From H.L. Mencken (it’s the legend on Corrente’s blog):
He likes money and knows how to amass property, but his cultural development is but little above that of the domestic animals. He is intensely and cocksurely moral, but his morality and his self-interest are crudely identical…He is a violent nationalist and patriot, but he admires rogues in office and always beats the tax-collector if he can. He has immovable opinions about all the great affairs of state, but nine-tenths of them are sheer imbecilities. He is violently jealous of what he conceives to be his rights, but brutally disregardful of the other fellow’s…This man, whether city or country bred, is the normal Americano – the 100 percent…He exists in all countries, but here alone he rules.
Truer now than ever before.
1
By C. Maoxian
It’s Mencken with an ‘e’.
November 7, 2004 @ 2:01 am | Comment
2
By richard
Typo; corrected. Thx.
November 7, 2004 @ 8:39 am | Comment
3
By A Fateful Reader
My god, get over it. You just keep going on and on –like the re-election of Bush is the death knell for the country and its people. Ready to castigate Americans for re-electing Bush and not electing Kerry. Life goes on my friend, and your writing can too. Do you suppose you’re looking at this in a vacuum? It’s your blog and I’m sure you’re welcome to keep licking this issue, but this is one reader that is increasingly becoming very weary of the whole Bush-Americans-sour mash. Those of us still in China get enough of this crap on a daily basis. Yes, I suppose I could read other blogs, but I have generally valued your writing and insight, but lately, it’s been very off balance. Please measure this comment carefully; Bush isn’t the grand evil master of the universe and the American people aren’t the hatemongers you suppose they are for re-electing him. I voted for Kerry, but I don’t see Bush’s re-election as the end….
November 7, 2004 @ 5:22 pm | Comment
4
By richard
Point taken.
As always, I cover the news and the pundits, and the election still is a topic of intense, even overriding interest among them. It’ll taper off. But please don’t expect me to go easier on shrub. I will if he gives me cause, but that’s a huge if.
November 7, 2004 @ 5:35 pm | Comment