Notes on Democracy

by H.L. Mencken

The renowned satirist and author of The American Language presents a scathing critique of democracy, demagogues, and politicians of all kinds.

H. L. Mencken was one of the greatest contrarian minds of the twentieth century. As a columnist for the Baltimore Sun, he was an outspoken skeptic of America's most cherished institutions--namely, organized religion and representative democracy.

In Notes on Democracy, Mencken presents an incisive critique of how democratic ideals are doomed to fall short in practice. From disproportional representation to rampant political corruption, Mencken's assessments--first published in 1926--are surprisingly applicable today.

Genres: Politics, Philosophy, Nonfiction, History, Political Science, Sociology, American History

132 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1927

About the author

Henry Louis "H.L." Mencken became one of the most influential and prolific journalists in America in the 1920s and '30s, writing about all the shams and con artists in the world. He attacked chiropractors and the Ku Klux Klan, politicians and other journalists. Most of all, he attacked Puritan morality. He called Puritanism, "the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy."

At the height of his career, he edited and wrote for The American Mercury magazine and the Baltimore Sun newspaper, wrote a nationally syndicated newspaper column for the Chicago Tribune, and published two or three books every year. His masterpiece was one of the few books he wrote about something he loved, a book called The American Language (1919), a history and collection of American vernacular speech. It included a translation of the Declaration of Independence into American English that began, "When things get so balled up that the people of a country got to cut loose from some other country, and go it on their own hook, without asking no permission from nobody, excepting maybe God Almighty, then they ought to let everybody know why they done it, so that everybody can see they are not trying to put nothing over on nobody."

When asked what he would like for an epitaph, Mencken wrote, "If, after I depart this vale, you ever remember me and have thought to please my ghost, forgive some sinner and wink your eye at some homely girl."

(from American Public Media)

Reviews

[Greg · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another reviewer made a point that everyone who reads this will agree and think that they are part of the non-mob / rabble that makes democracy so terrible. That is probably true. The same reviewer, or maybe it was another, blames this book for not offering a viable solution to the problems of democracy, which is kind of weird to damn Mencken for since he is pretty clear about not offering anything better, and going against the current that holds that if you can't come up with some way to fix whatever is broken then shut your mouth and live with it.

Democracy might be the best system that we have, but it also has some terrible sides to it. This is kind of the thesis in this book, and Mencken goes about pointing out where the masses of America fuck things up constantly, or to paraphrase Mencken, if there is a choice between two things the masses will inevitably pick the worse of the two. This sounds cynical, but maybe it's true in Mencken's day. In ours though it's most certainly not, just look at health care, a whole portion of uninsured, underemployed people living in areas that have been economically wiped out in the past 15 years or more are violently opposed to getting their health care needs taken care of by someone other than rich insurance companies that generally won't cover them anyway. Obviously the masses are choosing correctly in supporting big business over their own self-interest and health. Oh Mencken if only you could see how far we have come.

In Mencken's day there were these lunatics who were trying to tell schools they couldn't teach science when myth was more pleasing to the palate. If only you could see us now when over 50% of the country knows that the Earth was created about 6000 years ago, and no facts in the world are going to change that truth they believe. Again we have come so far. You silly critical goose Mencken, can't you just enjoy the ride and not be so damning with all of your facts and moral outrage at things like prohibition and busy-body religious folk who want to regulate what you do in the privacy of your own home. If the majority of the people want a morality police then it must be a good thing. But saying things like this are just being critical and the charge of elitist is hanging around when you want to point out that there are too many fucking stupid people, and they get the same right as anyone else at making decisions.

As a thought experiment, picture the last time you went to Wal-Mart. Picture all those shoppers. The last time I went there was on Black Friday last year in the afternoon, it was pretty crowded. Picture those people, picture those malnourished yet obscenely obese people who can't even figure out how to feed themselves properly, those people running to get bargains, the 40 year-old grandmothers who are only a few years older than you who haven't even had one kid yet (if you happen to be in your mid-thirties and single like myself), picture the cashiers, and the zombified senior citizen greeting you at the door, and the guy wearing all NASCAR clothing, and all of the other people. Now let these people make all of your decisions for you by vote, what you are going to buy or not buy on your trip to Wal-Mart, just something simple like that, like you are an American Idol contestant, but instead a shopper who is letting this segment of the population make your decisions for you. Would you want these people to even pick what you are going to buy on one trip to the store? Do you trust them? (Maybe this is coming across as super-elitist, but whatever, my point is I have lived near these people, I have worked with them, I have had conversations with them and I can say that many I've known are really nice people, but I wouldn't want them making any decisions for me, never mind decisions on larger scales, why? Because they are not educated and aware, they are led by rhetoric and are uncritical, and it's not necessarily their faults, but they don't know any better).

To be honest though I don't fucking know much. I don't know anything about global warming, I hear things from some scientists, and then the right-wing people have their scientists, and it all comes out as sound-bytes, and I have no fucking idea which side is right, because I have never gone to really look into the information. I believe that the scientists that are saying global warming is happening and is bad, and we need to do something about it are right, but I'm not going to get into an argument with my parents about it who believe it's all a sham because some right-wing radio DJ says it is because of some studies that neither me nor my parents have seen. I'm not informed enough to really know about this topic, and my guess is that I'm in a majority of 99% of the population that doesn't fucking really know, but takes someones word at it.

This is one example, but I could pick lots of other issues and make a similar point. We are a bunch of ignorant fucks and we have been given this power to let our ignorance reign, by just being quick witted enough to not get ourselves killed before we become 18 years old, and restrain ourselves from committing a felony.

Anyway, this book is very good. Mencken is an entertaining writer, kind of in the same vein as Christopher Hitchens is. I'm happy to have finally read Mencken, someone I've admired from afar for quite awhile, but whom I have kept putting off reading for one reason or another.

[Theo Logos · Rating 3 out of 5]

”It takes quite as long to breed a libertarian as it takes to breed a race horse. Neither may be expected to issue from a farm mare.”

Notes on Democracy is essentially a long and erudite Mencken rant bludgeoning his favorite targets — mob mentality, Christianity, the proletariat, and most especially, peasants, or the rural rubes. While it contains both wit and sagacity, it is so weighted down by Mencken’s unhindered prejudices and contempt that the overall effect is blunted.

I’m generally a fan of Mencken’s curmudgeonly and cynical philosophizing, but this isn’t one of his grander efforts.

[Erin Sipes · Rating 5 out of 5]

Who is H.L. Mencken and why am I just now reading him!? This book is genius! I started highlighting passages I liked but then realized nearly every page was marked in florescent pink.

I'm not going to say this book is for everyone but it is definitely for those of us out there that watch the news and listen to certain groups or leaders thinking, "Seriously are there people out there buying this?" Then we come into contact with those who are in fact subscribing whole-heartily to an idiotic brainless existence. Left dumbfounded we trudge along wondering if there are any 'real' people left in the world.

The world was a completely different place in 1926 when Mencken originally wrote this but it doesn't' take long to realize despite our innovations and advancements nearly 100 years later we've made no real progress in terms of democracy. Mencken's insights serve as a reminder to that fact and while the organizations may have changed and the leaders all have new names they are in essence the same.

"Public policies are determined and laws are made by small minorities playing upon the fears and imbecilities of the mob-sometimes minorities of intelligent and honest men, but usually minorities of rogues." Hmmmm, rogues you say? Remind you of anyone?

If you are of a thinking mind I highly recommend this book but be warned it reads like a philosophy book so if you think you can just pick it up and read a few chapters you're wrong. It will have you thinking and a buzz with every paragraph so make sure you have a good sounding board to bounce ideas off of after reading.

(I received this book as part of a giveaway on Goodreads.com I was not in anyway encouraged to give a review that didn't reflect my genuine feelings towards the book.)

