H.L. Mencken PREDICTED Smirko 66 years ago TODAY!

[Octafish]

"As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. 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." — H. L. Mencken

-- Baltimore Evening Sun, July 26, 1920

PSYCHOTIC
KACKISTOCRAT

[burythehatchet]

1. Simply a marvelous quote

first time I've seen it.

[Octafish]

5. Rafe Colburn describes Mencken's take on the Plutocracy

Ain't it the truth?

From Rafe Colburn's blog:

Mencken on Bush

I'm currently reading a collection of H L Mencken's essays, The Vintage Mencken. In one essay, "The National Letters," Mencken describes George W Bush (err, the American plutocracy circa 1920), thusly:

It is badly educated, it is stupid, it is full of low-caste superstitions and indignations, it is without decent traditions or informing vision; above all it is extraordinarily lacking in the most elemental independence and courage. Out of this class comes the grotesque fashionable society of our big towns, already described. Imagine a horde of peasants incredibly enriched and with almost infinite power thrust into their hands, and you will have a fair picture of its habitual state of mind. It shows all the stigmata of inferiority--moral certainty, cruelty, suspicion of ideas, fear.

Mencken's argument is that what's needed is a real aristocracy. I'm not sure I buy into that necessarily, but his description of the American plutocracy then and now is dead on.

SOURCE

I agree with Rafe.

UNELECTED
SCHEISSKOPF

[burythehatchet]

10. In layman's terms

This class takes everything it can from society, and gives nothing in return, even when in a position to do so.

[robbedvoter]

38. W IS aristocracy - degenerate dauphin of generations of entitlement

As much as that exists in this country, the Bushes are menken's ideal come true. What's the big deal about this guy? I am sure the BFEE thinks of the newer moneyed (nuveau riche) people just as bad as Menken.

[liberalmuse]

2. Ouch!

That is so dead on accurate it hurts!

[Octafish]

12. Bring it on.

Mencken understood the information environment big picture and how the news is consumed waaaaay back when.

Here's a great analysis from Wendy McElroy:

The Bathtub, Mencken, and War

by Wendy McElroy

On December 28, 1917, the iconoclastic journalist H.L. Mencken published "A Neglected Anniversary" in the New York Evening Mail. The article was so titled because, as Mencken declared, America had neglected to celebrate the seventy-fifth anniversary of the invention of the modern bathtub which had occurred on December 20, 1842 in Cincinnati, Ohio. "Not a plumber fired a salute or hung out a flag. Not a governor proclaimed a day of prayer," Mencken lamented, then proceeded to offer an informal history of the bathtub in the United States. He provided political context. For example, President Millard Fillmore had installed the first bathtub in the White House in 1851. This had been a brave act on Fillmore's part, since the health risks of using a bathtub had been the subject of great controversy within the medical establishment. Indeed, Mencken observed, "Boston early in 1845 made bathing unlawful except upon medical advice, but the ordinance was never enforced and in 1862, it was repealed."

"A Neglected Anniversary" was the direct result of the anti-German propaganda that dominated newsprint in the years before and during America's involvement in World War I (1914-1918). Mencken was an established and respected newspaper man. He had started his career as a cub reporter for a Baltimore newspaper in 1899, then became the city editor in 1904. Yet, during America's anti-German period, he could not get material on World War I published because of his pro-German views which sprang from a love of the culture rather than from politics. Mencken was enraged by the popular portrayal of Germans as 'barbarous Huns' who committed atrocities such as the widely-reported bayoneting of Belgian babies. (Although the latter accusation had been absolutely accepted by the American people, it was later proven to be pure Allied propaganda.)

Mencken had attempted to infuse some real-world perspective on the war into American newspapers. Near the end of 1916, he had traveled as a reporter to the eastern front to cover the hostilities but the break down of diplomatic relations between Germany and America forced him to return. At home, Mencken discovered to his horror that most of his dispatches had not been published. Edward A. Martin writes in H.L. Mencken and the Debunkers, "It was 1917; Mencken, passionately pro-German, felt muzzled by the excesses of patriotism that dominated the attitude of Americans. The 'Free Lance' column had been a casualty, in 1915, of his unpopular views of the war. The war and all of its ramifications were excluded from his writing until after 1919..."(81)

Thus, Mencken -- a political animal to the core -- turned to non-political writing in order to publish. A book of Prefaces, a book of literary criticism, appeared in 1917. His book on the position of women in society, In Defense of Women, issued in 1918. And the first edition of Mencken's magnum opus, The American Language, emerged in 1918. His articles either appeared in the literary magazine he co-edited with George Nathan, "Smart Set," or he addressed such controversial matters as the American bathtub.

