On Being an American

Ah yes, we enter the homestretch of the election. And it's going to be ugly.

The pious pitbull has been let off her leash and has been spotted in Florida attacking Mr. Obama for his association with Mr. Bill Ayers, a former member of the Weather Underground some forty odd years ago. I will not bother you with the details; but if you are interested here is a link to Mr. Ayer's bio in Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Ayers

The Obama folks have retaliated with a video describing Mr. McCain's role in the infamous Keating Five imbroglio. Remember the Savings and Loan meltdown of some 20 years ago?

And of course the financial panic continues unabated - and now encompasses this entire disreputable globe. Todays headlines have the former CEO of

OOOPS. Sorry, I was interupted - the house was on fire. My landlady started a fire in their recently acquired woodstove and the stack overheated. Her son called me downstairs and the stack was burning...flames in the living room... Shannon called the fire department. I took the burning wood out of the stove and threw it out on the lawn. There was fire coming out of the stack on top of the roof. The fire died down. The firemen are now airing out the main house. No smoke in my digs. Shannon is a mite upset. Good thing she was still home when it started - or I would, at this moment, be standing in the driveway wondering what the hell happened...as my worldly possessions, such as they are, go up in smoke.

Now where were we? Ah yes. Today's headlines have the former CEO of the busted insurance outfit, AIG, blaming those pesky accounting rules for the firm's demise. Yeah.

The point of relating all of this (except the fire part) is that recent events have reminded me of an essay by H.L. Mencken titled "On Being an American" excerpts of which follow:

...
Why am I so complacent (perhaps even to the point of offensiveness),so free from bile, so little fretting and indignant, so curiously happy?
...
To me, at least (and I can only follow my own nose), happiness presents itself in an aspect that is tripartite. To be happy (reducing the thing to its elementals) I must be:

a. Well-fed, unhounded by sordid cares, at ease in Zion.
b. Full of a comfortable feeling of superiority to the masses of my fellow-men.
c. Delicately and unceasingly amused according to my taste.

It is my contention that, if this definition be accepted, there is no country on the face of the earth wherein a man roughly constituted as I am - a man of my general weaknesses, vanities, appetites, prejudices, and aversions - can be so happy, or even one-half so happy, as he can be in these free and independent states. Going further, I lay down the proposition that it is a sheer physical impossibility for such a man to live in These States and NOT be happy - that it is as impossible to him as it would be to a schoolboy to weep over the burning down of his schoolhouse. If he says that he isn't happy here, then he either lies or is insane.
...
Here the general average of intelligence, of knowledge, of competence, of integrity, of self-respect, of honor is so low that any man who knows his trade, does not fear ghosts, has read fifty good books, and practices the common decencies stands out as brilliantly as a wart on a bald head, and is thrown willy-nilly into a meager and exclusive aristocracy. And here, more than anywhere else that I know of or have heard of, the daily panorama of human existence, of private and communal folly - the unending procession of governmental extortions and chicaneries, of commercial brigandages and throat-slittings, of theological buffooneries, of aesthetic ribaldries, of legal swindles and harlotries, of miscellaneous rogueries, villainies, imbecilities, grotesqueries, and extravagances - is so inordinately gross and preposterous, so perfectly brought up to the highest conceivable amperage, so steadily enriched with an almost fabulous daring and originality, that only the man who was born with a petrified diaphragm can fail to laugh himself to sleep every night, and to awake every morning with all the eager, unflagging expectation of a Sunday-school superintendent touring the Paris peep-shows.

Have a nice day.