The late H.L. Mencken has always been among my favorite misanthropes. Like all satirists, he took a dim view of human nature. One of my favorite Mencken epigrams seems particularly apt in the wake of the recent presidential election.
“Democracy,” Mencken wrote, “is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.”
As, indeed, the American electorate is about to get what the majority thinks it wanted.
“As democracy is perfected,” Mencken wrote on another occasion, “the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. 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.”
Dudes, we’re there. Be it recorded that during one of his interminable campaign pep rallies less than a week before the election, President-elect Donald J. Trump mimed masturbating and performing fellatio upon a handheld microphone he’d complained about. If he were a high school civics teacher — not that he’s remotely qualified — he’d have been arrested, lost his job and possibly ended up in prison.
But no, Fox News failed to notice the event, so for all practical purposes in “red” America, it never happened. Like most of the rest of the national media, Fox is treating Trump like a conquering hero, breathlessly chronicling the parade of sad sacks and sycophants passing through Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate like royal courtiers. My personal favorite so far is the elevation of South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem to secretary of Homeland Security.
Noem’s political career was widely assumed to be over after the revelation than she’d shot and killed her own puppy for the crime of performing badly on a pheasant hunting trip. But she attached herself to candidate Trump like a (pardon me) tick to a dog’s ear, so he’s put her in charge of safeguarding the nation. Her qualifications for this lofty position are that she’s handy with a shotgun. The president-elect has no use for dogs.
With 20-20 hindsight, it’s remarkable that Democratic nominee Kamala Harris did as well as she did. I’d convinced myself that American women would turn out in droves to prevent an adjudicated p***y-grabber, fraudster and felon like Trump from returning to power. (Never mind the New York “hush money” case. Can anybody doubt he’d have been convicted for inciting the Jan. 6 insurrection? Is there an innocent explanation for those boxes of classified national security secrets stored in Mar-a-Lago bathrooms? The fella’s a one-man crime wave.)
Soviet-level disinformation
Instead, millions stayed home mostly because they were fed up with Democrats and seemingly believed a great deal of what they saw on Fox, Newsmax and the other billionaire-funded propaganda outlets. Democrats and other reality-based citizens are going to have to find a way to deal with what’s become Soviet-level disinformation broadcast across America 24/7.
Ignoring it ain’t working.
In the wake of the electoral disaster, I have come to agree with Isaac Chotiner in The New Yorker: “Among Democrats, the blame for Trump’s victory overwhelmingly lies with one person: Joe Biden.” As a personal matter, I was prevented from seeing things clearly for the longest time due to the president’s resemblance to my late father, an Irishman from the northeast who also used the word “malarkey” as a polite synonym for “bullshit.”
Never mind the Biden administration’s incomprehensible failure to deal adequately with the growing disaster at the Mexican border. I put it down to Irish Catholic sympathy for immigrants and underdogs.
But there can be no excuse for Biden’s refusal to honor his own promise to be a one-term, transitional president. By early 2024, he was simply too old to think about a second term — not the enfeebled party Trump made him out to be, but no longer vigorous and articulate enough to campaign for the office. Biden’s closest associates have much to answer for.
Postponing his inevitable resignation as a candidate until it was too late for the Democratic nominee to be anybody other than Harris left the party and its standard-bearer in a bad spot. Her inability to tell the women on “The View” anything she’d do differently than Biden didn’t help. She’d also made some foolish commitments during her failed 2020 presidential candidacy that gave many voters heartburn. Otherwise, Harris ran a terrific campaign, and almost pulled it off.
But public funding of gender-affirming surgery for convicted felons? I’m sorry. That’s crazy and was never anything else. Crazy on the merits, and a sure loser politically. One of Trump’s most effective TV ads showed Harris making that pledge and ended with the punchline “Kamala is for they/them; President Trump is for you.”
Well, if you believe that last bit, there’s nothing you won’t believe. President Trump is for President Trump.
Period. The end.
Gene Lyons is a National Magazine Award winner and co-author of “The Hunting of the President”
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