[Captain Curmudgeon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Can you believe some twats on Abebooks and Amazon want $25 for this book?? Jesus, I have never payed over $25 for anything besides rent and a large bulk order of Minoxidil from Amazon.com that I get monthly. Anyways, the book is lacking substance, he uses pompous/condescending language (trademark of Mencken). I think if he and I got in an argument, he would constantly call me "stupid" and a "dumb dumby mcdumber", which of course, I would stare blankly at him and nod pathetically in agreement because I lack a spine and any conviction to defend my rather high school level mentality on politics and culture. I looked up the words he uses and have determined he could use way simpler words while simultaneously applying more style (dumb it down and doll it up Mencken!). Mencken is not an artist, he is some sort of intellect thing. This can contribute to some yawns over some boring history shit (who are these historic figures? What is a "Roosevelt"?!) and some further yawns over some other stuff. In addition, Mencken strikes me as a word nerd (I am the first to admit it is way easier to judge his vocabulary/intellect/etc than to recognize my own lack of vocabulary/intellect/etc and my failure to comprehend such works... whatever... fuck him... he's dead...).

Anyways, the man is somewhat clever and a pretty quick read, though I cannot pull away any discernible points that jump out at me as of now (except for below quotes). I think his flamboyant grandiloquent language, once cleared away while reading, leaves not much substance or meat and can be rather redundant. It seems to be just a vain attempt to stretch the books length. What a schmucky prick.. Generally, he throws around some very interesting but very vague ideas, while using fancy words and repetition of basically the same idea...his idea that democracy blows... I feel he lacks in really pinning down these ideas and rather relies on fanciful words to repeat generally that same idea of democracy blowing. This guy really lays into politicians; he hates them and equally hates the ignoramus layman that makes up democracy. Also while reading it, he makes you feel retarded... I can appreciate perspective though. I would highly suggest the read cause its so short (even for a layman ignoramus like myself) and brings up some interesting points; though not many... Much like modern politics and history stuff, the book can be dry and boring at times...MONTEBANK is his favorite word for sure. I counted that the word was used 14 times...I can't believe I took the time to count that word 14 times, I have no life... I do share his hate for humanity, Amen to that...

Because I do not belong to the "herd" and am not suffering from "mob mentality", I will give this book 3 stars opposed to the conformist Democratic men of goodreads.com and there conformist ratings of 4-5 stars (Mencken is looking up from hell, nodding in approval for my act of revolutionary individualism and intellect, I am a true rebel in the social networking community of sheep!...I need a drink). Anyways, this shit is just too outdated for the most part, e.g. who the fuck is President Wilson and why do I care? Will knowing him get me discounts on alcohol or get me laid??? Does it reduce my rent?? I have more important things to worry about than democracy and its short comings; for example, is $3 too much to spend on a used turtle neck sweater with a stain on it from the local thrift store and how to part my hair in order to comb over my obvious patchy bald spots that dominate my skull..Seriously, I have the weirdest balding patterns...

Throughout the book, Mencken redundantly rips into democracy with no freshness and, of course, no other other solution to dreaded democracy and capitalism (though he is aware of this and makes this clear by stating "My business is not prognosis, but diagnosis" and "To lack a remedy is to lack the very license to discuss disease").

As any other political writing worth reading, his points are based a lot on political psychology and I believe takes some ques from Nietzsche aka Mencken's Mustached Master... (that took me three hours to come up with)...

In addition, on more positive note, I thought this was a creative way to create a word: "and there is the art of what may be called, by a shot-gun marriage of Latin and Greek, the dema-slave."...Though I could have totally misread that whole sentence, I thought he created the word dema-slave by "shot-gun marrying" Dema=Latin and Slave=Greek. Also, I think that is the dorkiest observation I have ever written and have probably lost most of my readers (all two of them, one including me and the other my mother that I pester to read my reviews and articles in order to validate my meager accomplishments)...I hope I have not lost "face", mom....



Some quotes:

"All the revolutions in history have been started by hungry city mobs...When the city mob fights it is not for liberty, but for ham and cabbage. When it wins, its first act is to destroy every form of freedom that is not directed wholly to that end."

"The fact is that liberty, in any true sense, is a concept that lies quite beyond the reach of the inferior man's mind. He 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."

"Liberty means self-reliance, it means resolution, it means enterprise, it means the capacity for doing without...The free man is one who has won a small and precarious territory from the great mob of his inferiors, and is prepared and ready to defend it and make it support him. All around him are enemies, and where he stands there is no friend. He can hope for little help from other men of his own kind, for they have battles of their own to fight. He has made himself a sort of god in his little world, and he must face the responsibilities of a god, and the dreadful loneliness."

"Viewed thus, it must be obvious that he is still incapable of bearing the pangs of liberty. They make him uncomfortable; they alarm him; they fill him with a great loneliness. There is no high adventurousness in him, but only fear. He not only doesn't long for liberty; he is quite unable to stand it. What he longs for is something wholly different, to wit, security. He needs protection. He is afraid of getting hurt. All else is affectation, delusion, empty words."

"The American people, true enough, are sheep. Worse, they are donkeys. Yet worse, to borrow from their own dialect, they are goats. They are thus constantly bamboozled and exploited by small minorities of their own number, by determined and ambitious individuals, and even by exterior groups. The business of victimizing them is a lucrative profession, an exact science, and a delicate and lofty art."

"The art of politics, under democracy, is simply the art of ringing it. Two branches reveal themselves. There is the art of the demagogue, and there is the art of what may be called, by a shot-gun marriage of Latin and Greek, the demaslave. They are complementary, and both of them are degrading to their practitioners. The demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots. The demaslave is one who listens to what these idiots have to say and then pretends that he believes it himself."

"An aristocratic society may hold that a soldier or a man of learning is superior to a rich manufacturer or banker, but in a democratic society the latter are inevitably put higher, if only because their achievement is more readily comprehended by the inferior man, and he can more easily imagine himself, by some favour of God duplicating it. Thus the imponderable but powerful force of public opinion directs the aspirations of all the more alert and ambitious young men toward business, and what is so assiduously practised tends to produce experts. E.W. Howe, I incline to think, is quite right when he argues that the average American banker or buisness man, whatever his demerits otherwise, is at least more competent professionally than the average American statesman, musician, painter, author, labour leader, scholar, theologian or politician. Think of the best American poet of our time, or the best soldier, or the best violoncellist, and then ask yourself if his rank among his fellows in the world is seriously to be compared with that of the late J. Pierpont Morgan among financial manipulators, or that of John D. Rockefeller among traders. The capitalists, in fact, run the country, as they run all democracies: they emerged in Germany, after the republic arose from the ruins of the late war, like Anadyomeme from the sea. They organize and contral the minorities that struggle eternally for power, and so get a gradually firmer grip upon the government. One by one they dispose of such demagogues as Bryan and Roosevelt, and put the helm of state into the hands of trusted and reliable men- McKinely, Harding, Coolidge. In England, Germany, and France they patronize, in a somewhat wistful way, what remains of the old aristocracies. In the United States, through such agents as the late Gompers, they keep Demos penned in a gilt and glittering cage. Public Opinion? Walter Lippman, searching for it, could not find it. A century before him Fichte said "es gar nicht existirte." Public opinion, in its raw state, gushes out in the immemorial form of the mob's fears. It is piped to central factories, and there it is flavoured and coloured, and put into cans."

"The man who hopes absurdly, it appears, is in some fantastic and gaseous manner a better citizen than the man who detects and exposes the truth. Bear this sweet democratic axiom clearly in mind. It is, fundamentally, what is the matter with the United States."

"...the last joke upon man may be that he never learned how to govern himself in a rational and competent manner..."

