THE TRIUMPH OF THE BOOBOISIE

By Andrew Williams

I sing the praises of Henry Louis Mencken, scion of Baltimore, poet of "the immense protein factory of the Chesapeake." I sing his praises because, in his writings, I have discovered a fellow soul, a diagnostician of the first water who described the American ailment so long ago and so well in his writings.

If Mencken were alive today, he would be pronouncing from the rooftops that "the booboisie have taken over the cathedral." We are ruled, it seems, by a fourth-rate aristocracy-insecure in its position, animated by mulish suspicion of all those who question its actions and motives, of the same sentimentality as the mob "mind," and frightened silly of the battles of ideas and ideologies that occur in a healthy society.

Mencken was that most dreaded and hated of men in a democracy-an Elitist. He believed, as does Harlan Ellison-another writer I fiercely admire-that people have the right to an informed opinion, however contrary that line of thought may be to the lynch-mind. And, in his informed opinion, the top influences the bottom, and vice versa.

Let us take a recent example: Our own Attorney General, it appears, is repulsed by the presentation of what, to some, are the most beautiful parts of the human body. To that extent, he ordered a statue of a lovely young woman swathed in opaque cloth because it has the temerity to be accurate in its display of a typical woman's torso, including (close your eyes here, sir-bad word coming) breasts.

This streak of Puritanism is embedded in the genetic code of our society. It is, indeed, what keeps us distrustful of new ideas, of progressive discourse, of anything that does not ostensibly enlighten us spiritually. In other words, anything that smacks of the material, of the ruck of life, is to be disdained, shunned, clouded over.

And it is because of our distrust of open, honest and even naïve dialogue that we apparently have so few first-rate writers--e.g. , Vonnegut, Pynchon, Mailer, Oates, deLillo--and a whole slew of ironic post-modernists who regularly sacrifice "truth and objectivity for the sake of a witticism," as the science fiction writer Philip Jose Farmer noted in a (slightly) different context.

Now, anyone who's ever read any of the sage of Baltimore's output will notice a definite Menckian tone in this essay. This is inevitable and intentional. Mencken put such a stamp on the ideas I am expressing here that even a faint imitation of his style is almost unavoidable. And why avoid it? We are all influenced. The only exception that comes to mind is Kaspar Hauser, and even he was inadvertently exposed to certain environmental influences during a captivity that stretched from his infancy to young adulthood.

And frankly, we could use more of Mencken's humor and his healthy, rigorous use of logic and language. We are being hamstrung by what he would have called "radio clowns" who cannot bear the thought that "America Uber Alles" is being resisted by anyone at any level in any quarter. Such is not the logic of the promulgators of this would-be empire.

A true aristocracy, Mencken observed, does not fear change or dissension. Indeed, it usually extends its protection to those who produce them, seeing in their actions the unstoppable future. Since aristocracy operates from a position of security, it has no fear of what change may bring.

So, indeed, the booboisie have won. They have placed a man in charge of them who is, on average, no smarter, better or braver than they are. His opponent, for all the arguments placed by his worthy proponents, was cut from much the same cloth and would have operated in much the same way, in keeping with the decisions of his boss. Only the style of rhetoric would have changed.

Thomas Jefferson said, "People get the kind of government they deserve." This is true, but only for the majority. The rest of us-the Unsilent Majority-will continue to work as long as possible for something better.