Commenter Otsuka Duojinshi highlights another great H. L. Mencken quote, this time on the topic of the romantic isolation of the wives wedded to boring beta male providers.
HLM identified a wife’s contempt for the beta/omega precisely:
A woman, if she hates her husband (and many of them do), can make life so sour and obnoxious to him that even death upon the gallows seems sweet by comparison. This hatred, of course, is often, and perhaps almost invariably, quite justified.
To be the wife of an ordinary man, indeed, is an experience that must be very hard to bear. The hollowness and vanity of the fellow, his petty meanness and stupidity, his puling sentimentality and credulity, his bombastic air of a cock on a dunghill, his anaesthesia to all whispers and summonings of the spirit, above all, his loathsome clumsiness in amour—all these things must revolt any woman above the lowest.
HLM, if he were alive today, would wholly cosign Game as a legitimate pursuit for men, because he would understand that improving one’s sexual charisma does a marriage good. Here’s the Wiki on HLM. A lot of notable quotables by the great man!
[…] The Great Men On Bored Wives […]
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[…] The Great Men On Bored Wives […]
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‘The hollowness and vanity of the fellow, his petty meanness and stupidity, his puling sentimentality and credulity, his bombastic air of a cock on a dunghill, his anaesthesia to all whispers and summonings of the spirit, above all, his loathsome clumsiness in amour—all these things must revolt any woman above the lowest.’
I see a man who has these characteristics…and I see a man who doesn’t place God at the center of his life.
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Indeed.
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The hollowness and vanity of the fellow (fuzzy hats, shirts with saying on them)
[CH: chicks dig narcissistic men.]
his petty meanness and stupidity (negs)
[negs are neither mean nor evidence of stupidity.]
his bombastic air of a cock on a dunghill (let me tell you about this chick I laid after one date)
[see above.]
his anesthesia to all whispers and summonings of the spirit (believe in game, bio-mechanics, and Science!!!)
[at least game is an ethos, dude!]
his loathsome clumsiness in amour (let’s see a cad sacrifice or fight when the heat’s turned up)
[he’s a lover not a fighter.]
all these things must revolt any woman above the lowest. (sluts, feminists, and gals with daddy issues…LOVE it)
[nice well-bred girls are often the hardest to fall for charming players. because they otherwise experience so little of it in their lives.]
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In the never ending pursuit to please what women want…we forget what is important to men. That being the spiritual side.
Temporal is relative truth…spiritual is absolute truth.
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his loathsome clumsiness in amour (let’s see a cad sacrifice or fight when the heat’s turned up)
Why would the man who enjoys seducing women be less likely to fight than, say, the man who goes straight home to watch TV, or the man who plays soccer twice a week, or whatever?
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‘Why would the man who enjoys seducing women be less likely to fight than, say, the man who goes straight home to watch TV, or the man who plays soccer twice a week, or whatever?’
Because he’s pursuing his own pleasure instead of sacrificing. Between those three guys the soccer player would probably be the one I’d want in a fight.
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Earl,
If the premises upon which Heartiste relies are true, then the CH Worldview™ makes perfect sense and he’s advocating an eminently rational approach to life. Eat, drink, & be merry … for tomorrow we die.
I’m perfectly willing to concede that Heartistian Poolside-ism is the way to go, if God doesn’t exist & death is the ultimate end. What I’d like to see is a Heartiste riff on the implications of his teachings if Christianity is true. Christianized game blogs abound, so I’m not interested in an adaptation of CH’s strategy to a new worldview. What I want to see is his prediction of what happens when an individual adopts his strategy, & what happens when a society adopts it, given that the Christian worldview is the accurate one.
And by “Christianity” I mean the essential version that the vast majority of denominations agrees on, stripped of sectarian squabbles over baptism methods, the number of sacraments, the nature of The Lord’s Supper, and such. I’m referring to what C.S. Lewis called “Mere Christianity.”
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‘What I want to see is his prediction of what happens when an individual adopts his strategy, & what happens when a society adopts it, given that the Christian worldview is the accurate one.’
Like predicting hedonism?