"Democratic man, as I have remarked, is quite unable to think of himself as a free individual; he must belong to a group, or shake with fear and loneliness- and the group, of course, must have its leaders."

"...the quest for happiness, as always, brings only unhappiness in the end..."

[Corey Thibodeaux · Rating 5 out of 5]

"No man would want to be President of the United States in strict accordance with the Constitution. There is no sense of power in merely executing laws; it comes from evading or augmenting them."

The weekend after the election, I was at a trampoline park with my son. I frequently crossed paths with a woman wearing a "Garbage for Trump" t-shirt.

This saddened me deeply. Degeneration has become a point of pride in Americans and, worse, it's the trending ideology. I wanted to ask this woman - do you aspire to be garbage? Even setting that joke aside, what is the highest form of yourself you can envision? I cannot image anyone with high sense of self-worth reducing themselves to the garbage heap, let alone tying their own dignity to a public servant.

There is much I do not understand about the American psyche, especially when it comes to democracy. This book is not an exploration of how we got to where we are, but more about what we truly are. Despite this book being nearly a century old, Mencken's penetrating wit cuts straight to the nose of what ails us.

If you plan on running any sort of campaign in the coming years, you need to read this book and adjacent publications mentioned within. If you are an American reading this, it's time to face some uncomfortable truths. Accepting the wretched face in the mirror is highly un-American, but democracy demands it.

Some fun tidbits:

Democracy is a Fantasy
Let's get this out of the way - we live in a fantasy world. Not every person is created equal. "The will of the people" cannot exist when such a diverse population cannot agree on said will. Voters are not informed. Anyone aspiring to be a leader in government is not suited for leadership.

The Yokels Will Doom Us All
An educated man is not afraid of strange ideas, foreigners or the dark. He is sure of himself, knows his place in the world and can replace old fears with serenity. Most men are incapable of attaining this level of intellect. They cannot discern facts from emotion and they ignore facts at face value. Whenever you think, "OMG, that person votes," that is democracy working to perfection.

Food > Freedom
Democrats do not understand this one for some reason. People will fight for ham and cabbage before they will fight for liberty. The term "eat the rich" is thrown around too liberally, but there is some truth to it. Life for the majority has been relatively cushy, with plenty of citizens being able to afford food and shelter. But if you take away any of Maslow's base-level needs, good luck to whoever steered the ship into that glacier.

Mencken approaches democracy as if he is criticizing a boat capsizing. It's morbid entertainment. He admitted he has no advice on how to better democracy - it's the people you need to perfect. You need people in power who can satisfy their greed while somehow acting on behalf of the people while we need a voting force that actually knows what a tariff is.

We've tried education, we've tried legislation, we've tried medication. At some point we have to look in the mirror and accept what we really are: garbage that could be so much more.

[Jay Tee · Rating 3 out of 5]

At a different time in my life, a work such as Notes on Democracy would have hit me with the full polemical force Mencken intended. I can easily see myself a decade ago, enthralled while reading this in conjunction with Hans-Hermann Hoppe’s Democracy: The God That Failed. There is a good deal of overlap in the basic thinking behind the two works. Hoppe’s is a far more theoretical analysis but at the heart of each book is shared a basic claim: the rise of democratic states has resulted in the loss of liberty rather than its expansion. Contrary to democratic dogma imbibed by the masses today, both Mencken and Hoppe see the historical movement from aristocracy to monarchy and then to democracy as one of regression rather than progression.

While Mencken and Hoppe share a basic libertarian animus towards democratic governments (and governments in general), Mencken’s critique of democracy in Notes on Democracy takes on a much more Nietzschean and elitist flavor. This is consequently why I take issue with Mencken and found the first full length work of his I’ve read rather disappointing.

Writing with his characteristic wit and caustic polemical style, Mencken relentlessly hammers away at the democratic pieties of his age and our own. Whatever one may say of the content and arguments therein, Mencken is at least highly readable and amusing. It is not without reason that social media boomers (whether by age or temperament) share punchy quotes of his to their Facebook walls or X feeds.

He begins with a look at early modern democracy in practice. Wherever these earlier democratic movements popped up in the West, they seem to be primarily a matter of bread and not theory. That is, its practitioners and advocates were not scholars and intellectuals peddling an ideological system but peasants and lower class people seeking a greater share in the political system for it to better meet their material needs. As such movements began to pick up steam, theory began to proliferate in support to legitimize them and eventually said theory turned into unquestionable dogma in a great deal of the West. Mencken is willing to forgive early democratic supporters and theorists but doesn’t excuse modern purveyors of democratic dogma because they should know better.

Mencken may have not been a believer in popular narrative of progress detailing man’s gradual liberation up to present times, but he was a staunch believer in scientific progress. Mencken points to modern scientific advances in the understanding of human intelligence and natural capabilities in his reasoning for why modern democratic theorists should know better. The vast majority of men simply do not possess the natural intelligence to take in new information and get rid of old superstitious fears. Democrats who may profess to be aware of the ignorance of the masses say they are only incompetent because they are misinformed and in need of further education. Mencken would counter that no amount of education will correct the simple fact that some people’s brains are not built to go past a certain limit. It is a scientific way of justifying hierarchy that he shares with later libertarian theorists like Murray Rothbard, who championed works like The Bell Curve in order to naturalize inequality and paint egalitarianism as unnatural to man.

Given that no amount of education will ever correct the widespread ignorance of the populace at large, Mencken asserts that the belief that the masses have the right to govern themselves and are competent to do so is wrong. Not only is democracy wrong because most men are unfit to rule, but because it drags the rulers down to the level of their inferiors or worse elevates incompetent demagogues. Mencken excoriates the political class of his day for sacrificing honor and justice in pursuit of satiating the mob. He is willing to admit politicians in all systems have been willing to forsake honor, liberty and justice for some selfish reason, but at least in days of old courtiers bowed before men who were at least theoretically their superiors. This gets at the rub of what really bugs Mencken about modern democracy.

This hardened elitism and Nietzschean disdain for the weak and inferior masses is part of the issue I take with Mencken. Obviously he is writing in a polemical style to highlight the absurdities of modern democratic regime, but the way he speaks of those laboring and poor among us is a step beyond what I can find admirable in a thinker. He writes long passages on yokels (country morons) and the proletariat (city morons). He mocks the simple country folk with their superstitious and traditional ways. He laughs at the fact these yokels seem to commonly believe they are preferred by God (blessed are the poor anyone?). He sees the proletariat as generally less superstitious and backwards than the yokels but they are no more than “city morons” in the end. They too vote only for their own stupid self interests and are easily led asway by men promising fulfill their desires.

The yokel and proletariat alike are in his eyes unfit for self governance and their emergence within politics has seen only their striving after benefits for themselves. Worse is the case of puritanical politics inflicted on the polity most commonly by the yokel. Not only do these people envy their betters, seek only their own material benefit, prop up idiotic demagogic leaders, they force rigid moral policing on everyone in accordance with their backwards beliefs. Writing during the time of Prohibition, it is a little understandable the frustration Mencken vents.

Mencken sees Puritanism and democracy as intimately bound up. There is some truth to this as Puritan political theology and practice historically resulted in more democratic and egalitarian forms of governance. It seems less true if we fast forward a century past Mencken to today, unless Puritanism can instead be substituted for moralism in general. Because while the rigid Protestant Christian moralism of Mencken’s day may no longer have any real political sway today, the “woke” moralism pervading nearly every major institution of power today certainly does. Read in this way, Mencken may have a real point.

