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Notes
on Democracy: Mencken Vents His Spleen for His Era and Ours
August 15, 2008 This
is a wonderful book—packed with personality and a surprising amount of
helpful supplementary material. For example, in her introductory essay to Notes
on Democracy: A New Edition, Marion Elizabeth Rodgers (author of Mencken:
The American Iconoclast) describes the effect of Henry Louis Mencken
(1880-1956) on first-time readers: “[Mencken
is] . . . still castigated as un-American, ‘anti-democractic,’ even
‘a near anarchist.’ His independent and realistic thought is sternly
censured; in more liberated circles, it is simply regarded with unease.
When every phrase must be examined for political correctness, many find it
impossible to enjoy Mencken without apology.” As
an antidote for our perverse zeitgeist,
there is no better medicine than this readable and entertaining book by
one of the most influential writers of the 20th century. As
Mencken explores the democratic man, the democratic state, and the
conflict of democracy and liberty, he laughs and pokes fun at
fundamentalists, teetotalers, law enforcement zealots, judges, victimless
crime laws, presidents, public schools, our history of warmongering, and
the drooling stupidity that seems to run through our society like a
bubbling sewer with lots of inconvenient clogs. To
make this particular edition even more valuable to readers, Ms. Rodgers’
introduction explores Mencken’s most fascinating traits and some of the
accusations made against him—placing him in an appropriate historical
context. She also provides 45 pages of annotations to supplement the text.
These bring to life (and save us the trouble of looking up) the people,
places, and ideas cited by Mencken throughout the book. Then, in a
succinctly written afterword, Pulitzer-prize-winner Anthony Lewis brings
us up to date. He explains the vital relevance of Mencken’s thinking to
21st century America, which already has been twisted beyond
recognition by a Janus-headed cadre of lying and spineless politicians
(take your pick from either party) and their easily deceived mob of
witch-burners born in the wrong century. Part
1: The Democratic Man Mencken
begins by taking the high road: He refuses to blame the Greeks for cooking
up the concept of “democratic man.” Instead, he blames the idealized
vision of the noble savage on Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Then Mencken
playfully digs through the mountain of evidence that contradicts
Rousseau’s rosy assumptions—and he uses the appropriate tool, a
steam-shovel. He immediately dispels the notion that democratic man is on
a quest for his higher self. What he really wants is “something concrete
and highly materialistic—more to eat, less work, higher wages, lower
taxes.” But what’s so bad about that? The problem, says Mencken, is
that “the inferior four-fifths of mankind” reduces everything to his
own private advantage. This, he explains, is based on the inevitable
inequality that prevails among men: “The mob, being composed, in the
overwhelming main, of men and women who have not got beyond the ideas and
emotions of childhood, hovers, in mental age, around the time of puberty,
and chiefly below it.” With a bit more sympathy, he puts it this way: “One
thus sees the world as a vast field of greased poles, flying gaudy and
seductive flags. Up each a human soul goes shinning, painfully and with
many a slip. Some climb eventually to the high levels; a few scale the
dizziest heights. But the great majority never get very far from the
ground. There they struggle for a while, and then give it up. The effort
is too much for them; it doesn’t seem to be worth its agonies. Golf is
easier; so is joining Rotary; so is Fundamentalism; so is osteopathy; so
is Americanism.” But
how does this transform itself into democratic man? With the help of fear
and stupidity: “Man comes into the world weak and naked, and almost as
devoid of intelligence as an oyster, but he brings with him a highly
complex and sensitive susceptibility to fear.” Most of us are incapable
of getting rid of our childish fears, and being unable to reason, we fall
prey to those who are expert in manipulating our fears—“the
demagogues, i.e., the professors of mob psychology, who flourish in
democratic states.” According to Mencken, “. . . man on the lower
levels, though he quickly reaches the limit of his capacity for taking in
actual knowledge, remains capable for a long time thereafter of absorbing
delusions. What is true daunts him, but what is not true finds lodgment in
his cranium with so little resistance that there is only a trifling
emission of heat.” Consequently: “Politics
under democracy consists almost wholly of the discovery, chase and
scotching of bugaboos. The statesman becomes, in the last analysis, a mere
witch-hunter, a glorified smeller and snooper, eternally chanting ‘Fe,
Fi, Fo, Fum!’ It has been so in the United States since the earliest
days. The whole history of the country has been a history of melodramatic
pursuits of horrendous monsters, most of them imaginary: the red-coats,
the Hessians, the monocrats, again the red-coats, the Bank, the Catholics,
Simon Legree, the Slave Power, Jeff Davis, Mormonism, Wall Street, the rum
demon . . . the hell hounds of plutocracy, the trusts . . . Pancho Villa,
German spies, hyphenates, the Kaiser, Bolshevism.” Today
we might update the list with Korea, Vietnam, foreign oil, Islam,
Wal-Mart, inequality, tobacco, Iraq, illicit drugs, Afghanistan, Russia,
immigrants, firearms, imported cars, gay people, Iran, Holocaust-deniers,
Starbucks coffee, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, and anti-war protesters.