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“I see a man who has these characteristics…and I see a man who doesn’t place God at the center of his life.” The usual Xtian arrogance is what makes churchgoers such an insufferable bunch. Always pretending that their religion is where good values come from, so everyone outside it doesn’t follow those values. Despite their religion never encompassing more than a minority of the people in the world, being proven wrong over and over again (the world is not flat and not propped up by pillars), and existing for only a short time of the world’s existence. (But maybe the universe is only six thousand years old ’cause your priests say so.) Not surprising though to see that kind of arrogance from a Semitic religion that only has a connection to Europe to the extent that Marxism does: as a parasite, lying and flattering and threatening, doing whatever is necessary to survive and feed off European people’s work while planning to drown them with mass immigration. We have survived despite churches, not because of them. We have survived to the extent our ancestors ignored the Xtian amateur “morality”.
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So God isn’t at the center of your life?
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“So God isn’t at the center of your life?” Go play with George Bush, you can exchange stories about what your little fantasy creature tells you that you have to do. In Bushie’s case the order was to invade Iraq using the Israeli lobbyist’s lies as a pretext. Think he was honest about “god told me so”? Ah, the lovely “men of god”. Imported any immigrants lately? That’s the main effort of churches these days, to support mass immigration. But of course, you’re morally superior I’m sure. ‘Cause you have decided that masturbating at the thought of how religious you are makes you morally superior. Religionuts love praising themselves for the mere act of being a fanatic. It’s easier than making any actual effort.
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So what efforts have you done?
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A lot more than you, arrogant religionut. But why should I tell you about that, which is none of your business? Now go brag some more about how only those in your sect are moral. In reality Christian shitheads are the first to betray a nationalist organization and run back to their little churches, declaring loudly how racism is evil and all are Yahweh’s little children. Religious people are always a liability since they are nutcases who believe in fantasies instead of facts. You theorize, I don’t need to. This is common knowledge among those who do actual political work opposing the mass immigration that churches and Marxists push for.
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Arbiter,
The christinsane think you’re of the devil. When yahweh’s the subject, more than a word or two in response is wasted.
“So God isn’t at the center of your life?”
-No
“So what efforts have you done?”
-Nunyabidness.
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Good retort, Glen.
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What have you done, Earl? (Not attacking you–asking.) I have begun challenging the Jews in my real life on stupid ideas like feminism. It is funny to watch them pretend to consider my views honestly. I do not tell them I know their game or that feminism was created by ugly jewish women to attack the white family and be a tool of communism.
Just point out obvious flaws in feminist thought. Do you fight for truth with the real people you meet in the real world?
Do you point out at your church service the hypocrisy concerning the fact that the pretty girls there have had 6 sex partners already by age 24, and the fact that the Bible actually says women should not speak in church or be seen in public without a veil and without being accompanied by their husband or father, as is clearly illustrated in the Gospels with a few of the scenes in which Jesus forgives women for doing something such as talking to a strange man alone in public (which means she was a prostitute, or she would not do that, as Jesus points out).
LOL the entire point of the Jesus/Virgin Mary story is that… ooops, Mary can’t be pregnant if she’s not yet married. The Gospels themselves clearly reveal that the people asked Jesus, after he decided to start a cult at about age 27, “are you not Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph?”
Isn’t this the carpenter? Isn’t this Mary’s son and the brother of James, Joseph,[a] Judas and Simon? Aren’t his sisters here with us?” And they took offense at him.
4 Jesus said to them, “A prophet is not without honor except in his own town, among his relatives and in his own home.” 5 He could not do any miracles there, except lay his hands on a few sick people and heal them. 6 He was amazed at their lack of faith.
46 While Jesus was still talking to the crowd, his mother and brothers stood outside, wanting to speak to him. 47 Someone told him, “Your mother and brothers are standing outside, wanting to speak to you.”
48 He replied to him, “Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?” 49 Pointing to his disciples, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers. 50 For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.”
Then Jesus entered a house, and again a crowd gathered, so that he and his disciples were not even able to eat. 21 When his family[b] heard about this, they went to take charge of him, for they said, “He is out of his mind.”
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You fellows worship whatever gods, man-made -isms, or poonannery you think is right…
… as for me and my house, we will serve Jehovah.
The irony is, y’all would probably find me a hale fellow, well-met, and a useful kamerad for Der Tag…
… I’m not quite so particular ’bout the company I keep, and ah goes where the sinners be. 😉
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Arbiter, you make a good point. The religion of Christianity has behaved poorly in recent years, possibly since its inception. But remember, this is a religion (formalities, customs, etc) constructed by men, based on the wisdom of an enlightened being. Jesus didn’t invent the religion that followed. The man-made invention did, however, allow the words of a God to reach the common folk. Yes, the church used this to gain power, but with its dissemination, it also brought about unity and cohesiveness to Euro society.