While his disgust for the lower classes is at times distasteful, Mencken also has a real point when he explains that under mass democratic governance states have grown larger and more total than even the most powerful oriental despots of old could dream of. Contrary to the common libertarian refrain of today that "most people are libertarians and they just don't know it", most people assuredly do not hold liberty as a primary value. The average man for whatever else you may say about him, does not have a real appreciation for liberty. In most instances he will choose safety over liberty. Combine this fact with the puritanical drive of the masses and you see the massive expansion of police power into nearly every facet of modern life. This is one reason why Mencken lauds the medieval order as a better one for liberty because depriving the mob of real political power, Christendom saw certain evils as immutable and incapable of being eradicated by state power. Hence the medieval state did not possess the police powers that modern democratic states hold and are fully legitimated in using by the masses. This view of prudential medieval statesmanship is slightly exaggerated but the larger point about expansive state power's legitimation under democracy is manifestly true.

My deeper problem with Mencken isn’t his cynical Nietzchean disdain for the common man. I find those with similar attitudes today rather amusing and worth the read, even if they are still deeply flawed for the same reason (see the BAPist Right). Mencken in my reading is a sort of pure distillation of bourgeois, gentlemanly liberalism. He took liberalism to its logical conclusion and as a result was an atheist libertarian. He is a crude materialist and lambasts any sort of supernatural view of the world throughout the book, associating such views with yokeldom and the mob. While some of his historical insights are true enough, he terribly misunderstands the history of Christianity and the West in general.

Like Jefferson and the Deists, he identifies the true teachings of Jesus Christ to basically be that of the duties of a gentleman. This watered down and uninspiring view of Christianity couldn’t be further from the truth. He claims that a new bogus Christianity replaced the original message of Jesus by means of the Apostle Paul. He calls Paul the “prophet of the sewers” and the “arch-theologian of the mob.” He claims the Roman Church very early on dethroned Paul in favor of Peter, and thus the West did not have to put up with puritanical politics until his reemergence with the Reformation. Any historian worth his salt, whether Christian or not, would tell you it is in fact this narrative that is bogus. For these unfortunate views alone, I could not recommend this book to any improperly catechized person.

At the book’s end and after hundreds of pages taking democracy to task, Mencken makes a surprising confession. He actually doesn’t oppose democracy in principle and in fact thinks it may be the best form of government currently available in the modern world. His call is not ultimately to tear down the system, but for people to seriously reckon with the very real deficiencies of democracy. His hope lies in “a party of liberty”, composed of elites with aristocratic breeding who can lead within democracy and seek to correct and contain its worst flaws.

This hoped for “party of liberty” is not altogether too different from the mixed regime envisioned by the classical thinkers. Anyone who has read their Aristotle or Plato knows these two towering figures of classical philosophy were no fans of pure democracy. They and the thinkers who followed in their footsteps called for a mixed regime that combined some elements of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy. If any one of these forms is allowed to predominate, it will likely lead to tyrannical governance and will spell doom for the polity.

Anyways, here’s a quote for your uncle’s Facebook wall:

“Our laws are in the main invented by frauds and fanatics and put on the statute books by poltroons and scoundrels.” (Perhaps a picture of Sam Elliott to accompany for good measure)

[Dissident Books · Rating 5 out of 5]

We are so proud that this was Dissident Books' first release and that it turned out so well. H. L. Mencken's words are as shocking and challenging--perhaps more so--as they were when Notes was first published in 1926. It's hard to think of anything more holy to the American mind than democracy. (Maybe capitalism, and Mencken rips that apart too.) Mencken dissects universal suffrage and the notion of the masses' limitless wisdom with a razor-sharp Ginsu. The introduction and extensive annotations by Marion Elizabeth Rodgers, author of Mencken: The American Iconoclast, open up vistas on the text that otherwise would go unnoticed by the average reader. Two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner Anthony Lewis' afterword is a passionate attack on George W. Bush and the Media. It's a fine nightcap to an evening (or a week, a month) spent with the Sage of Baltimore and Notes on Democracy: A New Edition.

[Jon · Rating 2 out of 5]

Mencken is known for his wit, but if this book is any indication, that reputation is completely undeserved. He tries hard to be clever, but fails almost every time. Many admire Mencken for his anti-plebeian elitism. This book is full of it, to be sure, but his is the sort of elitism one might find in an intelligent but immature 15-year-old boy; not a supposedly well-read grown man.

On the whole, I found the book unimpressive, predictable and boring. The one salient observation Mencken makes is this: “Man is not 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”. People aren't interested in the abstract ideal of “liberty”; they want community and a sense of belonging.

[Alex Stargazer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Henry Louis Mencken: a contrarian and master writer, it must be said. The book itself is not only bold in its aim (to discredit and attack that most cherished political institution) but also in the way Mencken goes about it—through a kind of rhetorical violence, an artillery barrage of wit, eloquence and scathing criticism.

Does he succeed? Modern democracts would hope not. If my opinion is any indication, however, I would say that Mencken does succeed in his broadest aim: to make the reader think critically about democracy and democratic society. This is not say that his arguments always hit the mark (they do often go awry or miss altogether) but that, in the broad strokes, it is often hard to disagree.

From here on the review will be divided into parts. The first will be purely about Mencken in a literary perspective; it will concern his language and writing style. The second part will be about his political points, and will inevitably be more opinionated.

Mencken as a Writer

What is immediately apparent when reading Mencken is the language. There is simply no ignoring it. His eloquence is breathtaking; his mastery of the American language laudable; and he is wonderfully verbose, his prose turgid and somehow still very readable. To employ one example of many:

I confess, for my part, that it greatly delights me. I enjoy democracy immensely. It is incomparably idiotic, and hence incomparatively 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.

You’ll have also noticed that I say the ‘American’ language, and not the English language. This is because Mencken is indeed distinctly American: not only in outlook, but in the idioms and words that he employs. I confess to never having heard of such as terms as mountebanks, bugaboos, dunderheads, or indeed hobgoblins. It is wonderfully amusing.

Nonetheless, it must be said that Mencken—like so many talented writers—does at times overindulge. He can be excessively verbose. His prose is at times so full of elaborate wordcraft, Latin phrases, and obscure historical allusions that it leaves one struggling to keep up; indeed, I struggle to understand what he’s even trying to say.

Generally speaking, however, this is not the norm. So long as one’s grasp of the American language (or in the case of an English writer like I, the nearby reach of a dictionary) is reasonably secure, Mencken is quite readable.

Mencken as a Thinker

Inevitably, the main scope of this review lies with the ideas presented in Notes on Democracy. There are actually a number, and I shall surmrise them briefly for the sake of clarity:

Democracy is the rule of the mob, and the mob are idiots. This is the basic premise that underlies much of his other arguments. Mencken provides two arguments for it: firstly, he argues that it is self-evident on the basis of the decisions that democratic societies actually make. He gives the examples of Prohibition, comstockery (censorship of literature deemed ‘obscene’) and various other historical cases. One can quite easily put anti-trans laws, persecution of LGBT people, austerity and selling off council housing in this category.

Mencken unfortunately tries to take it a step further. He believes that the mob are congenitally idiots; they are born with a limited intellect. This view is undoubtedly influenced by Darwinism (of which he is a great fan), and its bastard cousin, social Darwinism. His view is unfortunately the product of a very early and limited understanding of biology that lacks advanced knowledge of race and genetics. (Menckel is also a racist, likely influenced by the so-called ‘science’ conducted in his day that ‘proved’ blacks were inferior.)

The mob is sovereign in a democratic society, regardless of whether or not it is ‘representative’ and indifferent of how many constitutional hurdles there are. He gives the eighteenth ammendment (Prohibition) as an example.

Democracy is inherently linked with Puritanism; it engages in a great deal of persecution against minorities, heretics, and other such hobgoblins. Menckel believes there are two fundamental causes: envy and fear. Fear of what the average ‘yokel’ cannot understand (such as evolution) and envy of others who have a good time.