If you nodded your head at any
of these, ask yourself why. As an example of the bugaboo theory of
demagoguery in action, Mencken demonstrates how President Wilson—a
favorite target—was able to whip Americans into a fear-based frenzy by
demonizing Germany: “The
whole power of the government was concentrated upon throwing the plain
people into a panic. All sense was heaved overboard, and there ensued a
chase of bugaboos on a truly epic scale. Nothing like it had ever been
seen in the world before, for no democratic state as populous as the
United States had ever gone to war before. I pass over the details, and
pause only to recall the fact that the American people, by the end of
1917, were in such a terror that they lived in what was substantially a
state of siege, though the foe was 3000 miles away and obviously unable to
do them any damage.” Does
this remind anyone of President Bush and 9-11? But how is it that
demagogues find such fertile fields on the continent of the democratic
man? In a word, envy. Underneath his pretensions of superiority, in
democratic man “there lies an uncomfortable realization of actual
inferiority.” More explicitly: “The
sea-sick passenger on the ocean liner detests the ‘good sailor’ who
stalks past him a hundred times a day, obscenely smoking large, greasy,
gold-banded cigars. In precisely the same way democratic man hates the
fellow who is having a better time of it in this world. Such, indeed, is
the origin of democracy. And such is the origin of its twin,
Puritanism.” Today’s
Puritans carry the torch of their philosophical ancestors by persecuting
deviancy wherever they find it: the Puritans of the left abhor the fat
wallets of the economically successful, and on the right, they spend an
inordinate amount of time worrying about the pudenda of the sexually
adventurous. By alternating the use of fear and envy, says Mencken,
politicians can stampede their followers into just about anything. The
democratic man “. . . 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.” Mencken
quotes Sir Francis Galton to explain that the pervasive mixture of fear,
envy, and stupidity results in fear of liberty: “The vast majority of
persons of our race have a natural tendency to shrink from the
responsibility of standing and acting alone.” He adds: “The heritage
of freedom belongs to a small minority of men, descended whether
legitimately or by adultery, from the old lords of the soil or from the
patricians of the free towns.” In contrast the democratic man seeks only
one thing: security. That is why instead of seeking genuine justice (justice for the individual based on his own
actions), he seeks out social
justice (a pre-determined result applied for politically organized
groups). Says Mencken, “Justice, in fact, is always unpopular and in
difficulties under democracy, save perhaps that false form of so-called
social justice which is designed solely to get the laborer more than his
fair hire.” Mencken’s theory about the roles played by fear,
stupidity, and envy goes a long way toward explaining why we are
presented—in each election cycle—with a choice between two fraudsters:
“[the democratic man] can imagine and even esteem, in his way, certain
false forms of liberty—for example, the right to choose between two
political mountebanks, and to yell for the more obviously dishonest—but
the reality is incomprehensible to him.” Part
2: The Democratic State Mencken
provides a definition of the democratic state that not only describes it
but also hints at its internal mechanism. Furthermore, he does not protest
that the United States is supposed to be a constitutional republic: “Whether
it be called a constitutional monarchy, as in England, or a representative
republic, as in France, or a pure democracy, as in some of the cantons of
Switzerland, it is always essentially the same. There is, first, the mob,
theoretically and in fact the ultimate judge of all ideas and the source
of all power. There is, second, the camorra of self-seeking minorities,
each seeking to inflame, delude and victimize it. The political process
thus becomes a mere battle of rival rogues. But the mob remains quite free
to decide between them.” He
denies that checks and balances have had any salutary effect. Why? Because
politicians play upon the envy, stupidity, and fears of the electorate:
“[The politician] is willing to embrace any issue, however idiotic, that
will get him votes, and he is willing to sacrifice any principle, however
sound, that will lose them for him.” Mavericks? They are rarely elected
and quickly disappear. If they are dubbed with that title in an admiring
way by journalists, you are being taken to the cleaners—and Obama and
McCain are no exception. Read
onward as Mencken’s delightful microscope tears into the presidencies of
Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and Franklin
Roosevelt with relish—exposing them and their adoring constituencies for
what they are. If Machiavelli took off our blinders and exposed the rancid
underbelly of tyrants in The Prince, Mencken did the same for democracy in this gem of a
book. As Mencken says plainly, “We are dependent for whatever good flows
out of democracy upon men who do not believe in democracy.” Part
3: Democracy and Liberty Mencken’s
discussion of Prohibition and the 18th Amendment teaches a
lesson that applies directly to our bizarre obsession over what people
ingest in the privacy of their own homes. I refer to the War on Drugs and
those who profit mightily from it—not only the criminal gangs that are
its inevitable result, but the judges, police departments, DEA, FBI, and
the vast and vicious prison industry. Here Mencken describes their
tactics: The
Prohibitionist leaders, being mainly men of wide experience in playing
upon the prejudices and emotions of the mob, developed a technique of
terrorization that was almost irresistible. The moment a politician
ventured to speak against them he was accused of the grossest baseness. It
was whispered that he was a secret drunkard and eager to safeguard his
tipple; it was covertly hinted that he was in the pay of the Whiskey Ring,
the Beer Trust, or some other such bugaboo . . . . The point is that such
accusations are generally believed, especially when they are leveled at a
candidate for office. The average American knows what he would do in like
case, and he believes quite naturally that every other man is willing and
eager to do the same.” If
we ask why the democratic man supports bankrupt notions such as
Prohibition, the War on Drugs, and a host of victimless crime laws and
economic legislation, we must remember the unholy trinity of envy,
stupidity, and fear: “Democracy,
as a political scheme, may be defined as a device for releasing this
hatred born of envy, and for giving it the force and dignity of law . . .