Remember too that what we’re left with is nothing more than an appropriation of the Christianity of the Roman era. The Muslims laid to waste the great classical greek/roman/christian traditions (all their knowledge, architecture, etc) once they started to spread Islam by the sword around 700 AD. As a result, Europe was plunged into the dark ages, and had little to go on. So we don’t know how ideas like flat earth, and 6000 years crept into the scheme of things. We also don’t know what was hidden from the public by the Vatican to keep the people in servitude.
However, even with this ‘bloody stump’ of a religion, Europe managed to flourish yet again in the Rennaissance and after. There’s no doubting that classical traditions and philosophies had a major impact on Europe then.
Contrast this to the behaviour of Muslims since their religion came into being, and it’s pretty clear whose ideologies are superior. You’ll argue DNA, but nature vs nurture is at the root of it. Communism, obviously, is also a disaster.
My point, as a non-Christian, is that we were lucky to have a great God visit our society. Only a handful, that we know about, throughout the world have come to offer salvation to humans. Great societies flourished in their wake (Europe, China, Greece [the ancient Greeks worshipped Buddhas], Egypt, Persia [Zorastrianism], to name but a few). All religions fall into decay however, and this is where we’re at now. The enlightened being predicted to appear during this cycle of civilization is Maitreya.
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‘Do you fight for truth with the real people you meet in the real world? ‘
When it comes up, yes. But I’ve learned over the years when it comes to fighting with the truth…you don’t start fights, you finish them.
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‘as is clearly illustrated in the Gospels with a few of the scenes in which Jesus forgives women for doing something such as talking to a strange man alone in public (which means she was a prostitute, or she would not do that, as Jesus points out).’
You do realize Jesus initiated that conversation. And it was to point out what Jesus was all about…forgiveness of sins.
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I agree with earl on the fighter and spiritual parts. I’ll own up to the dark underbelly of my desires, but I have yet to be convinced I could be attracted to a man who is lazy and spiritually apathetic. To me, that’s weakness
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Paging Matt King….paging Matt King…
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Dear dear Amy. You just want to be led. Where is of no consequence whether Jerusalem or Jonestown.
Dynamic, passionate and authentic matter. Morality does not.
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I’m thinking King’s intelligence finally prompted him to finally read the Good Book and parse out the logical incongruence within. (Not knocking it as a society-builder but as an explanative tome, of course).
Then again he is probably proselytizing fanatically somewhere in the third world. Or dead.
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I’ve observed that women will fight tooth and claw to get what the want at the cost of what they need.
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Of course, and this explains why women-led society is doomed to leftist policies that are bad, in the long run, for civilization. No-fault divorce of good fathers based on “feelings” and post-birth depression. Single moms. Welfare supporting 80 IQ black women having 6 future thugs, while slightly dorky white men cannot find a white women to give them a baby (or stay married to them very long afterwards). Women need to be led or forced into what they need, on a societywide basis. For example, fathers used to force or encourage their daughters to marry boring, stable betas whom the father (but not the daughter) knows will be a good provider. In the absence of this constraint, we know women chase future-abuser bad boys. Society–through law and mores–must actively discourage divorce when the (slightly boring but providing) father is a good dad and a good enough husband; instead we have women “liberated” to make their feelings ruin lives, and what do we have? Runaway no-fault divorce and half of all children growing up without a father.
Go on a dating website, if you are bored or want entertainment, and find single moms. There are thousands of brand new single moms with BABIES aged 10 to 15 months! Many, many women suffer from depression following child birth. It’s a major problem. But our society actively encourages women to seek divorce based only on their own (hormonally out of whack) feelings, to the detriment of their children. Who the fuck would be on a dating site looking for a new man with a 10 month baby, after divorcing the father against his will, when the father is NOT violent? Answer: a creature who needs to be controlled by society. These women leave the fathers, with a 10 month baby, literally based on “normal” little disagreements that–if anyone is to blame–are caused by the woman nagging and generally being unhappy for no truly good reason (rational male has a good article today on generally this topic) and postpartum depression. I am telling you that the dating sites right now are littered with women with little babies who just left the father based on “unhappiness” or a feeling that he did not treat her special enough, not a case of any domestic violence. I am quite confident that women were just as crazy and unhappy in the 1940s, but at that time society and law encouraged them to stay married.
