Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public

[moaz]

Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public - H. L. Mencken

Just saying after watching our neighbors electing some really questionable candidates (from both parties, but to be honest more from the reps).

But we are going there too; D. Ford got 33% votes in Toronto .

[Dresta]

Mencken would likely have felt that applicable to the masses everywhere, so not simply an American thing. He did let loose on Americans in particular, but mainly because other European countries like the UK still maintained a good deal of their aristocratic heritage. Now Europe is fully democratised and also somewhat Americanised, i don't think he'd view them much differently tbh. Politics is the same stagnating piece of shit in more or less every Western nation.

'Democracy, obliterating the old aristocracy, has left only a vacuum in its place; in a century and a half it has failed to either lift up the mob to intellectual autonomy and dignity or to purge the plutocracy of its inherent stupidity and swinishness.’

'‘To-day there is no longer any question of statesmanship, in any real sense, in our politics. The only way to success in American public life lies in flattering and kowtowing to the mob.'

'‘for if experience teaches us anything at all it teaches us this: that a good politician, under democracy, is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar. His very existence, indeed, is a standing subversion of the public good in every rational sense. He is not one who serves the common weal; he is simply one who preys upon the common-wealth. It is in the interest of all the rest of us to hold down his powers to an irreducible minimum, and to reduce his compensation to nothing; it is to his interest to augment his powers at all hazards, and to make his compensation all the traffic will bear. To argue that these aims are identical is to argue palpable nonsense. The politician, at his ideal best, never even remotely approximated in practice, is a necessary evil; at his worst he is an almost intolerable nuisance.’

Still rings true

His Notes on Democracy is the funniest political document i've ever read (quotes are from his Prejudices series though).

[GimmeThat]

a good politician under democracy, is the only person you want to talk politics to.