Based off of an observation I had in a GD thread.
Obviously I would vote for the less bigoted, more liberal candidate-namely Huey Long.
Why not Joe Louis vs. Eddie Cantor? Or Groucho Marx vs.Dashiell Hammett?
No less plausible than your matchup.
But if that WERE the choice, I’d vote third party, as I did 2016.
I mean, at least Huey Long was an actual politician, I guess. H L Mencken never ran for office or wanted to run for office. Also, they were both Democrats, so that would have been confusing.
I would definitely vote for Huey Duck over Foghorn Leghorn. We need a change, someone young, with fresh ideas. Not another worn-out career politician from the same old good ol’ boy network that got us into this mess.
Of course Mencken. Though I don’t believe he would stoop so low as to be considered for such an igmoninious position. It would be worth the vote to see the wowzers, tax collectors, and other assorted religious fanatics flip their lid.
Also anybody who thinks Jews and blacks are human beings:
I’m astonished that this thread was a setup to contrast a racist radical individualist with a fascist populist in a damaging light. That must mean that all of Mencken’s inclinations were evil and racist. As I said, it would be the wowsers that Mencken would rile up, and that tradition continues to this day.
BTW, the first quote reads as if Mencken is responding to some variation of the progressive idea of eugenics. Do we really want to go there? This was an era of disgusting ideas on race, and I’d take Mencken’s personal prejudices over the horrific progressive program.
Mencken all the way.
Yes, he held opinions about race that were common in his day and are abhorrent now. I don’t get worked-up about Alexander selling the population of Thebes into slavery either.
Yes it was a test of sort although the contrast is between a racist reactionary advocate of aristocratic government and a reformist populist with mildly authoritarian tendencies because he was operating in a political system where the other side used much more extreme violence to uphold a system based on white supremacy and oligarchic rule. Mencken may have riled up a lot of people but Long did the same with reactionaries and effete bourgeois liberals who wring their hands about tone rather then substance. Given the poll numbers despite the Dope’s supposed liberal orientation, I suspect my conclusions are justified.
Sure, but one of the two people was much less racist and it ain’t Mencken. Only one person actively helped black Americans.
Out of 11 votes? In a poll with zero shades of meaning? Yeah, umm…OK…
I quite like them both.
Also Mencken was known for being somewhat satirical. And he even married an Alabamian.
You call Long’s program, which included nationalization of banks, “reformist”.
We can play with labels all day long. The major confusion here is how you label Mencken an advocate for aristocratic government. Wrong. He was an advocate of no government or very close to no government. This would have obliterated the government’s connected aristocracy in favor of one based on voluntary exchange.
He was living in occupied territory in the 1870s? I thought we were talking about his ideas in post-Reconstruction America. The fact that you gloss over a half-century of labor violence is telling.
Long was one crackpot among many during the era. His policies would have resulted in the destruction of American capitalism. You have some adjustment to do if you still think “bourgeois” is a bad thing. Wholesale liberalization of economic activity since WWII has lifted billions out of poverty. Long wanted to crack the whip on washing machine manufacturers. They guy was a buffoon.
The fact is, the masses in the 1930s were much more sophisticated in their economic knowledge than they are today. They rejected the interventionist Hoover by electing a guy who campaigned in favor of small government.
What conclusions?
Black Americans would have retrogressed under Long’s command economy along with everyone else.