Women have to be led and society’s laws and mores have to allow men to lead them. It was that way for 8,000 years of recorded history, until the 1970s–except when it wasn’t, which is when empires declined.
http://www.newworldeconomics.com/archives/2014/092814_files/TheFateofEmpiresbySirJohnGlubb.pdf
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Great insight
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Well said. Hats off.
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Definition of Husband: a size 16 neck in a size 15 1/2 collar.
Sent from: Eric Ruttencutter
>
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I think it is a great detriment to society and civilization that women cannot help but be attracted to alpha men. Clearly, the human species spent most of its history as being savage hunter-gatherers, and in that scenario being part of the rotating harem of an alpha man was a rational choice. However, we have moved beyond that stage of history yet most women are still genetically programmed to want the alpha man.
Maybe genetic engineering and eugenics could select for the few women who are actually happy to have a beta husband? Remove all welfare, remove no-fault divorce, make illegitimacy a civil offence punishable by a fine, make life really difficult for sluts and alpha men, create incentives for well behaved women and beta men to have more kids.
[CH: women’s love for jerkboy alphas isn’t all bad. the salvation of the white west may lie with the alphas.]
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White women’s love for jerkboy alphas, if allowed to happen for centuries on end, will make White populations behave like Black and Hispanic populations. White people are totally capable of behaving like Zimbabweans if they want to.
Also, Western Civilization stands out because of the betas, because of all the law abiding farmers and factory workers, because of all the Isaac Newtons. If you want White people to continue to live good lives, you want more Isaac Newtons and fewer Errol Flynns.
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“White women’s love for jerkboy alphas, if allowed to happen for centuries on end, will make White populations behave like Black and Hispanic populations”
Not quite. There’s a certain swagger in the white alphas step that other races don’t have. For instance, it only takes a small percentage of white alpha males to dominate an entire prison population. Ever heard of the Aryan Brotherhood?
The elite know this too, which is why they are so hell bent on getting rid of us.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQSF-Vxrs2s
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Ideally, you want men who are both.
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Alas, H.L. wasn’t good with the ladies, and became quite and permanently soured on life in general. He may have been looking for love when what he needed from CH was a lesson in pump and dump.
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He was brilliant at puncturing the pretensions of the sour, though. He wrote a great take-down of those who voted for a ban on alcohol, for example. Describing how preachers would go out to the countryside and hold fiery speeches about the fancy parties being held in the cities, successful men dancing with attractive young women, tuxedos and gowns and chandeliers and music followed by romantic pleasures. The town folk and farmers would take a look at their own fat wives and muddy surroundings and vote against alcohol, because they’d be damned if they’d let someone else have those great parties. Envy is one of the strongest forces in politics, as Mencken noted.
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But he did marry an English teacher eventually. It made headlines, apparently 😉
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What is that saying about him?
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Some sources describe it as a victory for love. They married, she died, he was heart-broken. Another source I came upon talked about how he was more in love with another woman but wouldn’t marry her for some reason (maybe her religion- I can’t remember). And that he knew about Sara’s illness and it may have been part of the reason he proposed. I choose to take it as confirmation that high intelligence people cannot be satisfied in a relationship unless it is with another intellectual. I think that smart people have it very hard in finding their soul’s mate.
I have been thinking about IQ a lot this past week and have been undecided in grieving or rejoicing over whether someone has a low IQ. On the one hand, they will never have the same kinds of thoughts or insights that a person with higher intelligence has, but what they gain is an easier ability to be and find happiness. Knowing that someone is less smart causes the higher intelligence person to feel protective of them.
I think of a young female student I taught who had an IEP. She was in ninth grade but could only read at a second grade level. She was exceptionally pretty and very sweet. She had wonderful manners and was a very talented dancer: not gross hip hop, but elegant ballet. I think this girl faced a lot of difficulty in school, but I am quite sure she will be a loved and adored wife and mother.
I have read and strongly agree that men want women who need them. Sara’s illness may have created the dependency that caused (forced?) her into the feminine role that draws on a man’s heart. It is a reminder to me that many of us are too strong, too independent, too smart for our own good. I see so much negativity, so much vulgarity, so much vanity in young women (behind what look like nice faces) that I am torn between wanting to teach and correct and thinking, oh well, let them eat bukkake. All the easier for my daughter to marry the best.
