Is H. L. Mencken Watching Me Undress?
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong
I.
Love is like war: easy to begin but very hard to stop
I read that quote recently and thought about the war in Afghanistan. It has persisted for more than a generation and the fight becomes increasingly against young men who were not even born on 9-11, people whose lives have only known war. In Afghanistan, warlords pretend to be bureaucrats, balanced by the reverse in the U.S. In the U.S., the war has developed all the signs of a bureaucratic nightmare - no one championing it, no one thinking it's the right path, and no one able to stop it. I wonder what we will learn from it, or perhaps relearn (perhaps "bureaucrat" isn't a synonym for "warlord"?).
But it's an old quote, and I knew it was not about Afghanistan. Which only makes things worse. Have we not learned the lessons from Vietnam? It's been nearly 50 years, and again we're at war in a distant land with people we don't understand and don't understand us. People are fighting - dying - for a reason, although we've mostly forgotten the reason, if we ever knew it.
The quote, however, is not about the Vietnam War. That quote is by H.L. Mencken, in his 1920 play "Heliogabalus. A Buffoonery in Three Acts". 100 years ago we were warned against endless wars, just as we are on the cusp of surpassing our record for the longest war.
The play, as one might guess from the name, isn't present day. The line is spoken by Heliogabalus (also known as Elagabalus), emperor of Rome from 218 to 222 AD, remarking on the endless nature of war.
II.
There's another quote I like that goes like this:
There is always a well-known solution to every human problem—neat, plausible, and wrong
This has morphed over time (as quotes do) to:
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.
What a good quote for the age of social media. What a good "Internet age" quote. But it's not about Facebook. It's not even about the Internet. It was, again, written by H. L. Mencken in Prejudices: Second Series, Volume 2, published in 1920.
The insight behind these quotes, recorded from a time long ago, is eerie. Partially, it's like he's watching the present moment, like he can peer into society today and know what we're thinking. But I think they're disquieting because it makes me wonder, are we learning anything? Or does the next century hold even longer wars? Even dumber solutions?
III.
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, most of them imaginary.
In Defense of Women, 1918
I don't think a thing has changed here. I ran into this quote after I'd written something similar, the only difference being I used the term "boogeymen".
IV.
I'll leave you with one more from 100 years ago to this very day:
As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. 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 moron.
H. L. Mencken, Baltimore Evening Sun, 26 July 1920