. The Puritan’s actual motives are (a) to punish the other fellow for
having a better time in the world, and (b) to bring the other fellow down
to his own unhappy level . . .
. The whole criminal law in Does
this remind anyone of the raid on the bong business of comedian Tommy
Chong? What about financier Michael Milken in the 1980s? The same instinct
applies to both. And let’s not forget about Martha Stewart, surrounded
like Joan of Arc by a barnyard pen of FBI agents, prosecutors, and judges
(known to be hybrids of lawyers and politicians). One
must always remember Mencken’s assessment of the democratic man: “. .
. he is not actually happy when free; he is uncomfortable, a bit alarmed,
and intolerably lonely. He longs for the warm, reassuring smell of the
herd, and is willing to take the herdsman with it.” According to Mencken,
that is why the most harmful legislation often runs through the gauntlet
of Congress so quickly: “Haste is necessary, lest even the mob be shaken
by sober second thought.” Can anyone spell USA
PATRIOT Act? This gift of Congress was passed before it was read. By
mistake, someone even forgot to remove the thinly veiled humor. After all,
when spelled out, the acronym actually reads as follows: Uniting
and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate
Tools Required to Intercept
and Obstruct Terrorism Act.
Yes, there is a god; George Orwell walks among us. Part
4: Coda—or Mencken’s Final Barb In
the last section of his book, Mencken leaves us with some final thoughts
on democracy: “It came into the world as a cure-all, and it remains
primarily a cure-all to this day. Any boil upon the body politic, however
vast and ranging, may be relieved by taking a vote; any flux of blood may
be stopped by passing a law. The aim of government is to repeal the laws
of nature . . . . War becomes simply a device to end war. The state . . .
takes on a transcendental potency . . . . Democracy becomes a substitute
for the old religion . . . not vulnerable to logical attack.” Oh,
my. What’s a mother to do? We are saddled with a faith-based religion
called democracy. Along with Mencken, we can proclaim, “I have never
encountered any actual evidence, convincing to an ordinary jury, that vox
populi is actually vox Dei.
The proofs, indeed, run the other way.” So what is Mencken’s advice?
In short, enjoy it: “.
. . the true charm of democracy is not for the democrat but for the
spectator . . . . Try to imagine anything more heroically absurd! . . . .
It is based upon propositions that are palpably not true—and what is not
true, as everyone knows, is always immensely more fascinating and
satisfying to the vast majority of men than what is true . . . . I enjoy
democracy immensely. It is incomparably idiotic, and hence incomparably
amusing. Does it exalt dunderheads, cowards, trimmers, frauds, cads? Then
the pain of seeing them go up is balanced and obliterated by the joy of
seeing them come down.” Citing the preceding text, many readers consider Mencken to be the quintessential cynic. I disagree. Look behind the words. Mencken was a supreme idealist, and Notes on Democracy is an expression of his bottomless disappointment in the American public and its mode of government. Behind his unbridled amusement and boozy laughter lies a man deeply wounded by the nonsense that surrounds him, and Notes on Democracy is his attempt to reach an accommodation with it while remaining a sane—and living—human being. This particular edition places his remedy directly in our hands. Buy ten copies. You know who needs them.
Notes
on Democracy: A New Edition,
208 pages. By
H. L. Mencken (introduction and annotations by Marion Elizabeth Rodgers;
afterword by Anthony Lewis) Dissident
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