Democracy likes capitalism. Capitalism is about greed, self-aggrandisement, and impoverishing the other fellow. This corresponds to the base desires of homo democratus.

And finally, democratic societies will always be lead by demagogues and hacks. Those who appeal to the vagaries and fears of the mob will, as a rule, become the Congressmen, the Senators, and the judges. This will occur regardless of whether the democracy is direct or representative; in the former demagogues will shift and manipulate public opinion in much the same way.

So: do these criticism have any merit? Of course they do. But some more than others. Hence, I will address each of them separately, to begin with.

Are the Mob Idiots?

As Menckel puts it:

Examples from our own time are so numerous and notorious that it is needless to direct attention to them. It is axiomatic that all measures for safeguarding the public health are opposed by the majority, and that getting them upon the books is mainly a matter of deceiving and checkmating it. What happened in Los Angeles when a vaccination ordinance was submitted to a popular referendum is typical of what would happen anywhere under the same circumstances. The ordinance was rejected, and smallpox spread in the town. The proletariat, alarmed, then proceeded against it by going to Christian Scientists, osteopaths and chiropractors.

Without a doubt Menckel’s central thesis is his strongest. The examples he gives are mirrored in the modern US: anti-vaxxers, Christian groups that blame cancer on abortion, or STIs on contraception; the monsters that Mencken rallies against are here and very much alive, 80 years on.

Indeed, you can quite easily substitute a whole host of contemporaneous issues straight into Menckel’s argument. To quote him from a separate work:

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.

Donald Trump, anyone?

It doesn’t stop there, of course. Here across the pond, the mob voted to shoot itself in the foot and chose Brexit. The year before the proletariat voted to elect a Tory government; when the Tories tried to cut tax credits, it was like the turkeys realised what Christmas meant. (See this link.)

Indeed, the sheer number of catastrophic decisions that the mob makes—and against demonstrable fact, such as on evolution, global warming and the cause of the banking crisis—is staggering.

Mencken believed many spurious things. Behaviourist psychology is now all but discredited. There’s no such thing as a superior race. But in this, Mencken is not discredited; the fact is, his argument—even 80 years on— applies just as easily to the issues of today as it did back then. It is simply inconceivable for it to not lack a grain of truth.

Are the Mob Congenitally Idiots?

Where Menckel’s thesis begins to weaken is when he takes the argument above a step further, and claims that the mob is not only just full of idiots; the mob are destined, by genetics, to be full of idiots.

We can tell Menckel is mistaken by looking away from the US of A and across the Atlantic. A great deal of what Mencken describes does not exist here in England, or in the Netherlands. There is nothing like the anti-vaxxer or the anti-abortion movements here in England, and nor do religious fanatics elect members of parliament.

In the Netherlands, there is no Puritan prosecution of the kind Mencken describes. Alcohol is legal. Holland was the first country to bring in gay marriage. You can kiss your brother. Even drugs are legal.

So clearly, idiocy in politics is not biological in nature if there can be such vast differences between nations.

Furthermore, there appears to be no genetic link underlying political lunacy. Working class children can and do become competent statesmen—John Major is one example.

But if the mob is not populated by idiots out of biological necessity, than why are there so many damn idiots? The cause is more likely to do with education and expertise. On a first point of order, the mob makes bad decisions because very few of those in it are economists, historians or statesmen. Frankly, issues of complex economic, political, legal and historical means are beyond the ken of a cashier at Tesco. (Or Wal-Mart, for you Americans.)

There is also scarce doubt that education makes a great deal of difference. The reason the Netherlands is generally well run, and the reason that the US is generally badly run, is because the populus of the two nations are radically different where it comes to education and the media.

In the US, few know anything about economics or statecraft. In the Netherlands civil education is taken seriously. In the UK, the gutter press publish propaganda under the direction of Rupert Murdoch. Fox News does the same across the pond. But in Holland, the media as a whole is of a higher regard.

Are the Masses Really Sovereign?

Mencken, in his usual eloquent fashion, argues that all democratic systems of government are practically the same:

The lowly Christian I have limned is not only the glory of democratic states, but also their boss. Sovereignty is in him, sometimes both actually and legally, but always actually. Whatever he wants badly enough he can get. If he is misled by mountebanks and swindled by scoundrels it is only because his credulity and imbecility cover a wider area than his simple desires. The precise form of the government he suffers under is of small importance. 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.

Undoubtedly, many democrats—I’m thinking of the likes of Robert Dahl or Noam Chomsky in particular—would bristle at this. They’re always complaining about how the political elites don’t represent the people; that if only a purer form of democracy were brought in, the nation would find its succour.

But in Menkel’s words, the solution to democracy is not more democracy. The fact of the matter is that it even the most watered down democracies—with representatives, first-past-the-post, constitutions and lawyers—the people still choose who to vote for. At the end of the day, political parties generally share the prejudices of their voters. And if the voters find themselves overly discontent with the current political regime, they vote in radicals. Front National, Podemos, Syriza, UKIP—it is only a matter of time before the common man gets what he wants, and gets it good and hard. (Once more I quote Mencken.)

Mencken discredits his opponents further, however. Even if democracy were pure, the mob will still be misled by peddlers of fanciful lies. The fact of the matter is, the ordinary girl at Sports Direct does not know much, or have much opinion on, the matters of EU treaties, environmental legislation, or tax law. She votes on sentiment, and those who can understand and manipulate her prejudices—be it Farage with his xenophobic rhetoric, the Conservatives with their ‘economic plan,’ or the likes of Podemos with their implausible promises—can and will convince her to vote in way or the other.

But this is not to say that the masses lack sovereignty—that they are manipulated without end. Menkel recognised this dichtomy, and had a clear answer to it: the mob is still, obviously, a mob. It is unpredictable and has many contradictory and shifting prejudices.

The mob is ultimately sovereign; if the demagogue or politician (which according to Mencken, usually amount to the same thing) fails to adapt to the shifting wind, he will be thrown overboard—a new demagogue in his place.

Democracy and Puritanism

To be perfectly frank, I don’t buy Mencken’s argument that democracy is inherently linked with Puritanism. Firstly this is because such a claim is obviously wrong—the Netherlands, a very democratic country, is about as far from Puritanism as you can get.

Mencken fell foul to three false premises in making this claim. He firstly knew only of the US, and secondly cherry picked to ignore less convenient examples elsewhere. Thirdly: he based his argument on psycho-babble.

It’s ironic, actually. In Notes on Democracy Mencken criticises the psychologists of the 19th century, but then proceeds to accept a bogus psychology (behaviourism) while providing a false psychology of the democratic masses.

The reality is, the democratic masses are not all jealous and afraid of each other, or envious of the higher classes. While Mencken is correct to assert that jealousy and fear are the main (though perhaps not only) causes of Puritanism—hence anti-LGBT laws or the banning of alcohol or nude art—he is incorrect to believe that the masses are by nature Puritan.

As with believing that political acuity is genetic, Mencken simply takes his argument too far on the basis of ideas that (while popular in his time) are simply false.

Democracy and Capitalism

According to Mencken, capitalism is popular under democracy because:

Democratic man can understand the aims and aspirations of Capitalism; they are, greatly magnified, simply his own aims and aspirations.

If we recall, the aims of democratic man are to be fed, safe, entertained, and above all to have some sort of upperhand against his fellow man. Looking at modern America—with its obesity, its 24/7 reality TV, and its crude oppression of the lower economic classes—it is easy to accept this.

But perhaps it is not quite the whole story. Many communist governments, like that in Cuba, do have a good deal of public support. (47% of Cubans have a positive view of Raul Castro, for example.)

Or maybe the psychology of democratic man is to some degree the psychology of human beings in general. Of course we want to be well-fed, entertained, and some of us do secretly want to outdo the other.

