Mencken Taxes

The predatory wellness of a country in decline.

Sugarcane by Diego Rivera (1931)

To replenish my sense of horror, I scan local newspapers for evidence of civilisational rot.

One letter horrified me so fully that I considered the British version of arming myself to the gills and bumping off deserving bystanders with a Remington shotgun: replying with a starchy letter.

An anonymous pamphleteer began their offensive treatise carefully. ‘Spare a thought,’ went the headline. Who would decline such overtures?

The holidays, a time of joy for most, occasioned one person—who lives within an eight-mile radius of my hometown—to proffer what I can only describe as predatory wellness.

The letter read: ‘Whilst most of us will enjoy the forthcoming holidays, it would be worthwhile to remember those shop and supermarket employees who won’t get much of a holiday at all, or overtime, or even a day off in lieu.’

Reader, for just £2 a month, you can help end the plight of… people working for a living.

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After reading the letter a mere forty-two times, I canvassed for moral support. Surely, everyone else sees this grubby treatise for what it really is—the medicinal misery of a madwoman.

Whenever someone suggests one spare a thought, the only thought worth not sparing is the one which stops reading one more word of the looming, inexorable, head-in-the-oven Plathian misery which follows.

Taking time out of her busy day running the world’s financial system and media, a Jewish friend chimed into the debate. Being that her people are history’s scapegoats, I expected her to share my keen and paranoid eye. No sympathy with my Geiger-countered cynicism availed. Nothing. ‘How thoughtful a letter,’ she said.

Those are the words of a cerebral people schooled in debate and critical thinking from birth. I worried I was the nutter in this saga, or even worse—wrong. As the old Borscht Belt line goes: two Jews, three opinions.

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I don’t believe her. This age of New Sincerity and predatory wellness compels us all to play pretend. We must disregard thousands of years of civilisation in which human nature escapes with quite the chequered record. Could it be that the letter-writer is a miserable scold bent on poisoning the joy of others? Would that be cynical of me? Modern puritans hide their misery and power urges behind compassion and wellness.

But there is a point to all this. This letter isn’t merely the work of some tiresome, fun sponge. This very letter crystallises the decline of a culture from well-adjusted to neurotic.

Consider the steps taken to unleash this loathsome communique. First, the author imagined others having fun and enjoying themselves over the holidays.

Next, the author felt such joy as one would a knee in the Adam’s apple. Enraged, they penned the letter, careful to open with nice, conciliatory blessings. Reader, don’t be fooled. This was merely a rhetorical device to suck you in—Ted Bundy’s seductive grin.

The result? Those subjected to the letter will choke on its words as they guiltily surround themselves with family and friends this Christmas. As they pour yet another Advocaat around the bulging, triumphant Christmas table, lurid images of the immiserated author, weeping, doleful and alone, will poison their Christmas lunch.

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Declining nations first encourage and then succumb to the neurotic and miserable, elevating them above those with more amenable character traits. If you know your Adler, life is a battle between one’s talents and one’s shortcomings. The fact such a letter enjoyed publication proves our total decline into a nation of fun sponges and schoolmarms, those quick to dilute any kindling of spontaneity or joy amid those they loathe.

This is how civilisation ends, not with a bang, but with the barbed whimpers of miserabilists who garb their misanthropy in the language of a fourth-rate therapist whose qualifications one can purchase on eBay for £12.99 plus VAT.

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Within my lifetime, such obvious Jesuitical grasping met derision. All instances of misery-seeking and fun-sponging met a stern, unequivocal: Oh, fuck off.

Now our culture pays a daily tax to the miserable and the mad. As H. L. Mencken put it: ‘Puritanism is the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.’

In reply to the author of misery, I sent this essay to my local paper. After seventeen follow-up calls, sixteen of which met with a dial tone, I’m still awaiting their feedback. They must be very busy.

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To further the process along, I shuffled down to the newsroom armed with a four-pack of Special Brew, and a considerate thought-sparing placard saying: Publish my fucking letter or ELSE.

Surprisingly, they refused my later phone calls, emails, and even my expensively acquired homing pigeon. Reader, I spent hours upon hours cutting letters from magazines and newspapers, and dutifully gluing them into a coherent tapestry of suggestive and imperative sentences.

After a week without a reply, I helpfully and considerately spray-painted, ‘You will publish my fucking letter or else!’ across their front windows. A thoughtful employee took a jet-wash to my genius work of street art, no doubt to improve its visage.

Despite my helpfulness, I’m yet to receive a reply or a lucrative offer of employment. Perhaps they’re busy.

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