But Mencken was far from sanguine about having his political views suppressed. He complained to Ellery Sedgwick, editor of the "Atlantic Monthly" whose pages were also closed to him: "It is, in fact, out of the question for a man of my training and sympathies to avoid the war... How can I preach upon the dangerous hysterias of democracy without citing the super-obvious spy scare with its typical putting of public credulity to political and personal uses." (as quoted in H.L. Mencken Revisited, 50)

His restless frustration found vent in "A Neglected Anniversary." Like so much of Mencken's writing, the article was not quite what it seemed to be on the surface. It had levels of meaning. "A Neglected Anniversary" was a satire destined to become a classic of this genre of literature in much the same manner as Jonathan Swift's "A Modest Proposal" which satirized English policy in Ireland. In the article, Mencken spoke in an eloquent tone of mock-reason, which was supported by bogus citations and manufactured statistics. In short, his history of the bathtub was an utter hoax set within the framework of real historical fact. The modern bathtub had not been invented in Cincinnati. Fillmore had not introduced the first instance of it into the White House. The anti-bathtub laws Mencken cited were, to use one of his favorite words, "buncombe."

CONTINUED...

"Basically, I'm just
a media creation."

[w8liftinglady]

3. lol..Mencken was a genius

[Octafish]

19. Conover: ''Bush isn't a moron, he's a cunning sociopath.''

Agree on Mencken, w8liftinglady.

Here's something worth reading from one of today's true lights in journalism:

Bush isn't a Moron,
He's a Cunning Sociopath

By Bev Conover
Online Journal Editor & Publisher

December 5, 2002 — If any of us are to have a future worth having, the world's leaders, the members of Congress, the US corporate media and people of all political persuasions who value freedom and democracy had better start seeing George W. Bush for what he is: a sociopath and a passive serial killer.

Psychiatrists tell us that all serial killers lack the emotions that make us human; that they have to learn to emulate those emotions in order to get by in society. Hence, a charming, well educated fellow like Ted Bundy who is known to have murdered 15 women and may have killed 36 before he was caught.

While Bush is no Bundy, when it comes Bundy's education and acquired charm, and to our knowledge has never personally murdered anyone, it has been evident to us that there is something missing in George W. in terms of his lack of compassion and empathy. As governor of Texas, he set a record in signing death warrants — 154 in five years. He even made fun of the way convicted killer Karla Faye Tucker begged for her life.

If we believe the psychiatrists, a sign of a future serial killer is a child who delights in torturing and killing animals. George W., as a child, did exactly that. In a May 21, 2000, New York Times' puff piece about the values Bush gained growing up in Midland, Texas, Nicholas D. Kristof quoted Bush's childhood friend Terry Throckmorton: "'We were terrible to animals,' recalled Mr. Throckmorton, laughing. A dip behind the Bush home turned into a small lake after a good rain, and thousands of frogs would come out. 'Everybody would get BB guns and shoot them,' Mr. Throckmorton said. 'Or we'd put firecrackers in the frogs and throw them and blow them up.'"

On Sept. 12, 2000, Baltimore Sun reporter Miriam Miedzian wrote, "So when he was a kid, George W. enjoyed putting firecrackers into frogs, throwing them in the air, and then watching them blow up. Should this be cause for alarm? How relevant is a man's childhood behavior to what he is like as an adult? And in this case, to what he would be like as president of the United States."

CONTINUED...

