Mencken’s Motives and Expectations — MC Part 3

In this essay, I quote many passages from Mencken’s writings, not despite their similarities, but because of them. Where I find different eloquent passages where he makes the same point, I include them all, because that itself makes many a point. Specifically, it provides evidence for these controversial and unpopular beliefs: (1) that a critical, cynical and pessimistic person can sincerely enjoy holding and expressing critical, cynical and pessimistic beliefs; (2) that such beliefs need be no disincentive to productivity or obstacle to satisfaction; (3) that a low opinion is justified of the reading public, including attempts to educate them; and (4) that a low opinion is also justified of the government the reading public is part of and supports.

Mencken was published prolifically in popular places, yet most of his beliefs were still misunderstood. Even if his aim was not primarily to educate the masses, critics will have a tough time finding where his low opinion of the masses is wrong and what he could have done better to educate them — for example, could his prose have had more appeal, bite, clarity, directness or eloquence, and could he have repeated his viewpoint more?

Mencken believed that readers didn’t only need to be given a message once, but that it was unlikely they would get it at all. He repeatedly made the same observations simply for the sake of art, habit and amusement. He wrote on pedagogical, political and moral issues without any pedagogical, political or moral purpose. He was a critic of novels, but he never wrote one. He was a critic of America’s defence policy, but he was not a German spy. He was a critic of Presidents, but he never became one. His objectivity made him suspect, because reason is rarely comprehended, and is not represented by any political party, job description, university qualification or cultural group. It also explains why many people failed to see that, despite never writing a novel, running for office or launching a revolution, he still had many good ideas for those who did.

Leading by example means your followers are looking at the back of your head. Mencken faced up to people, and told them what he was thinking.

Mencken was a libertarian theorist of the highest rank, but only an incidental activist. He did not believe that he could be a successful activist, and it was not one of his primary aims. He advocated libertarianism because that was what he believed to be the truth, not because he thought it was attainable, or something people wanted to, needed to or should hear. More than an academic, activist or job-holder, he considered himself an artist or animal, someone “diseased” with the thirst for truth and aesthetic sense.¹

Here is some autobiographical insight from Mencken:

[A]n author, like any other so-called artist, is a man in whom the normal vanity of all men is so vastly exaggerated that he finds it a sheer impossibility to hold it in … Such is the thing called self-expression … The vanity of man is quite illimitable. In every act of life, however trivial, and particularly in every act which pertains to his profession, he takes all the pride of a baby learning to walk. It may seem incredible but it is nevertheless a fact that I myself get great delight out of writing such banal paragraphs as this one.²

And:

I have never tried to convert anyone to anything. Like any other man bawling from a public stamp I have occasionally made a convert; in fact, in seasons when my embouchure has been good I have made a great many. But not deliberately, not with any satisfaction … I am, in fact, the complete anti-Messiah, and detest converts as much as I detest missionaries. My writings, such as they are, have had only one purpose: to attain for H.L. Mencken that feeling of tension relieved and function achieved which a cow enjoys on giving milk.³

And again:

It has … been assumed on frequent occasions that I have some deep-lying reformatory purpose in me … My one purpose in writing … is simply to provide a kind of katharsis for my own thoughts. They worry me until they are set forth in words. This may be a kind of insanity, but at all events it is free of moral purpose. I am never much interested in the effects of what I write. It may seem incredible in an old book reviewer, but it is a fact that I seldom read with any attention the reviews of my own books. Two times out of three I know something about the reviewer, and in very few cases have I any respect for his judgements. Thus his praise, if he praises me, is subtly embarrassing, and his denunciation, if he denounces, leaves me unmoved. I can’t recall any review that ever influenced me in the slightest.⁴

And yet again:

What actually urges [a "scientific investigator"] on is not some brummagen idea of Service, but a boundless, almost pathological thirst to penetrate the unknown, to uncover the secret, to find out what has not been found out before. His prototype is not the liberator releasing slaves, the good Samaritan lifting up the fallen, but a dog sniffing tremendously at an infinite series of rat-holes.⁵

Another:

The lust to improve the world is simply not in me … This attitude, I find, is incomprehensible to most Americans, and so they assume that it is a mere cloak for a secret altruism. If I describe the Fundamentalists con amore, dwelling luxuriously upon their astounding imbecilities, their pathetic exploitation by mountebanks, I am set down at once as one full of indignation against them, and eager to drag them to the light … Such spectacles do not make me indignant; they simply interest me immensely, as a pathologist, say, is interested by a beautiful gastric ulcer. It is, perhaps, a strange taste — that is, in a country of reformers. But there it is.⁶

And another:

I am not, in fact, protesting against anything. I am simply describing something, not even in sorrow, but simply as a specialist in human depravity.⁷

And yet another:

[“Personal Notice”:] Not a cent of my funds shall ever be devoted, with my consent, to the uplift of my fellow men. Never willingly shall I give any aid, direct or indirect, to the spread of Christian snivelization in any part of the world.⁸

And one more:

I delight in argument, not because I want to convince, but because argument itself is an end … I can’t understand the martyr. Far from going to the stake for a Great Truth, I wouldn’t even miss a meal for it … The man who boasts that he habitually tells the truth is simply a man with no respect for it. It is not a thing to be thrown about loosely.⁹

What could be more knowingly and enduringly libertarian than this conscious, primary, persevering and worldly self-interest? A martyr dies for an undying truth — the only genuine chance of attracting attention through martyrdom comes from its novelty value, and even that is dying. A libertarian need not be disadvantaged by his beliefs. Mencken was never romantic enough to imagine that disadvantageous treatment would have a silver lining for the future. When his ideas were militantly unpopular, as in wartime, he was happily quiet on those issues.¹⁰ When his writing was merely accused of leading to a few suicides or his permanent unwelcome in the South, he wrote more of the same.¹¹

Mencken neither ruled out the possibility and success of a libertarian revolution, nor thought it would happen soon. His expectations were invariably conservative:

On some bright tomorrow, a geological epoch or two hence, [citizens] will come to the end of their endurance [of government] … [The libertarian utopia] will be realized in the world twenty or thirty centuries after I have passed from these scenes and taken up my public duties in Hell … The extortions and oppressions of government will go on so long as [the victims] are ready to swallow the immemorial official theory that protesting against the stealings of the archbishop’s secretary’s nephew’s mistress’s illegitimate son is a sin against the Holy Ghost … In other words, they will come to an end on the Tuesday following the first Monday of November preceding the Resurrection Morn.¹²

Mencken saw through even the most popularly lauded revolutions, observing:

Political revolutions do not often accomplish anything of genuine value; their one undoubted effect is simply to throw out one gang of thieves and put in another… [T]he American colonies gained little by their revolt in 1776 … Under the British hoof they would have got on just as well, and probably a great deal better.¹³

That the revolt may have been justified is one thing; whether it led to improved conditions, including less taxation, is another. The revolt was an overreaction: it does not follow from negotiations proving fruitless, that people should be made armless, legless and headless.

Mencken believed that reforms create, re-form and worsen what they rail against, and that revolutions just go in circles:

[The mob] looks for leaders with the necessary courage, and when they appear it follows them slavishly, even after their courage is discovered to be mere buncombe and their altruism only a cloak for more and worse oppressions. Thus it oscillates eternally between scoundrels, or, if you would take them at their own valuation, heroes. Politics becomes the trade of playing upon its natural poltroonery — of scaring it half to death, and then proposing to save it. There is in it no other quality of which a practical politician, taking one day with another, may be sure. Every theoretically free people wonders at the slavishness of all the others. But there is no actual difference between them.¹⁴

And:

The demagogue argues (a) that the rules were made by wicked men, and (b), that if enough nickels are dropped into his hat he will be able to change them. The first part is false pretenses and the second part is fraud. There is nothing else whatsoever. To be sure, a given demagogue may sometimes convince himself that he is honest and even that he is a hero, but what he thinks is of no more validity than what he says.

His actual purpose is never concealed from the judicious. He is always after a job for himself, and if talks loudly enough and foolishly enough he not infrequently gets it. There then begins a cycle of inevitable disillusion. His poor victims, reaching out for the moon, find out to their disquiet that what he has really handed them is only a cabbage. He must then begin to promise two moons, three moons, a dozen moons, with clusters of other gauds thrown in for good measure. They turn out to be onions, potatoes, wads of reconditioned chewing gum, wet sponges. Presently the demagogue is chased away — and another rises to fill his room. This has been going on in the world since Hector was a blastocyte. It will go on until the last galoot’s ashore.

The More Abundant Life brethren now face the first stirring of serious doubt in their customers. They have been assailed by naughty skeptics since the day of their emergence from primeval chaos, but persons of a congenitally believing turn of mind, which is to say, persons of normal human stupidity, have hitherto gone along with them pretty docilely. But now they find themselves confronted by rising dubieties, and it is necessary for them to do something to hold on to their soft and glorious jobs. The half of what they do consists in shoveling out more and more billions of the taxpayers’ money. The other half consists in beating the woods for new coveys and classifications of suckers.¹⁵

Reformers and revolutionists are like racing car drivers, believing that if they are the fastest to complete a number of repetitions, then the starting line will magically turn into the finishing line and all will be well.

