I believe that all government is evil, and that trying to improve it is largely a waste of time.

[Henry Louis Mencken, circa 1920]

As a few of you might know (and even fewer would actually care), I have been blogging now for almost precisely 18 months. According to my host site, the following statistics are available to me, to wit:

You have a total of 150 entries with a total word count of 264,777 words.

Entry Frequency

Entries per day: 0.29
Entries per week: 2.03

Since, after over a quarter-million words, it seems altogether fitting and proper to reflect back on writing as a hobby, in general, and what I have learned from the experience, in general. I do this, partially, because suitable targets for my distemper are, mysteriously, running low. I remain hopeful, however, that once the rushing river of merriment that will flow like honey from the political conventions is in full force, this temporary dearth of windmills will be quickly remedied. Also, I elected to write on this subject because I want to propose that everyone take up writing a web log for the simple fact that it is cathartic, therapeutic and the best damned sedative available without a prescription.

There are lots of ways to make your feelings, your beliefs, your personal philosophy - in brief, your quirks - known to the world, assuming, of course, these are things you actually want to share with strangers. Since I have never had any reservation about letting my freak flag fly, I find the act of belching out words and trying to put them in some sort of order that might make sense, a thoroughly enjoyable pastime. No block of time in my schedule flies faster than the hour or two I spend at my keyboard pointing out (to all who might read) that the world is obviously going to hell in a hand basket, the speed of flight is accelerating and we are all likely to plummet to the depths of Hades in the very near future. Writing a BLOG allows the author to reminisce, reflect, analyze, prophesies, dissect and, when all else fails, simply rage against the machine. It’s beauty is that all this may be done with absolutely no repercussions, at least, as long as you don’t make overt threats to the health and welfare of anyone who might be under the protection of law enforcement, the Secret Service or claims a family members with a history of violence. It is both cathartic and calming, empowering and engrossing, educational and often hysterically comical, especially if you are already a few slices short of a full loaf, like me.

From a more practical point of view, while churning our 3-4 thousand words a week for a year and half, I am lately convinced that - wonder of wonders! - I have been improving, at least to my eye, as a writer. If practice doesn’t actually make "perfect", it does lend to developing a sort of skill, to wit, a feeling for what might make sense and what is pure balderdash. When I began this project, I was - even to myself - more than a little boring. My prose was stilted, frequently pompous and downright "preachy". To tell you the truth, even I didn’t particularly like reading my earliest essays. In my defense, I point out that when anyone begins such an exercise, even the humblest of men are prone to assume a posture of inflated sense of self-importance, to wit: "What I am saying is not only the truth but it is also immensely important." With that grave notion in mind, I wrote long and tediously about how historical trends relate to current times with all the humor of a mortician, a county judge or a Russian diplomat. Convinced, as I was, that the critical nature of my unique, enlightened and Divinely-inspired analysis required concise writing and exact wording, I gave no thought to levity and, certainly, none to sarcasm. Lacking either of these grossly underrated qualities, my essays had all the charm of the Congressional Record or a coroner’s inquest.

Then, about 6 months ago, I had an epiphany. Actually, it wasn’t so much a lightening bolt of insight as it was the serendipitous exposure to one of the greatest essayists in American literature. No, it wasn’t Mark Twain (though he was a force of nature). It wasn’t Poe or Emerson or Walter Lippman or, really, anyone I had ever even heard of before. For some reason - and for the life of me, I can’t remember the how or why - I picked up an autobiography of Henry Louis Mencken. Reading the hilarious, irreverent and painfully truthful social commentary of my new best friend, Henry, adsorbing (via osmosis, I presume) his colloquial greatness, my mediocrity was, first, diluted and, finally, wholly transformed. Again, at least in my eyes, the process changed (for the better) how I wrote and, in many ways, it changed the way I looked at the world.

