, was like going to the greyhound races. He treated the copious paperwork and red tape of bureaucracy like they were part of a ticker-tape parade — like their wounds could be unwound. He hated many things, but loved to hate them; it was a hobby, not a duty. He suffered from neither optimism nor pessimism, even if he was pessimistic.
Footnotes- One such oft-quoted remark is, “A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for the coffin.” Although this is always credited to Mencken, and I can perfectly believe that he was the author, I have never actually seen Mencken himself claim that it was his. It is in The Smart Set, vol. LXX, no. 4 (April, 1923), p. 130. It is one of the many anonymous epigrams scattered on page-footers throughout the magazine. Mencken edited and contributed to the magazine, and was author of some of the anonymous epigrams, but not all of them. Usually, what Mencken wrote anonymously or as part of a co-authored article, he later would republish under his own name. I find no evidence of this here. [↩]
- That he called six volumes of his writings Prejudices is not another example of his contributory negligence, or is only a mild one. It is very shocking to see the positive use of a word used mostly negatively; it leads people to question their own prejudices. Calling the books Prejudices tells readers that it will not be a dull read, and deters critics from complaining of its lack of “academic” tone, since it is obviously not meant to have one. It is an advertisement and a defence against critics. That it may have some negative consequences should not be blamed on Mencken. Once you read his Prejudices, they are no longer merely prejudices. They are also well-reasoned. Those who fail to appreciate this have not read the contents sincerely. [↩]
- A Mencken Chrestomathy, pp. 167-68. [↩]
- On Politics, p. 153; see also pp. 83-84. [↩]
- A Mencken Chrestomathy, p. 627; cf. pp. 365-67, p. 17 and pp. 4-8, and H.L. Mencken on Religion, pp. 225-28. Three other good and perhaps more strategic answers to the same question are: (1) if you detest my presence here so much, it is my right to stay and your right to leave; (2) the domestic policy of the country is preferable to its foreign policy; and (3) if you dislike being the recipient of my criticism, you can always heed it and join in — either way it is a sign of my criticism at least partly getting through, in sentiment or reason, and if you don’t like it, why encourage me? Those responses, of course, avoid addressing the two more academic implications of the question, for which these statements should be expanded: (1) government has no just claim to the ownership of its claimed territory; and (2) acquiescence is not consent. For one final comment, suppose I break into your home, start stealing your stuff, then when you confront me I say, “If you don’t like it, you can always leave.” How does saying that show any principled political philosophy? [↩]
- On Politics, p. 160. [↩]
- Prejudices: Third Series, pp. 12-14, 18, 58, 62-63. [↩]