But I feel Mencken is ultimately mistaken here. For one, a good part of the reason why communisms fail to take root in democratic societies is because communist movements tend to be revolutionary—and unless the situation is very dire, no one really wants a revolution. Mencken is correct when he says that being safe, warm and fed is more important to the average man than abstract concepts of liberty or communist dreams of the emancipation of the workers.

Another issue is that democratic societies are generally wealthy societies. Europe, America, and Japan are obvious examples. The Chinese, on the other hand, do not have democracy; nor do many in the Middle East, Africa or South America. This inevitably biases the ratio of capitalist democracies.

Mencken’s biggest mistake, however, is more fundamental. He simply assumes that human psychology is immutable and constant across the ages. But he is quite mistaken: hunter gatherer societies were frequently communist. Matriarchy was once more common that patriarchy.

The Dignity of the Politician

Mencken finally blamed democracy for undermining the decency of its politicians. To be a politician and gain power, one must tell the electorate what they want to hear. A politician is therefore either an unprincipled hack, or he insults his principles by deceiving the electorate whenever they turn against him.

Hillary Clinton is perhaps a prime example of this. Her politics changes with the wind.

But what of the likes of Jeremy Corbyn? He has stuck fast to his principles for the past 30 years.

Mencken would say that he is the exception that proves the rule; for the past 30 years he has been a backbencher, and the only reason he’s an MP is because of the vagaries of FPTP. When your constituency has a large number of impoverished people and champagne socialists, there is no need to sell elaborate lies and vacuous soundbites. You can be true to what you are.

Conclusion
Mencken is undoubtedly a fascinating thinker and an eloquent writer. But more than that: he’s refreshing. Usually, I am told that democracy is the best thing since sliced bread; especially by Liberals, but also by other creatures of the political spectrum.

If I claim to doubt democracy, I am not merely a fool; I am a heretic. An authoritarian.

Mencken drops a bucket of cold water over that. Where other thinkers make metaphysical defences of the value of democracy, or come up with elaborate explanations of why democratic societies make poor decisions (usually because there’s not, eh, enough democracy), Mencken offers a frank and rational critique of democracy.

He’s not always on the money. Democracy does not have to be Puritan; stupidity is a function of ignorance, not genetics. But in his main argument he is correct: democracy is fundamentally flawed because of its mistaken belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.

Are there solutions? Mencken does not offer them, and it is beyond the scope of this already lengthy review to consider them.

All I will say is that if you enjoy having your foundational beliefs challenged by a witty, intelligent contrarian, Notes on Democracy is the book for you. It may have some obscure historical allusions, it may be verbose, but damn, it’s good—both logically and rhetorically.

Rating: 4/5

[Steve]

No fan of the commoner, Mr. Mencken fires off one blow after another against the perplexing tendency for the mob to act against its better interests. Here, there’s been no shortage of opportunities and no shortage of opportunists willing to take advantage of those occasions for personal gain. Because this writing is so curmudgeonly and snobbish, it doesn’t play well today, though I do fundamentally agree with his message.

I allude to the fact that 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.

Throughout this work, Mr. Mencken rails against suckers and idiots but leaves me wondering who appointed him as the ultimate arbiter.

Learning survives among us largely because the mob has not got news of it. If the notions it turns loose descended to the lowest levels, there would be an uprising against them, and efforts would be made to put them down by law.

He certainly reminds us that what we’ve experienced in our national political circus is nothing new and is a phenomenon that will recur again and again.

The demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots. The demaslave is one who listens to what these idiots have to say and then pretends that he believes it himself. Every man who seeks elective office under democracy has to be either the one thing or the other, and most men have to be both.

The good news in all this is that if you’re aware of the weaknesses of the masses, there’s both profit and power within easy reach. The executives of modern media enterprises are well aware of this concept, to point at just one such group. Or remember Alec Baldwin in Glengarry Glen Ross? “You've got the prospects coming in. You think they came in here to get out of the rain? A guy don't walk on the lot lest he wants to buy. They're sitting out there waiting to give you their money. Are you gonna take it? Are you man enough to take it?”

The challenge in reading Mr. Mencken is to understand what he proposes as an alternative. I might suppose he would support the Chinese government today, as infallible as any around. Now there’s a system that knows what it’s doing, right?

[Casey · Rating 3 out of 5]

Trying to read "Notes on Democracy" now and see past the early 20th century scientific conclusions to its supposed brilliance is like trying to watch Eddie Murphy's "Delirious" for the first time and not be distracted by all the dated gay jokes. "Notes on Democracy" has some good stuff in it for sure, but it's also very disjointed, it's arguments imperfect and hard to read for insights with so much talk of "inferior man" and other ideas that just seem silly now. A lot of the faults of democracy that Mencken points out are dead on. Mencken does nail the manipulation of the public by politicians and religious leaders through the use of fear; a tradition that continues today. For practical purposes of improving a country, I'm not sure Mencken offers any help and comes off as more of "get off my lawn" crank than a Hunter Thompson, seedy-underbelly satirist. I guess basically, the things that were meant to be funny or thought provoking in the book didn't have anything to back them up beyond dated psychology which left me feeling like Mencken himself may not have been totally behind his own book today.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

Here the enfant terrible Mencken takes on democracy, the ostensible rule of the "common man."

A bit tongue in cheek, of course, but clever and bitingly written. We won't see newspapermen this great again, alas!

This edition is nicely annotated. Some of the period references are obscure.

And democracy is highly overrated. Just watch some of Jay Leno's interviews with men-in-the street, and then tell me with a straight face how great universal suffrage is and we ought to encourage more people to vote!

[Tobias · Rating 4 out of 5]

Perfect election year reading. Dated in many respects - dismay for democracy in the 1920s had a racial tinge that it doesn't quite have today - but this is actually a learned discussion of the problems of democracy. Mencken was extremely well read, was a devotee of Nietzsche, and, for all his crude language about the "booboisie," had actually put a lot of thought into the dangers of mass democracy.

[Umar Khan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is review from Pakistan. A third world country where literacy hasn’t yet crossed the threshold of 50%, and where standardised education is still with minorities.

This is a country where the people who have been given power to choose and power to vote haven’t yet even realised their own potential to think and exercise their brains.

Here, cash in hand is disbursed during that season of voting. Here people vote those whom their community elders would vote and community elders would vote who’d give them something tangible in return.

To read of one of the most developed countries of the world, the country we’d aspire to be someday in distant future, a country that quite literally nearly dictates and rules the world, a country where people are actually educated, where politicians are upstanding, formally attired, well behaved and soft spoken _ to read of ills of democracy ushering from such heavenly abode is tad bit depressing.

I’ve always believed in Democracy because it gives ME a right to choose. It elevates ME. It puts ME on par with the elites. It is a right that’s equally distributed among all. One right that’s exercised by everyone, regardless of landings, leanings, strengths or weaknesses.

This is one right that’s with the rich and poor. The most powerful guy, only has but one vote to throw in that ballot box. The weakest of lot too has but one vote to have his voice heard.

Isn’t it the only truly and uniquely equal thing in the whole of world_ one vote. And regardless of all ills that’s something to cherish as an ideal.

[Yogeeswar · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mencken has style, wit, eloquence and what not! He's a warrior with a pen, decimating Democracy as a mediocrity , or worse.

It was long ago observed that plain people, under democracy, never vote for anything, but always against something

The mob, in common practice, sticks to thieves as their leaders, it is only because their words are words it understands and their ideas are ideas it cherishes. It has the power to throw them off at will, and even at a whim, and it also has the means.

