Menachem's Writings: Of Hobgoblins and Bogeymen and Politicians

Menachem's Writings

Of Hobgoblins and Bogeymen and Politicians

Henry Louis Mencken, American essayist, magazine editor, satirist, acerbic critic of American life and culture and a student of American English, said, "The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary".

This guy has got to be my hero. I need to read some of his stuff. I just came across his existence listening to Radio 2UE in Sydney, Australia. I like to listen to this radio station because I grew up on it -- John Laws, Bob Rodgers, Gary O'Callahan -- but now I listen over the Internet. Lots of information, lots of idiots ringing, and I love that Australian accent. Reminds me of my school days. Very entertaining in the background while I'm working. I know Howard listens too. (As I write I hear John Cleese is fighting with his third [ex-]wife of 15 years [no kids], "I'm going to take John for all I can, he won't know what hit him" and Nicole Kidman had a baby on Sunday in America and called her Sunday -- really interesting trivia ;-)

Meanwhile back on the farm: welcome to the homeland -- though I doubt Mencken was thinking about us over here when he made the above statement, he sure could have been. Our politicos are experts at alarming the public, and they have the press at their service. Without press cooperation they would have difficulty in achieving any of this. And of course they are all under the control of the handful of families who own a whopping 60% of our economy! using means that have been illegal since the 1929 stock market crash in other countries.

I have avoided writing about the lunacies of local politics and didn't intend to today either. If it wasn't so serious, it would be funny. But it is serious. An illusion of democracy. Brainwashings. Police who are too scared to draw their weapons while murder is being committed under their noses.

But the politicians don't realise that they are not really in control in this land. And the Boss is slowing taking over from them. I think they now realise this. That's why they are suddenly in such a rush. They think they have a fig-leaf: the so-called religious parties. They just don't get it. Because a guy wears a black rag on his head and sports a straggley beard does not make him religious -- it does not mean that he has favour in the sight of the Lord. The black rag men are in it for the same reason the others are. That's why they don't leave the government. They just keep leveraging the guys on top. But don't they realize that the guardians of secularism view them with contempt, as a business expense, small change to keep them out of the way? The bogeyman of theocracy is used to cloak the lack of democracy. This boogeyman is Mencken's hobgoblin. It keeps the populace alarmed and paralysed. The population is kept quiet. Everything is a security issue, and cannot be questioned.

It's starting in the U.K. too now. And elsewhere. Islam is on the march. The Arabs are coming!

Everyone fears the Islamic bogeyman and so no-one minds "giving up" some aspects of hard-won personal rights to keep the boogyman away. But does he really exist?