Jan 26, 2013

H.L. Mencken on Gun (and everything else) Control

Each year about this time,  the Moon of the Shrunken Scrotum, I tend to stay  in my lodge,  near the fire, and spend time with the old writings. I owe these authors. Without them I would be someone else.

This morning it is H.L. Mencken (1880-1956), one of my primary sources on 21st Century politics. Here he discloses one of the reasons we veer so close to post-constitutional government and pixie dust economics.

He is discussing American literature as it existed in the earliest years of the 20th  Century. It was ponderous stuff requiring close attention and patience, but Mencken thought it was important. Or would have been if enough people paid attention. He wasn't optimistic about that.

"In the arts, as in the concerns of every day, the  American seeks escape from the insoluble  by pretending it is solved. A comfortable phrase is what he craves beyond all things...".



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