I know of no popular American writer more antidemocratic in philosophical mind and spirit than the bilious H.L. Mencken (1880-1956). For decades he railed regularly against the democratic species in what was this, the most democratic of nations. He playfully but earnestly denounced its shallow comprehensions, its inherent demagoguery, its herd mentality, its Babbittesque pretensions and, perhaps most of all, its sickly corruption by Christian evangelical provincialism.
Yet this profoundly vocal antidemocrat remained vastly popular among his democratic readers (at least, that is, till he began launching less humorous tirades against FDR's New Deal activism, when some -- any -- activism was most demanded by the populace). And I suspect his popularity remained intact for so long because his readers suspected -- despite their all their partisan fervor on Election Day and enthusiastic partaking in other democratic rituals -- that Mencken was on to something; that Mencken was, in short, right.
But I don't mean to paint Mencken in one color only. For he also, I think, retained a certain fondness for democracy, or at least its promise. What he despised about it, however, was its very real and fragile uncertainty -- that is, its ultimate cowardice. And the democratic cowardice he saw and detested in the first half of the twentieth century is every bit as pronounced in that of the twenty-first's beginnings.
Take, for instance, his partial musings in "Notes on Democracy," dated 1926, just a few years after the foreign horrors and domestic oppressions of the Great War, and amidst the contemporary and frivolous distractions that would soon lead to the Great Depression:
"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, by a process as simple as taking a deep breath, into despots of an almost fabulous ferocity. Nor is this process confined to times of alarm and terror; it is going on day in and day out. Democracy always seems bent upon killing the thing it theoretically loves" -- which was to say, freedom.
I, as well, hardly need point to today's similarities. Whether real, imagined, or fabricated, perceived menaces to democracy's national safety have availed little more than a despotic ferocity. The democratic spirit reveled in its suicide, and it put the knife to itself in the blink of an eye. Just protect us. Constitutional traditions are nice, and participatory democracy and far-ranging debate are theoretically swell -- but when our safety and security are threatened, just do ... whatever -- whatever it takes.
The despotically inclined did just that. But now, after democracy has seen the errors of its ways (after how many similarities?), it's still stuck with the despots, as well as all the democratically elected "dunderheads, cowards, trimmers, frauds [and] cads" who inhabited Mencken's Congress and ours.
In fact, Congress' dunderheadedness and cowardice have become institutionalized, as this piece -- which prompted these Menckenian musings -- in this morning's Washington Post drearily recounts. One senator labels it "political dysfunction." Mencken was less euphemistic.
Still, he was entertained by it all, if not resigned. The workings and non-workings of democracy may have been "incomparably idiotic," but "the pain of seeing [the dunderheaded pols] go up is balanced and obliterated by the joy of seeing them come down."
And, finally, as mentioned, one reads in Mencken that touch of uneasy fondness for the democratic system. "Is rascality at the very heart of it? Well, we have borne that rascality since 1776, and continue to survive. In the long run, it may turn out that rascality is an ineradicable necessity to human government, and even to civilization itself -- that civilization, at bottom, is nothing but a colossal swindle."
And with that, I am persuaded, Mencken hit the proverbial nail on the head -- and there's no confirmation like today's Congressional confirmation, democratically enshrined.