The typical democrat is quite willing to exchange any of the theoretical boons of freedom for something that he can use. In most cases, perhaps, he is averse to sell his vote for cash in hand, but that is mainly because the price offered is too low. He will sell it very willingly for a good job or for some advantage in his business. Offering him such bribes, in fact, is the chief occupation of all political parties under democracy, and of all professional politicians.

The art of politics, under democracy, is simply the art of ringing it. Two branches reveal themselves. There is the art of the demagogue, and there is the art of what may be called, the demaslave. They are complementary, and both of them are degrading to their practitioners. The demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots. The demaslave is one who listens to what these idiots have to say and pretends that he believes it himself.

[Dwain Minor · Rating 3 out of 5]

As a conservative Christian, I disagree with a lot of what he said. But I knew that going in.

As one with a more libertarian bent, I enjoyed this book.

[Jim Puskas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Despite its obvious shortcomings, I'm giving this book the full 5 stars. Notable caveats:
First, his language is at times awkward. It's deliberately provocative and fraught with hyperbole.
Second, having been written in 1923, it is very dated; that said however, his attacks upon the foolishness, corruption and knavery of the politicians of his day are equally true of the gang we are saddled with today.
Third, he states that "The average man doesn't want to be free. He wants to be safe." But this desire for safety and comparative lack of concern about a lack of freedom is in no way unique to democratic man; it's a feature that "strong men" of all stripes have always exploited. It's what keeps Putin popular and in power in Russia. It's a fault of mankind, not of democracy.
Finally, having pointed out the ills of democracy, he offers only diagnosis, no prognosis for a cure. He provides no argument that some sort of "benign dictatorship" would be an improvement. We are all aware of lands ruled by monarchs, oligarchs and tyrants that exhibit any and all of the same failings as democracies and are often a great deal worse. Yes, the mob is unfit to rule but so is the king, whether he be a philosopher or not.
Despite all of the foregoing, Mencken puts his finger squarely on the fundamental weakness of democracy: the fact that vast numbers of people (the electorate) are self-serving and are susceptible to being bamboozled by slick, simple answers to complex issues; they are comfortable when being told what they already want to believe, truth be damned. Demagogues have always understood this and exploited it. Even though Mencken over-reaches in his praise of the patrician and disdain for the proletarian, there is a disturbing degree of truth in his analysis. After all, millions of supposedly intelligent Americans today choose to believe the lies being told by their own government.
This book enraged a lot of liberal democrats in his day because it pilloried their sacred cows. I suspect their anger was enhanced by an uncomfortable realization that much of what he wrote was true.

[Realini Ionescu · Rating 4 out of 5]

Notes on Democracy by H.L. Mencken – quintessential, now that the Orange Idiot has just thrown out of the White House a war hero, now his nemesis, https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/20...

Think about it, H.L. Mencken has predicted the arrival of The Orange Moron

9 out of 10

‘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…’ how prophetic, every single day (almost) brings another nadir, an abjection that you think could not be matched, and yet, the next day, more often the same hour, there is a new horror

Trying to plunge in what will be a depressing note – ergo, you have been warned, it is also a spoiler alert implied there, as in the end will foretell Armageddon – I was aghast at what has been happening last night, when Orange Moron and Bearded Fool ejected the war hero Volodymyr Zelensky from the White House
H.L Mencken has had things to say about Democracy that have been proved right, last night and all the way through this presidency, which is a long litany of horrors, nonsense, ludicrous ramblings, arrogance, and the display of a heinous Narcissistic Personality Disorder, that was on live television last night, it was abominable

‘The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary…’ well, here is another accurate assessment, and look at this Orange Jesus – this is the name given by his cohorts actually, he is the Chosen, after all
The jackasses have jumped after the meeting to blame the war hero, whom should have begged and kneeled in their view, in fact, we have those at our sauna, yesterday, a musician that I liked- to show how base I am, I will say he is only 150 centimeters tall, and this is why he identified with Putin, both suffering from a Napoleon complex – started on an oxymoron, there are thousand here that want to be like dogs

Here came this Orange Savior and these chaps will no longer walk on four legs or something, it is not worth wasting time on this, albeit, there have been many mistakes, excesses on the side of the democrats, but that is nothing to compare with the Orange Calamity that will (has hit us) think of this – The US has voted with Russia, North Korea, Belarus, against a UN resolution condemning the Russian invasion
Nort even China did that, they abstained, and this proves that in ‘actions’, this once great democracy, defender of principles and rules in the world, has just become one of those would be empires, willing to grab Greenland, Panama, Canada, Gaza, and lately the rare earths of Ukraine, using extortion and Mafia Boss tactics

Indeed, The Economaist has The Don’s New World Order on the cover of its latest issue, and in long articles, you get that principles are out the door, and in we have a new outlook, with land to grab, allies to bully, and engage with the likes of Putin, by the way, that monster is not a dictator, Zelensky, an elected war hero is
The Orange Cow has dodged the draft, but when Russia invaded Ukraine – oops, in the telling of the ‘leader of the free world, it was Ukraine that asked to be occupied – the US offered a way out for the president, because it could have ended in days, with his death, but he famously said ‘I need ammunition, not a ride!”

And he stayed on, under immense pressure, and now this Mafia Donald aka Don wants five hundred billion dollars – reports say that this why he entered the meeting with a foreign leader upset, because it did not come close, in the papers, to the extortionate position he wanted – when the US have given only about 120 billion
Besides, when Zelensky asked for serious weapons, they gave him light ones, at least for quite some time, then he wanted tanks, and he had to wait a keep saying it, denied longer range or jets, he had to accept whatever was sent, and now he is presented with a preposterous bill, and made to flatter those bastards

Absolute ghouls, using Russian propaganda, and willing to embrace Putin for money, this Bearded Worm has said on tape that ‘he does not care about Ukraine, it can go wither way’, and he just came to Europe to scold his hosts, this is a competition between the Orange Cretin and the bearded pig on who can be more abject
They have already given Putin so much, stating Ukraine will not be in NATO -well, here is a thought, there is no NATO with the likes of Orange and Bearded Morons, thus, what they say is yet more nonsense, they use it just like Mafia Dons did, as a way to extract protection money, and as such, it is an outfit that has lost credibility

‘Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard. Democracy is also a form of worship. It is the worship of Jackals by Jackasses…’ yes, we can see that in the US and in some other places, but the Horror Show of last night was disgusting, how can people vote for such a duo?
The truth is that Ukraine fights for the right reasons, it is defending, and we must not confuse the victim with the abuser – this was something that the Furter German Chancellor Merz posted, after the heinous attack on Zelensky, right in the Oval Office, and if you are with Trump, then I hate you, really, there is no other way to say it, because if there were doubts, well, he will not do what he says, he is just boasting, negotiating, well, this is no longer such a game, to me, it is simple, you have pure, or as close to that as possible – Evil!

Now for my standard closing of the note with a question, and invitation – maybe you have a good idea on how we could make more than a million dollars with this https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/20... – as it is, this is a unique technique, which we could promote, sell, open the Oscars show with or something and then make lots of money together, if you have the how, I have the product, I just do not know how to get the befits from it, other than the exercise per se

There is also the small matter of working for AT&T – this huge company asked me to be its Representative for Romania and Bulgaria, on the Calling Card side, which meant sailing into the Black Sea wo meet the US Navy ships, travelling to Sofia, a lot of activity, using my mother’s two bedrooms flat as office and warehouse, all for the grand total of $250, raised after a lot of persuasion to the staggering $400…with retirement ahead, there are no benefits, nothing…it is a longer story, but if you can help get the mastodont to pay some dues, or have an idea how it can happen, let me know

As for my role in the Revolution that killed Ceausescu, a smaller Mao, there it is http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/03/r...