NAZI NUTJOB

[theanarch]

29. one correction, re: Karla Faye Tucker...

the incident mentioned here comes to us courtesy of none other than Tucker "Bowtie Boy" Carlson, in the course of a private interview with then-candidate Bush, on the eve of the 2000 election. What made this episode so startling to Carlson was that he (Carlson) had just attended Karla Faye's last press conference, in which he described her as calm, composed, dignified and (get this) forgiving of Gov. Bush, should he not commute her sentence. And he described Bush, in the course of mocking Karla Faye, as being giddy, almost to the point of hysteria, in his derision of her. Obviously, Bush's sociopathy was, even then, so advanced that he was totally thoughtless in making up a derogatory scenario about Karla Faye, and go as far as to literally act it out...in front of a journalist, utterly heedless to the high probability that it would be reported. That the M$M deep-sixed this very disturbing account from a PRO-BUSH media personality speaks volumes to the biases of the press.

[w8liftinglady]

4. dupe

[Octafish]

43. No problem. I goofed...It's 86 years to the day.

Then again, 66 sounds so dramatic.

[Totallybushed]

6. Menchken had

a very sharp wit, and a much sharper tongue.

Did he have a quote for when we retake the WH and congress and the SC?

;-)

[theanarch]

25. yes, he did:

"The American people always do the right thing, but only after they have tried everything else first."

[Totallybushed]

32. Very good,

thanks :)

[Octafish]

60. He had a couple of zingers about We the People...

"Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard."

"Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage."

After The Anarch's this one's not bad:

"In this world of sin and sorrow there is always something to be thankful for; as for me, I rejoice that I am not a Republican."
-- H. L. Mencken

[grasswire]

7. try reading Eric Hoffer, 1951

In his book "The True Believer" Hoffer describes the attributes of a leader of fanatics. It's Bush.

[Octafish]

42. Thanks, grasswire! Hoffer and I feel the same way about lots of stuff.

What I found:

"Good and evil grow up together and are bound in an equilibrium that cannot be sundered. The most we can do is try to tilt the equilibrium toward the good."

Eric Hoffer was a self-educated longshoreman who came to fame in the 1950's with the publication of his first book, The True Believer. A caustic analysis of the nature of mass movements and those who are driven to join them, The True Believer did what no other book of the mid-twentieth century could: it helped expose the hidden causes of the tumultuous events that nearly destroyed our world at that time. Hoffer said of the 1930's, "It colors my thinking and shapes my attitude toward events. I can never forget that one of the most gifted, best educated nations in the world, of its own free will, surrendered its fate into the hands of a maniac."

The True Believer, though, is not solely concerned with the rise of Nazi Germany, but with the origination of all mass movements, destructive or creative. And more importantly, it is concerned with the main ingredient of such movements, the frustrated individual. The book probes into the psychology of the frustrated and dissatisfied, those who would eagerly sacrifice themselves for any cause that might give their meaningless lives some sense of significance. The alienated seek to lose themselves in these movements by adopting those fanatical attitudes that are, according to Hoffer, fundamentally "a flight from the self."

Hoffer's first book dove into the subject that ultimately occupied him for his entire writing career and interested him throughout his life. That subject was not merely the discontented individual, but the creative and fulfilled individual as well. The nature of man and the individual human being have always been primary themes in the history of philosophical thought, and Hoffer's struggles with these concepts and questions have produced some particularly illuminating insights. He writes, "It is the individual alone who is timeless. The individual's hungers, anxieties, dreams, and preoccupations have remained unchanged throughout the millennia."

It is fitting that a true individual, as Hoffer most certainly was, would demonstrate a deep understanding of human nature not only in his writings, but in his life as well. Born in 1902, Hoffer grew up in the Bronx under the care of a household servant after his mother died when he was seven. When his father died in 1920, Eric moved by himself to the west coast, determined to avoid factory work and "stay poor." A born reader, he began to educate himself in the libraries of California while he supported himself with odd jobs and migrant farm labor. He lived his life on the road until 1941.

When the war broke out, Hoffer attempted to join the military, but was rejected for health reasons. He joined the Longshoreman's Union instead and became a stevedore, doing the most difficult work possible in order to help the war effort in whatever way he could. For the next twenty-five years, he both worked the waterfront and actively pursued the knowledge and education that he had pursued all his life, reading, writing, struggling, and playing with the ideas that would be his life's work. He published ten books between 1951 and 1982, and an eleventh was published after his death in 1983.

CONTINUED w RESOURCES...

