The Time Capsule: Brilliant minds of the past still relevant

“In every non-believer’s heart there is the uneasy feeling that, after all, he may awaken after death and find himself immortal. This is his punishment for his unbelief. This is the agnostic’s Hell.”

H.L. Menken (1880-1956) was a non-believer, writing those lines while contemplating the possibility that he was wrong. His sentiment in this regard is a bit of a mind-twister.  If he was right and there is no hereafter then he’d have no way of knowing. If, on the other hand, he was wrong he’d have now spent more than 50 years roasting in Hell, saying he was right with regard to his fate if he was wrong.    

Agree with him or not, he was undeniably a brilliant man with a perceptive—if unconventional—view of human nature, politics and social structures. He remains relevant half a century after his death; at least to those of us who enjoy reading his work.   

Menken would probably be considered racist today, although in his writing he was strongly against bigotry. A newspaperman, essayist and writer of numerous books, he was also critical of populism, fundamental Christianity, an overly powerful federal government, and chiropractic medicine. 

His positions on various issues ignored political correctness. He could be painfully blunt. He felt our electoral process and political system had evolved into “the worship of jackals by jackasses.”  He carried this thought further when he wrote the following about the United States Presidency:

“In small areas, before small electorates, a first-rate man occasionally fights his way through, carrying the mob with him by force of his personality. But when the field is nationwide, and the fight must be waged chiefly at second and third hand, and the force of personality cannot make itself readily felt, then all the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre.  The Presidency tends, year by year, to go to such men ...  We move toward a lofty ideal.  On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright ...”

I’ll not use the word. Look it up.  I suspect, though, that if Menken lived today the NSA and IRS would have him for lunch. 

He defined Puritanism as being the fear that someone, somewhere, might be having a good time. He believed government programs prolonged the Great Depression rather than shortened it, and those who claimed otherwise were spreading leftist propaganda.  He insisted the “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” was the greatest work in American literature, dismissing accusations that the book was racist. 

Perhaps his best-known quote is this:

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

I don’t know which imaginary hobgoblins Menken had in mind at the time, but I wish he were around to share his thoughts on a government shutdown and global warming. 

Roy Marshall is a local historian and columnist for the Red Oak Express. He can be contacted at news@redoakexpress.com.