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The hollowness and vanity of the fellow, his petty meanness and stupidity, his puling sentimentality and credulity, his bombastic air of a cock on a dunghill, his anaesthesia to all whispers and summonings of the spirit
The one trait you’ll find among those with a low IQ is an inflated, bombastic self-esteem. As research shows, Blacks, the group with the lowest IQ, have the highest belief in what they can do, while high-IQ East Asians have the lowest belief in their accomplishment. For example, when asked if they think they could be computer engineers most Blacks answered yes despite their crappy grades. Whites and Asians had higher grades and were less sure in their ability to be computer engineers. Another example is regular churchgoers, who have a lower average IQ than other people (and are fatter), and who have an inflated belief in their moral superiority combined with an arrogant view of the morals of others. (Which is funny since they can never actually agree on what their bible morality says, so each sect has its own reasons for why it’s morally superior.)
When it’s said that a group performs poorly in life because “they have had their self-esteem damaged” it’s B.S. If anything people suffer from a too-high self-esteem which prevents them from improving themselves. Sometimes we see this in the manosphere too, in comments about how all you need to do is display an air of being great, and then women will believe you’re great. If that was true every ugly idiot bragging loudly at the pub would have women swarming around him, instead of being a social pariah. Like the salesman, you need a lot more than putting on an air – too many people do so, and people will soon see through it if that’s all you got.
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Another example is regular churchgoers, who have a lower average IQ than other people (and are fatter), and who have an inflated belief in their moral superiority combined with an arrogant view of the morals of others.
Not sure if you’re describing Southern Baptists or SJWs here.
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Its not the regular churchgoers who fit that stereotype. In the US Christians are above average in education, income, and in being entrepreneurs.
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I think he’s describing Black Southern Baptist church ladies.
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Everything this guy writes is in some know it all smarty pants tone. He sounds like a man that reads a lot of atheism plus.
From now on Arbiter, your name is Ralph.
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There’s more high IQ churchgoers than high IQ atheists. What the atheists don’t understand is even though their percentage of high IQ people is up, they’re dwarfed in number of believers. 50% x100 > 90% x 10
Voxday has a nice book you should read.
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And as atheist left-wing liberalism is very dysgenic IQ-wise, SJWs will get dumber and dumber as the decades go by. They simply aren’t producing dangerous intellectuals like Gramsci or the other Frankfurt School scum anymore.
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There is a difference between ego and self-esteem. Ego is false self; self-esteem is authentic self.
Lots of salespeople and entertainers, for example, have huge egos and low self-esteem.
The best people to hang out with are the opposite — no ego, but rock-solid self-esteem.
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Here is another insightful one:
“Misogynist: a man who hates women as much as women hate one another.”
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Bombastic air? That’s the only line that doesn’t seem to vibe. Can anyone explain?
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Yeah…no.
http://www.amazon.ca/gp/aw/d/B008DYOZ60/ref=redir_mdp_mobile/175-4974718-6038638?tag=catse-20
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[…] Source: Heartiste […]
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My favoriteline from the wikipedia article on Menken:
In 1931 the Arkansas legislature passed a motion to pray for Mencken’s soul after he had called the state the “apex of moronia”.[27]
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To be in love is merely to be in a state of perceptual anesthesia – to mistake an ordinary young woman for a goddess.
H. L. Mencken
The only really happy folk are married women and single men.
H. L. Mencken
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Bachelors know more about women than married men; if they didn’t they’d be married too.
H. L. Mencken
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Love is the delusion that one woman differs from another.
H. L. Mencken
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Fuck Mencken. Samuel Eliot Morison had him pegged:
“Beard probably contributed more than any other writer, except Henry L. Mencken, to the scornful attitude of intellectuals toward American institutions, that followed World War I.
…All these antiwar historians were sincere, and few of them were doctrinaire pacifists, as their actions in the last few years prove; nevertheless, their zeal against war did nothing to preserve peace. It only rendered the generation of youth which came to maturity around 1940 spiritually unprepared for the war they had to fight. One may share Beard’s detestation for war–most Americans do–but one must admit that few of the things Americans value most, such as independence, liberty, union, or westward expansion, could have been won or secured unless men had been willing to fight for them.”
Plus the whole willingness for unlimited ragging on the lowbies among his own people while enthusiastically calling for ALL THE JEWS just leaves the present reader cold:
“There is only one way to help the fugitives, and that is to find places for them in a country in which they can really live. Why shouldn’t the United States take in a couple hundred thousand of them, or even all of them?”
The great mass of leftist drones in America often organize around decadent/hypocritical reactionaries too cool for public conservatism who end up speaking the truth once and never acting on it to the benefit of the population that might actually defend it. And then, much like women project their annoyance with the alphas they lust after on the nearest beta, they reserve their harshest pent-up burns for those farthest away from their personal experience.