[Cha]

8. And they all thought..

"Noooo!"

What is a "KACKISTOCRAT"? I know he's psychotic!

[havocmom]

14. From Urban Dictionary: unprincipled person in power

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=kakistocrat

2. kakistocrat An unprincipled person in power. An incompetant leader, or puppet of a corrupt system

After taking office, the new mayor proved to be another kakistocrat, enriching his circle of friends and letting the city fall into ruin

[Cha]

20. Thanks! I've never heard

of that word before..but have seen the definitions over the years. I wonder how they came up with that word for the slang? Usually there's a descriptive reason for slang word.

[eppur_se_muova]

23. Probably from Greek kakon, "bad or evil".

(cf. cacophony, a bad or evil sound)

Doesn't sound very slangy; I wonder who introduced it.

[Cha]

27. Thanks for that!

I'm a word buff.

[Octafish]

45. Kakistocracy means government by the WORST.

I'm terribly sorry, zidzi. I mis-spelled kakistocracy while doing some work on a crunch time project. I was thinking about government by the least qualified and someone was talking and blah blah. The thing is, I saw this quote and today's date and though how apropos. When I got back after things'd quieted down I realized my dates're off. My spelling's off. Just about everything. That is why I use links.

Kakistocracy

Kakistocracy is derived from the Greek kakistos, the superlative of kakos (kak?V) meaning bad. The word literally means "government by the worst elements of society." While not a true form of government, it is instead a term for any system of management controlled by the least competent, least qualified, most unreliable, or the most evil members of a society.

The term is used by critics of an established government, and not in scholarly analysis or academic research.

Kakistocracy is not used to describe governments run by persons whose primary motivation is graft---the word for that is kleptocracy. However, the two are not entirely mutually exclusive, as it is possible to be both bad and greedy.

Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"Things'd be a heck of a lot easier if this was a dick-tater-ship. Just as long as I'm the dick-tater."

[leveymg]

55. Bush: Kakistocrat in Charge of a Kleptocracy. Say that five times fast,

and run like hell before the airstrike arrives.

:nuke: :nuke: :nuke: :nuke: :nuke: :nuke: :nuke: :scared: :scared: :scared: :scared: :scared: :scared: :wow:

[grasswire]

9. by the way

You have a spelling error. It would be "kakistocrat" with no c in front of the second k.

[Octafish]

47. Thanks, grasswire. My old tired eyes...

... and tired, shriveled brain.

Better than the alternative, I guess.

Speak of the devil...

Kakistocracy: Government by the WORST

[seemslikeadream]

11. How can 59,054,087 people be so dumb?

:hi:

[The Count]

35. Mirror, meet Diebold.

Who counted those people?

[Octafish]

48. We BOTH know he lost by 7-15 percent.

How else to explain his current 37 percent?

If those people are stupid enough to keep believing in him, that's an awful large percentage.

Consider that he won with "51 percent"?

Have a fair election -- from equal time on mass media to fair counts with paper ballots -- and Smirko's not even in in 2000.

We also BOTH know that you don't steal elections to do good things.

Anyone actually see what happened to the Treasury?

[jackstraw45]

13. Wouldn't that be 86 years? nt

nt

[GreenPartyVoter]

15. I would think so, or else all this has been a dream and when I wake up I

will still be a sophomore in high school.

[Octafish]

41. LOL! Yeah. I'm a journalism major.

No math skills whatsoever.

[LiberalEsto]

58. Story of my life

No math skills whatsoever, English major, worked as a reporter for almost 30 years. Wanted to be a botanist.

Journalists are people who would study for more lucrative jobs, if only they could do the math.

[G_j]

16. K & R !

the truth sure hurts!

[Octafish]

49. ''A Downright Moron.''

Can't be much clearer than that.



Well. Yes, it does.

[AX10]

17. kick

[Octafish]

50. PSYCHOTIC KAKISTOCRAT

Thanks for the kick, AAAAAAAAAA! Much obliged.

What I meant to say:

PSYCHOTIC
KAKISTOCRAT

[On the Road]

18. And Hunter Thompson Said Something to the Effect of

The day is coming when Americans will demand that their president be a degenerate.

