Mencken: Rascal, Knave, Jackass, Shabby, Scurvy and Other Kind Words for Professional Politicisns

The Book: The Impossible H. L. Mencken and Free Republic ^ | August 19, 1935 | H. L. Mencken

[poconopundit]

As all government, in its essence, is organized exploitation, and in virtually all existing forms it is an implacable enemy of every industrious and well-disposed man.

In theory, it invades his liberty and collars his money only in order to protect him, but in truth it always makes a stiff profit on the exchange.

That profit represents the income of the professional politicians, nine-tenths of whom are simply professional rogues. 

They employ a great many technicians to carry on the ostensible functions of government, and some of those technicians are honorable and competent men, but the politicians themselves are seldom either.  Their only object in life is to do as little honest work as they can for the most profit, whether in money, in power, or in glory.

The typical politician is not only a rascal but also a jackass, so he greatly values the puerile notoriety and adulation that sensible men try to avoid.

The prevailing view seems to be that the lower orders of the governmental camorra are the most parasitical and anti-social, but this is not really the case.  The minor job-holders that everyone disclaims are actually much better fellows than the political big-wigs that most people find it so hard not to venerate.

Consider, for example, the Post Office.  It's rank and file is made up of poor men and woman who work hard for every nickel they get, and are so closely watched that the slightest aberration means disaster to them.  In return for the relative security of their jobs, they have to show a constant competence, and to submit, more often than not, to brutal overloading.

But as one goes up the line one finds less and less diligence and less and less capacity for the work in hand, until at the top one commonly encounters a professional politician of the most crass and shameless sort, bent only upon serving his party machine.

It is the same in the City Hall.  People who go there on business for the first time are usually greatly surprised to find so many polite, industrious and expert people behind the desks.  They expect a gang of lazy, impudent ward heelers, but what discover is a body of functionaries at least as well qualified as those they are used to meeting in stores and banks.

But the higher offices are seldom so decently manned, and in the highest of all, that of the Mayor, it is so rare to find reasonable real and genuine competence.

When the Governor of an American State turns out to be a man of ability and honesty it is a miracle indeed, and of a very rare sort, for most American Governors are shabby and scurvy politicians, and some of them are obvious knaves.

Feel free to steal this meme and widely distribute this story.  Vote in Georgia Primary May 24, 2022 to kick the corrupt Kemp out of office.

[alloysteel]

Not just H.L. Mencken, but another commentator from that period, Will Rogers. There was a time when truth, REAL truth, could be spoken to power, and not have a thousand apoplectic anti-dialectic towers of rectitude come swarming down like murder hornets

[poconopundit]

Jacquerie,

Getting back to you after a month. Wanted to thank you for introducing the 17th century Algernon Sidney.

Wikiquotes has a few great quotes of his. And I’ll note that his is one pundit who was executed for his writings by the English King.

[Jacquerie]

I highly recommend reading his Discourses. He's easier to read than Alexander Hamilton.

His lay knowledge of the Bible is incredible, and he used biblical references to refute authoritarian regimes of all sorts . . . including the so-called Divine Right of Kings.

Our Framers highly respected Sidney, the martyr for liberty.

I wrote a few posts about this incredible man and his times at my blog.

http://articlevblog.com/2019/10/algernon-sidneys-advice-for-article-v-opponents/

http://articlevblog.com/2018/08/algernon-sidney-and-the-deep-state/

http://articlevblog.com/2017/06/algernon-sidney-and-corrective-self-government/

http://articlevblog.com/2016/02/algernon-sidney-republican-martyr-i/

http://articlevblog.com/2016/02/algernon-sidney-republican-martyr-ii/

Yeah. I like Sidney. Like the Federalist Papers, Sidney should be in every AP high school civics class.