Mencken

[morality_play]

"When a candidate for public office faces the voters he does not face men of sense; he faces a mob of men whose chief distinguishing mark is the fact that they are quite incapable of weighing ideas, or even of comprehending any save the most elemental, men whose whole thinking is done in terms of emotion, and whose dominant emotion is dread of what

Comments

[fallen_scholar]

To quote Jefferson, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just. It's easy to blame Diebolt, the Electoral College or common apathy, much more difficult to accept that the democratic process is working ever better, selecting even more percisely the individual who best represents the collective will of the nation. I've certainly made that argument before.

Then again, the exact form of Mencken's rhetoric is found in all manner of critics of Democracy from the Greeks onward, and while indisputibly attractive tends to ultimately derive from aristocratic pretension.

[morality_play]

"and while indisputibly attractive tends to ultimately derive from aristocratic pretension