[Octafish]

51. Yeah. We got the degenerate part.

Mehr licht from a blog:

Lifestyles of the Fascist and Degenerate

Submitted by shystee on Wed, 2006-07-05 22:33.
Republican Looting | Brent Wilkes | cunningham | Kyle Dusty Foggo | Mitchell Wade

Vanity Fair details the adventures of The Duke-Stir and his merry band of fellow travelers:

Every time Wilkes was asked by Tom Casey, a California defense contractor who would eventually work with him, how he got to be so friendly with Lowery and other congressmen, the answer was always the same, Casey tells me: “Honduras.” Specifically, Casey adds, Wilkes described sexual encounters between congressmen and women from Honduran villages.

More scenes from the Fall of the Great Empire:

“What these revelations provide is a window into Babylon or the last stages of Rome,” explains a source with knowledge of the multiple ongoing investigations. “Many felonies went undetected because in the Defense Department a lot goes on in secret, and these crimes grew in the shadow of both 9/11 and one-party rule—with little scrutiny. So what you’re looking at is a world where money, secrecy, sex, and indulgence were all in play. Where everyone is guilty of something.”

Family Values, America, Mom and Apple Pie:

Wilkes also introduced Casey to Dusty Foggo, who often passed through Washington. Around 1994, during a visit to a Washington strip club, Casey says, Foggo wore a gun in a shoulder holster and flashed his identification at the club doorman. He was promptly seated by the stage. “Foggo sits there the whole night telling me how he likes to fuck girls in the ass,” Casey recalls. “He sees a girl there, he jabs you and says, ‘She’s ready to go—let’s double-team her.’ The weirdest combination of sex and domination! And Wilkes, he’s just laughing the whole time.”

SOURCE

[leveymg]

56. I've wondered why the CIA regional center was placed in Tegucigalpa.

Even the name of the place suggests a Right-wing rape date fantasy.

[SeattleGirl]

21. OMG, what a perfect quote.

Absolutely perfect.

[Octafish]

53. ''How George Bush became a dictator''

Thanks, SeattleGirl. Here's a perfect article to go with it:

How George Bush became a dictator

Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

An existential choice is forced upon us. Bush told us that we were either for his regime or we were for the "evil doers". I see a different paradigm: either we are for freedom or we are for Bush. Bush is spoiling for a Constitutional showdown that will force the issue and consolidate a dictatorship beyond the ability of Americans to change -short of violent revolution.

In his latest book "Conservatives Without Conscience", John Dean paints a stark difference between Richard Nixon and George Bush. Dean recalled the day the Supreme Court ordered Nixon to hand over the infamous White House tapes. Nixon, Dean reveals, toyed with the idea of defying the high court. It was Nixon, after all, who had said that if the President does it, it's legal.

Pressured by his own party, Nixon spent a night talking to portraits and getting down on his knees in prayer with an embarrassed Henry Kissinger. By night's end, as the story goes, Nixon had had an epiphany. He would resign.

What brought him to a night of prayer was his decision to comply with an order to the US Supreme Court to turn over the secret recordings of his Oval Office conversations. They were notable for what was missing: an 18 minute gap, and also what was present: a tape recorded "smoking gun" in which then White House counsel John Dean had warned Nixon of a "cancer on the Presidency."

But, Bush, Dean points out, is not Nixon. In the same or a similar situation, Bush will not budge. Bush will defy the Supreme Court of the United States. In doing so, America will no longer have a legal recourse of removal. Impeachment will be a dead issue. If impeached, he would not leave the office. Having subverted every protection afforded the people by our founders, Bush will have left us no choice but slavery under a dictatorship or a popular uprising. Bush will have left us, therefore, no choice but revolution.

...whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government. --Thomas Jefferson, Declaration of Independence

CONTINUED...

[lonestarnot]

22. "moron." He got that right didn't he!

[Octafish]

54. A perfect moron. Now something on the moron who has everything...

http://www.presidentmoron.com/

KAKISTOCRATIC NUTJOB

[longship]

24. Mencken Pics

Recommended and :kick:ed

[Octafish]

64. Great pics, longship. Here's a decent bio...

http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/scopes/menckenh.htm

H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)
by Doug Linder (2004)

Those interested in his writings might want to check out the links on the bottom...