Although Mencken was not what is commonly called an egalitarian, his belief in the alikeness of all politicians, reforms and governments, and the people they are supported by and consist of, shows that he is actually more egalitarian than those who claim themselves to be radically so:

I believe that all government is evil, and that trying to improve it is largely a waste of time … [G]overnments are much alike the world over, whether they be called communist or conservative. They do the same thing that seems likely to save their faces and they do it regardless of creed, principle or previous protestation … [The] primary error [of “the whole American people”] lies in making the false assumption that some politicians are better than others … [A] good politician is as unthinkable as an honest burglar … [Those who argue for the possibility of respectable politicians and their success] simply argue, in words but little changed, that the remedy for prostitution is to fill the bawdy-houses with virgins.¹⁶

Nor did Mencken have much faith in attempts to decrease political scandals, believing revolution, reform, electioneering, lobbying and protesting to be inherently scandalous:

Why should democracy rise against bribery? It is itself a form of wholesale bribery … [I]t sets up a government that is a mere function of the mob’s vagaries, and that maintains itself by constantly bargaining with those vagaries. Its security depends wholly upon providing satisfactory bribes for the prehensile minorities that constitute the mob, or that have managed to deceive and inflame the mob. One day the labour leaders — a government within the general government — must be bought with offices; the next day the dupes of these labour leaders must be bought with legislation, usually of a sort loading the ordinary scales of justice in their favour; the day after there must be something for the manufacturers, for the Methodists, for the Catholics, for the farmers … The whole process of government under democracy, as everyone knows, is a process of similar trading. The very head of the state, having no title to his office save that which lies in the popular will, is forced to haggle and bargain like the lowliest office-seeker.¹⁷

This attitude toward revolution, reform, scandal-preventing and government in general are not found in the placards, policy proposals or position papers of political parties, think tanks, stump speeches, government departments, magazines, newspapers or universities. Mencken is usually only quoted for comic relief, to attract initial interest and to add a shroud of cynicism, when providing the very direction of their works, or replacing them, would result in superior accuracy, eloquence and consistency. People talk about sweetening the pill, but the more common arrangement is that a message is so sickly sweet and full of fluff, that to convince their audience that there’s something to it, they bitter the placebo or mask the sugar overdose, hiding the untruth with a truth, which they fail to respect for anything but its fresh tone. As Mencken said, “The truth, to the overwhelming majority of mankind, is indistinguishable from a headache.”¹⁸ With the right treatment, it can go away. With the right environment, it is not a problem. It is handy as an excuse when wriggling out of something, but that is all.

To sum up Mencken’s motives and expectations: he generally acted out of pure vanity, and discerned that if he had any other aim, it would probably be in vain anyway.

Footnotes

1. H.L. Mencken, A Mencken Chrestomathy (New York: Vintage, 1982), pp. 442-49; see also H.L. Mencken, Prejudices: Fourth Series (New York: Octagon Books, 1985), pp. 269-77. A note on my referencing of Mencken: Much, but not all, of his work has been reprinted in many different essay versions and compilations. I only reference one location for each specific passage, based on my estimate of: (1) its most popular current location; and (2) where the best relevant discussion is. The Chrestomathies often include only part of a larger discussion, sometimes excising the best bits. I may reference and quote multiple locations for where Mencken makes the same point, but only ever one location when he makes the same point in the same way, as per the two criteria explained in the previous sentence. [↩]
2. A Mencken Chrestomathy, p. 466; and H.L. Mencken, A Second Mencken Chrestomathy, ed. Terry Teachout (New York: Knopf, 1995), p. 489; see also H.L. Mencken, In Defense of Women (New York: Knopf, 1927), pp. 77-78. [↩]
3. A Second Mencken Chrestomathy, pp. 483-84, 491. The second half of the paragraph Mencken wrote for use in his obituary. [↩]
4. H.L. Mencken, The Diary of H.L. Mencken, ed. Charles A. Fecher (New York: Knopf, 1990), p. 133; see also A Mencken Chrestomathy, p. 438. [↩]
5. A Mencken Chrestomathy, p. 12. [↩]
6. H.L. Mencken, The Impossible H.L. Mencken, ed. Marion Elizabeth Rodgers (New York: Anchor, 1991), pp. 682-83. [↩]
7. H.L. Mencken, A Gang of Pecksniffs, ed. Theo Lippman, Jr. (New York: Arlington House, 1977), p. 70. [↩]
8. H.L. Mencken, The Gist of Mencken, ed. Mayo DuBasky (New York: Scarecrow Press, 1990), p. 50. [↩]
9. H.L. Mencken, Letters of H.L. Mencken, ed. Guy J. Forgue (New York: Knopf, 1961), pp. 189-88; and A Mencken Chrestomathy, p. 15; see also A Second Mencken Chrestomathy, pp. 352-53. On the last sentence quoted, see also George Jean Nathan, Testament of a Critic (New York: Knopf, 1931), pp. 55-56. [↩]
10. See, for example: The Diary of H.L. Mencken, pp. 156, 207, 263; and Letters of H.L. Mencken, pp. 161, 453, 476. [↩]
11. A Mencken Chrestomathy, pp. 132-33, 184. [↩]
12. Ibid., pp. 148, 146; and Prejudices: Fourth Series, p. 236. Mencken’s position should not be confused with Albert Jay Nock’s “Isaiah’s Job” (if you don’t know about this essay, then good, it’s best that way — this comment works on a few levels). Speaking to the Remnant is long term romanticism, which, in a way, is the most extreme form of hope-fuelled romanticism. Mencken also occasionally lapsed into such romanticism; for example, pleading for the slow development — just say, “When”! — of a libertarian aristocracy or influential group. Marcus Aurelius, in his Meditations, trans. Gregory Hays (London: Weidenfield & Nicolson, 2003), bk. 6, p. 73, said:

    They refuse to admire their contemporaries, the people whose lives they share. No, but to be admired by Posterity — people they’ve never met and never will — that’s what they set their hearts on. You might as well be upset at not being a hero to your great-grandfather.

    If you change “admired” to “understood”, then this is a perfect criticism of belief in the perfectibility or improveability of mankind. But on the whole one gets the picture that both Mencken and Nock are as conservative as can be. Mencken made a very similar comment to Marcus Aurelius when he said in his Book of Prefaces (New York: Knopf, 1920), p. 61:

    There is a notion that judgments of living artists are impossible. They are bound to be corrupted, we are told, by prejudice, false perspective, mob emotion, error. The question whether this or that man is great or small is one which only posterity can answer. A silly begging of the question, for doesn’t posterity also make mistakes?

    For an example of Nock’s thoroughgoing conservatism, see his Memoirs of a Superfluous Man (Chicago: Gateway, 1969), esp. pp. 304-21. Another example of Nock’s conspicuous conservatism is in his essay, “The Criminality of the State,” in his State of the Union, ed. Charles H. Hamilton (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1991), pp. 269-75, which contains passages like:

    The British State has sold the Czech State down the river by a despicable trick; very well, be as disgusted and angry as you like, but don’t be astonished; what would you expect? — just take a look at the British State’s record! The German State is persecuting great masses of its people, the Russian State is holding a purge, the Italian State is grabbing territory, the Japanese State is buccaneering all along the Asiatic Coast; horrible, yes, but for Heaven’s sake don’t lose your head over it, for what would you expect? — look at the record!

    And here’s another passage, from Nock’s A Journal of These Days (New York: William Morrow & Company, 1934), p. 30:

    Sometimes people who knew me to be a believer in Henry George have wondered that I do not crusade for it or even say much about it. But much more than a sound economic system is necessary; you have to have sound people to work it … The wise social philosophers were those who merely hung up their ideas and left them hanging, for men to look at or to pass by, as they chose. Jesus and Socrates did not even trouble to write theirs out, and Marcus Aurelius wrote his only in crabbed memoranda for his own use, never thinking anyone else would see them.

    Also:

    Even a successful revolution, if such a thing were conceivable, against the military tyranny which is Statism’s last expedient, would accomplish nothing. The people would be as thoroughly indoctrinated with Statism after the revolution as they were before, and therefore the revolution would be no revolution, but a coup d’Etat, by which the citizen would gain nothing but a mere change of oppressors. There have been many revolutions in the last twenty-five years, and this has been the sum of their history. They amount to no more than an impressive testimony to the great truth that there can be no right action except there be right thinking behind it. As long as the easy, attractive, superficial philosophy of Statism remains in control of the citizen’s mind, no beneficent social change can be effected, whether by revolution or by any other means.

    And here is one final passage from Nock’s “Anarchist’s Progress“:

    [I]f it were in my power to pull down its whole structure overnight and set up another of my own devising — to abolish the State out of hand, and replace it by an organization of the economic means — I would not do it, for the minds of Americans are far from fitted to any such great change as this.

    [↩]

13. A Mencken Chrestomathy, pp. 145-46; see also Prejudices: Fourth Series, pp. 227-28. [↩]
14. H.L. Mencken, Notes on Democracy (New York: Knopf, 1926), p. 50. [↩]
15. H.L. Mencken, On Politics, ed. Malcolm Moos (New York: Vintage, 1960), pp. 312-13. [↩]
16. On Politics, p. 112; The Gist of Mencken, p. 509; Prejudices: Fourth Series, pp. 133, 130; and A Second Mencken Chrestomathy, p. 32. For what it’s worth, a similar comment to this last one is in Frank Chodorov, Out of Step (New York: Devin-Adair, 1962), p. 48: “it cannot be done; you cannot clean up a brothel and yet leave the business intact.” [↩]
17. Notes on Democracy, pp. 180-81. [↩]
18. A Mencken Chrestomathy, p. 149. [↩]