Some favorite quotes from To The Hermitage and other works

‘Fiction is infinitely preferable to real life...As long as you avoid the books of Kafka or Beckett, the everlasting plot of fiction has fewer futile experiences than the careless plot of reality...Fiction's people are fuller, deeper, cleverer, more moving than those in real life…Its actions are more intricate, illuminating, noble, profound…There are many more dramas, climaxes, romantic fulfillment, twists, turns, gratified resolutions…Unlike reality, all of this you can experience without leaving the house or even getting out of bed…What's more, books are a form of intelligent human greatness, as stories are a higher order of sense…As random life is to destiny, so stories are to great authors, who provided us with some of the highest pleasures and the most wonderful mystifications we can find…Few stories are greater than Anna Karenina, that wise epic by an often foolish author…’

[Christopher Rex · Rating 4 out of 5]

The more things change, the more they stay the same. After reading Mencken's "Notes on Democracy" it is quite evident how true that is for the US system of democracy. It is also quite evident that corruption and incompetence are a systematic and entrenched feature of our system. Sad, really.

Mencken is a beast. Everybody should read his writings. He clearly had his finger on the pulse of what is wrong with both the US governmental system as well as the general populace and their role in "democracy." Mencken in no way places the blame for our democratic ills solely upon government officials, but he evenly spreads it across the general "citizen" as well.

In short, Mencken doesn't seem to have a whole lot of faith in humanity...and I don't blame him.

It was incredible to see the parallels of issues from the time of writing (1926) until today. From pushing "creationism" in schools to Prohibition to big-money interests to how the system works, it seems very little has changed in terms of "what's wrong."

I'm not sure of what the solution really is, and it seems Mencken wasn't either. I think he would agree that an informed citizenry is absolutely critical if "democracy" is to work. Sadly, it seems we are no closer to that today than in Mencken's time. As such, we pay the price with corrupt officials, incompetent decision-makers and democracy which is in serious decay.

It would certainly be interesting to see Mencken's take on the state of our democracy today - though, I highly doubt it would be much different.

The only "criticism" is that many of his references are to events (and people) that the casual reader might not know of, or understand. However, the footnotes are extremely helpful in this regard. Also, some of his language is a bit flowery at times and seems out of place.

Well worth reading for any "concerned citizen."

[Lise · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received a free copy of this book through Goodreads Firstreads.

H.L. Mencken was always one of my father's favorite writers, but until now I'd never read his works. I found he was witty, snarky, sarcastic, educated, iconoclastic and always willing to exaggerate a point for maximum impact (much like my father). Even now, some fifty years after his death, Mencken is still a controversial figure, capable of raising strong emotions in his readers.

"Notes on Democracy" is Mencken's commentary on the democratic system. Although parts of it are clearly dated (a large portion of the book is a diatribe against Prohibition, and there's a fair number of pot shots taken at the KuKluxKlan), most of it stands the test of time quite well. I found the introduction to be good preparatory reading, and the Annotations are interesting and useful in themselves.

It's both alarming and reassuring to see how much of the problems we recognize today were around well before this book was written in the 1920's. Mencken clearly intended to shock and jar his audience, but in the post W era some of it leads to a sad 'so true' rather than outrage at the author.

I'm going to be lending this one around, and expect to be referring to it for quotes and snark and perspective on the follies and foibles built into the structure of the country.

[Andrew Weitzel · Rating 4 out of 5]

A cathartic read, and a reminder that history repeats itself. You could replace the names of the past politicians Mencken mentions with today's current crop and the book wouldn't miss a beat.

Also, I found the last section very prescient, considering I finished it shortly after the Boston Marathon bombings: "I have spoken hitherto that democracy may be a self-limiting disease, like measles. It is, perhaps, something more: it is self-devouring. One cannot observe it objectively without being impressed by it's curious distrust of itself- it's apparently ineradicable tendency to abandon it's whole philosophy at the first sign of strain. I need not point to what happens invariably in democratic states when the national safety is menaced. All the great tribunes of democracy, on such occasions, convert themselves ... into despots of an almost fabulous ferocity".

"Invariably" is right. As relevant today as it was when it was written.

[Seth Turnage · Rating 5 out of 5]

Assails Democracy's Golden Cows

Reminiscent of Twain or modern day comedians like George Carlin, H.L. Mencken states outright his own pessimism about human nature in general, and disappointment with the status of the human condition.
Nevertheless, he feels it is his duty as a man of intellectual integrity to critique democracy in its own terms: it's defense of liberty and it's ability to EFFECTIVELY impose morality on it's own citizens.
Mencken was active during the prohibition era and the Scopes trial, to extremely plain failures of government to impose "Puritan" morality on the masses, and making a circus of it meanwhile.

This is why Mencken says that democracy is "the art of governing the circus form the monkey cage." This is something he genuinely believes, but as a social critic, enjoys as a source of material.

[Krista · Rating 4 out of 5]

I would recommend this book to anybody interested in reading about theories of democracy or early 20th century U.S. History. This particular book is brilliantly annotated. I genuinely enjoyed reading the annotations as much as the book and I can't recall another book I have ever felt that way about. Mencken's writing is accessible and interesting. Nothing is sacred to him and that is refreshing at times. However, he also writes with scathing generalizations and in the end comes off as a journalist of his times, albeit a very intelligent and great writer, but not as somebody who truly captures the finer nuances of either democracy or history. I did enjoy reading this though and definitely recommend it.

[Jay · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely brilliant book. Not a novel, but I'd rank it next to Candide for its dark humor and skepticism of humanity.

He points out the obvious, which is that man within a democracy spends much of his time trying to strip the liberty and happiness away from his fellow man; that a system of government supposedly designed and set up to give absolute liberty to each person living within it, is being constantly assailed by the very people it is mean to aid. Very witty. Very astute. Can't recommend it highly enough.

[Mattheus Guttenberg · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mencken at his finest. A charming, curmudgeonly, and acerbic perspective on American democratic values and institutions. He inspires a deep cynicism in the reader regarding all the rituals and affectations of democracy: voting, politicking, campaigning, and the general idea of social betterment by democratic participation. Democracy may not be the worst form of government, but it's certainly the most humorous.

[Ogi Ogas · Rating 5 out of 5]

My ratings of books on Goodreads are solely a crude ranking of their utility to me, and not an evaluation of literary merit, entertainment value, social importance, humor, insightfulness, scientific accuracy, creative vigor, suspensefulness of plot, depth of characters, vitality of theme, excitement of climax, satisfaction of ending, or any other combination of dimensions of value which we are expected to boil down through some fabulous alchemy into a single digit.

[Kevin Schaeffer · Rating 2 out of 5]

"They [the masses] want to be delivered from the bugaboos that ride them. They want to be soothed with mellifluous words. They want heroes to worship. They want rough entertainment suitable to their simple minds. The science of politics under democracy consists of trading with them, i.e., in hoodwinking and swindling them. ... It is combat between jackals and jackasses." -- H. L. Mencken, Notes on Democracy, A New Edition, p. 87

[Josiah Edwards · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although Mencken can come off as a crotchety political cynic and cites his references far less than I prefer, his knowledge and straight-edge analyzation of one of the most beloved political systems is quite something. Although Mencken does not consider himself anti democracy (mostly just pro liberty), he meticulously pokes gaping holes in our current political system which are so easily overlooked today. Thanks Uncle Jim.

[A · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mencken is like Nietzsche: he fires his machine gun everywhere (and entertainingly!), but when the smoke is clear and the bodies lay on the battlefield, one does not know where to go after the carnage let forth on dear old democracy! (Check out Democracy: the God that Failed for such an exposition of where to go next).

[Esther · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've just started reading the book and already I'm really enjoying it. Good thing I have a pencil and not a pen in my pocketbook so I can highlight parts I like.