DINK OF THE VERY BOTTOM

[autorank]

26. K&R. I love Mencken and I love this quotation.

We were sold this bill of trash by our Corporate Media in 2000:

"He's just the kind of guy you'd like to have a beer with." while they knew, the KNEW he had huge substance problems.

"He's the kind of guy you'd like to have as a next door neighbor," while they knew, the KNEW that he had a huge kink factor at least in his background and he as a nasty piece of work to boot.

The CM is less and less effective because there are too many channels. Even if five or six companies own most of them, there are specialty channels that just never carry the political brainwashing. Hence, * only happened because he was made to happen by the CM in 2000 and they'll never be able to do it again because of diversity. Nevertheless, Mencken is right! WE DID IT! He'd be so proud;)

[StaggerLee]

28. Wow

K & R

:dem:

[progressoid]

30. 66 YEARS ago? 1920? typo?

:shrug:

[European Socialist]

31. Wrong--Raygun elected in 1980--Moron #1

[leveymg]

57. Ford was also a useful idiot, as was "Silent Cal" Coolidge

It's an old GOP tradition.

McKinley was no bright bulb, either.

In this 1903 statement to a visiting church delegation, President William McKinley defends his decision to support the annexation of the Philippines in the wake of the U.S. war in that country: http://historymatters.gmu.edu/blackboard/mckinley.html

When I next realized that the Philippines had dropped into our laps I confess I did not know what to do with them. . . And one night late it came to me this way. . .1) That we could not give them back to Spain- that would be cowardly and dishonorable; 2) that we could not turn them over to France and Germany-our commercial rivals in the Orient-that would be bad business and discreditable; 3) that we not leave them to themselves-they are unfit for self-government-and they would soon have anarchy and misrule over there worse than Spain's wars; and 4) that there was nothing left for us to do but to take them all, and to educate the Filipinos, and uplift and civilize and Christianize them, and by God's grace do the very best we could by them, as our fellow-men for whom Christ also died.

At least he could count to four.

[The Count]

33. W IS NOT the result of a perfect democracy - but of its hijacking. Gore

was elected in 2000, Kerry in 2004. By the plain folks of the land.
This quite only illustrates its author's contempt for democracy, the people. In fact, he talks like a real BFEE crony. oh, yeah, i know, he thought himself above "new money' - only "old money" is entitled to arrogance.... We are not amused.

[robbedvoter]

34. Does it matter that W is NOT the heart desire of the folks of this land?

Other than the word "moron" I see nothing in this quote fitting our reality. Unless you think we live in a perfect democracy.

[indepat]

36. The office of president and the current incumbent represent the inner soul

of countless tens of millions of the people, or so it would seem.

[robbedvoter]

37. Not so. Only Diebold, ES&S and a few thieves.

[Mnemosyne]

39. You are psychic, Octafish.

I've been looking for this exact quote for a few days. Just could not find it.

Thanks much! :hi:

[KittyWampus]

40. Funny But True

[farmbo]

44. My signature line...

eom

[Sparkly]

46. K&R & Thanks for the reminder.

(Btw, 86 years?)

[w4rma]

52. Except he stole both elections, which is the opposite of a democracy. (nt)

[The Count]

59. Been trying to highlight this - but it seems the WH/moron association

makes everyone oblivious to the flaws this anti-democratic artistocracy fan.

[Swamp Rat]

61. Whoa!

:wow:

[blues90]

62. HL Mencken / Allen Watts

While listening to NPR the roy of hollywood show on thursday nights years ago Allen Watts read an artical written by H L Mencken titled The Libido of the Ugly . Watts added his perception realting to the time which was in the 50's and just how mans progress had not changed on bit .
I have a cassette recording around here somewhere of this show . It really opens ones eyes of american history and the abuse of american ideals by selling the masses on bad ideas .

At the time Mencken wrote this artical he was traveling by train through Pittsberg PA which at this point in time was the richest city in the entire USA due to the steel industry however it consisted of the poorest people with the worst display of housing and land use of all time .

[blues90]

63. here is a link to Mencken's Essay great reading

http://www.bizbag.com/mencken/menklibid.htm