Fuck him, fuck Mark Twain, and fuck every so-called reactionary who can occasionally speak the truth in their young but never institutionalize, organize, or realize it in any common form. They’ll always betray the substance of their quotes, first for style, then for money and position, then for the most abject maudlin sentimentality as their testosterone decays, with no regular habits or traditions to keep their truths in mind when their personal motivation falters.
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Something of an exaggeration. he is describing a hopeless man, not an ordinary one. most people are ordinary. That doesn’t make them useless.
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http://heretical.com/miscella/mhusbach.html
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CH,
This is from Theodore Roosevelt’s Book “A Book-Lover’s Holidays in the Open” —
[T]here is one vital point—the vital point—in which the men and women of these ranch-houses, like those of the South America that I visited generally, are striking examples to us of the English-speaking countries both of North America and Australia. The families are large. The women, charming and attractive, are good and fertile mothers in all classes of society. There are no symptoms of that artificially self-produced dwindling of population which is by far the most threatening symptom in the social life of the United States, Canada, and the Australian commonwealths. The nineteenth century saw a prodigious growth of the English-speaking, relative to the Spanish-speaking, population of the new worlds west of the Atlantic and in the Southern Pacific. The end of the twentieth century will see this completely reversed unless the present ominous tendencies as regards the birth-rate are reversed.
A race is worthless and contemptible if its men cease to be willing and able to work hard and, at need, to fight hard, and if its women cease to breed freely. I am not speaking of pauper families with excessive numbers of ill-nourished and badly brought up children; I am well aware that, like most wise and good principles, this which I advocate can be carried to a mischievous excess; but it nevertheless remains true that voluntary sterility among married men and women of good life is, even more than military or physical cowardice in the ordinary man, the capital sin of civilization, whether in France or Scandinavia, New England or New Zealand. If the best classes do not reproduce themselves the nation will of course go down; for the real question is encouraging the fit, and discouraging the unfit, to survive. When the ordinary decent man does not understand that to marry the woman he loves, as early as he can, is the most desirable of all goals, the most successful of all forms of life entitled to be called really successful; when the ordinary woman does not understand that all other forms of life are but makeshift and starveling substitutes for the life of the happy wife, the mother of a fair-sized family of healthy children; then the state is rotten at heart.
The loss of a healthy, vigorous, natural sexual instinct is fatal; and just as much so if the loss is by disuse and atrophy as if it is by abuse and perversion. Whether the man, in the exercise of one form of selfishness, leads a life of easy self-indulgence and celibate profligacy; or whether in the exercise of a colder but no less repulsive selfishness, he sacrifices what is highest to some form of mere material achievement in accord with the base proverb that “he travels farthest who travels alone”; or whether the sacrifice is made in the name of the warped and diseased conscience of asceticism; the result is equally evil.
So, likewise, with the woman. In many modern novels there is portrayed a type of cold, selfish, sexless woman who plumes herself on being “respectable,” but who is really a rather less desirable member of society than a prostitute. Unfortunately the portrayal is true to life. The woman who shrinks from motherhood is as low a creature as a man of the professional pacificist, or poltroon, type, who shirks his duty as a soldier.
The only full life for man or woman is led by those men and women who together, with hearts both gentle and valiant, face lives of love and duty, who see their children rise up to call them blessed and who leave behind them their seed to inherit the earth. Dealing with averages, it is the bare truth to say that no celibate life approaches such a life in point of usefulness, no matter what the motive for the celibacy—religious, philanthropic, political, or professional.
The mother comes ahead of the nun—and also of the settlement or hospital worker; and if either man or woman must treat a profession as a substitute for, instead of as an addition to or basis for, marriage, then by all means the profession or other “career” should be abandoned. It is of course not possible to lay down universal rules. There must be exceptions. But the rule must be as above given. In a community which is at peace there may be a few women or a few men who for good reasons do not marry, and who do excellent work nevertheless; just as in a community which is at war, there may be a few men who for good reasons do not go out as soldiers. But if the average woman does not marry and become the mother of enough healthy children to permit the increase of the race; and if the average man does not, above all other things, wish to marry in time of peace, and to do his full duty in war if the need arises, then the race is decadent, and should be swept aside to make room for one that is better. Only that nation has a future whose sons and daughters recognize and obey the primary laws of their racial being.
They don’t make’ em like Teddy anymore.
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What is the source for this quote?
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