Allowing for the fact that the focus of his cultural tirades have, for the most part, long passed (Prohibition was one of the windmills he charged against with stallion and lance), his style of writing, nevertheless, was extraordinary. He took on the universal truths that all "right-thinking" Americans held tightly to their breasts and, summarily and with an almost pathological glee, sent them to the trash heap. The very glue that held the Great Mob together - the rightness of Protestantism, the greatness of democracy, the superiority of America over all the other nations of the world - were all fair game to Mencken’s lance. His genius was to take the universal "truths" of American thought and to expose the silliness and haughtiness that lie at their roots. In a time when the citizenry began to see itself as special among the world’s "inferior" societies, he - laughing at the top of his lungs - kicked the supports from these idiocies and exposed the pomposity of such thinking. He would call a spade a spade (and a heart a heart and a diamond a diamond) and never give it a second thought. And, all the while, he was eagerly read my millions of his countrymen: those who despised him (and there were many) as well as those who laughed with him at the arrogance all around them. He was subject to censor during Woodrow Wilson’s overt (and illegal) infringements on the First Amendment under the pretense of World War I security and was appalled at the "Palmer Raids" which destroyed any semblance of freedom of speech. But, after that foolishness ended, he emerged, renewed and invigorated and was even more critical of his country’s "lust for liberty".

In my thinking, this is the mark of a true patriot, which is not to say a literary genius. In brief, it is to take on the most sacred cows of one’s culture and strip them - hide, muscles and bone - for all to see. To what end? To prove that "American exceptionalism", "Manifest Destiny" and the other great myths of our history are relevant to contemporary society only if we rededicate ourselves to these principles each generation. Mencken recognized and appreciated our nation’s historic greatness but saw it being replaced by complacency, pridefulness and self-satisfaction. And he demanded more from his nation and his fellow citizens. If there is one sentence that revealed his true philosophy it was this: I believe in only one thing: liberty; but I do not believe in liberty enough to want to force it upon anyone. If those are not the words of a libertarian, there is no such quote.

As a true red-white-and blue patriot, he knew of The Republic’s faults, her transgressions, her militancy and her blatant hypocrisy. Like Socrates, who attempted to better Athens with the truth, Mencken wanted to improve the lot of his nation by pulling down all the bunting, frills and buncombe and by pointing a beefy finger at what cried out for remedy. If there was one man who dared stand before the flag-waving clod-hoppers and rabble-rousing demigods and admit that the emperor has no clothes, it was Mencken.

Far from an anarchist, he wanted to keep what was good from the Old Republic (and he believed there was much that deserved to be saved) and summarily discard the hokum, political power grabs and the unconstitutional governmental intrusion into the lives, the homes and the businesses and the average citizen. He was the avowed enemy of creeping federal power that had slithered into the lives of the voters, pandered by the crooks, incompetents and idiots in the Congress. And he as never unclear about where he stood: He was for personal liberty to the maximum; he was against government, always. [See quote that heads this essay]

While I admit the vanity of it and, ultimately, the futility of the effort, it is to this that I aspire. I am, at least in one aspect, perfectly suited for the task: To wit, I do not profit one penny from my compositions. Those who write for their daily bread are bound and, often enough, gagged. Since others pay their rent, buy their groceries and distribute their prose, these unfortunate souls cannot fully vent their spleens for even if they were to be true to their convictions, it would cause them to suddenly be without their daily bread, a place to sleep or a vehicle for their writing. They are prohibited from slinging fully-heaped up mud pies and, therefore, must limit themselves to the occasional spit ball lest they annoy the wrong people. If they piss off the folks who sign the paychecks (or the folks who buy advertising to enable the people to write the paychecks), they most assuredly will find themselves, abruptly, writing the society column for the Waukegan Weekly Gazette, surely a fate only slightly less cruel than trying to write a speech that President Bush could deliver without tripping over those pesky two-syllable words.

So, the debt I owe to H.L. Mencken is great. He has proven to me that the truth - no matter how grating or downright painful it may be - will always find a readership. Further, he taught me that the artificial and arbitrary "rules" of the great scourge of social criticism, namely, "political correctness", should be ignored. Truth is truth. It cannot be disguised nor should it be obfuscated just to fit someone else’s ideas of propriety and tactfulness. Write what is true, offend what deserves offense and let the chips fall where they may. That was Mencken. I lack his skill, his humor, his insights and his indusrty. However, thanks to his example, I do not lack his courage of conviction.

By the way, Mencken estimated that he had written 3 million words of commentary during his lifetime. I surely have a long way to go before I rest.