H.L Mencken was a hell of a guy. They don’t make men like him anymore. They try to, they really do,
but the parts come out all wrong.
Mencken was a master of his art, and that art was taking society down a peg. It’s no
surprise that Mark Twain was a huge influence on Mencken, seeing as how Twain had no delusions about human nature.
Humanity is a joke, and Mencken was one of those rare individuals who actually got it. He saw the world for the farce that it was, and always took the time to have a good belly laugh at its expense.
We like to primp and preen and pretend that we are something, anything, other than absurd and ridiculous. Mankind is the butt of a cosmic joke, a speck of fecal matter propelled by the asses of who knows which god, that has travelled trillions of miles just to land on a tiny rock at the far ends of a minor galaxy located in the boonies of the Universe.
People often wonder why, if aliens exist, we haven’t met any yet. Earth is Bumpkiss, Illinois, a single road town in the middle of nowhere. We’re not getting any space tourists, because the aliens are too busy visiting real worlds with real cultures full of living beings who are actually capable of real, sentient thought, instead of the knee jerk reactionary tripe that passes for human thought in most corners of this backward planet.
Now, it’s just speculation on my part, but I suspect Aliens have taste, and so long as humans don’t, we’re not going to be seeing them any time soon.
I’ve gone off on a tangent, so let’s get back to Mencken. He had the same expectations of the human race that I do. None.
He was a brilliant mind, and I thought I’d share some of his quotes with you. Now, you’ll find several around the web, and I’ve collected a couple of them like these little gems
A church is a place in which gentlemen who have never been to heaven brag about it to persons who will never get there.
A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin.
A judge is a law student who marks his own examination papers.
A newspaper is a device for making the ignorant more ignorant and the crazy crazier.
A prohibitionist is the sort of man one couldn’t care to drink with, even if he drank.
A society made up of individuals who were all capable of original thought would probably be unendurable.
Adultery is the application of democracy to love.
Now, those are all fine and dandy quotes, but they’re a dime a dozen. Instead, here’s an excerpt from one of his books, “Damn, A Book of Calumny”
For humility and poverty, in themselves, the world has little liking and less respect. In the folk-lore of all races, despite the sentimentalization of abasement for dramatic effect, it is always power and grandeur that count in the end. The whole point of the story of Cinderella, the most widely and constantly charming of all stories, is that the Fairy Prince lifts Cinderella above her cruel sisters and stepmother, and so enables her to lord it over them. The same idea underlies practically all other folk-stories: the essence of each of them is to be found in the ultimate triumph and exaltation of its protagonist. And of the real men and women of history, the most venerated and envied are those whose early humiliations were but preludes to terminal glories; for example, Lincoln, Whittington, Franklin, Columbus, Demosthenes, Frederick the Great, Catherine, Mary of Magdala, Moses. Even the Man of Sorrows, cradled in a manger and done to death between two thieves, is seen, as we part from Him at last, in a situation of stupendous magnificence, with infinite power in His hands. Even the Beatitudes, in the midst of their eloquent counselling of renunciation, give it unimaginable splendor as its reward. The meek shall inherit—what? The whole earth! And the poor in spirit? They shall sit upon the right hand of God!…
This little slice of wisdom is something most of us should do well to remember. The human race, by and large, hate the weak, the humble, and the poor. We , as a species, despise them, we loath them, and we empower the top dogs of our society to feast on them at their leisure. The moment the weak try to defend themselves, we rally around their oppressors and aggressors, and we tell them to learn their place. And if a weakling were to gain the strength to defend himself against those belligerent forces arrayed against him, only then would we lavish him with our respect and fealty.
We save our kindness for those who don’t deserve it, and have none to give to those who do.
Mankind only responds to power and prestige, and can’t conceive of anything of value that isn’t wrapped in gold, and guarded by soldiers.