Don’t Blame Me

“As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day, the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”
— Henry Louis Mencken

I thought I’d shut up this week and let wiser ones speak.

“I wish my countrymen to consider, that whatever the human law may be, neither an individual nor a nation can ever commit the least act of injustice against the obscurest individual, without having to pay the penalty for it. A government which deliberately enacts injustice, and persists in it, will at length ever become the laughing-stock of the world.”
— Henry David Thoreau

“They who have been bred in the school of politics fail now and always to face the facts.”
— Thoreau

“The greatest braggarts are usually the greatest cowards.”
— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

“The first method for estimating the intelligence of a ruler is to look at the men he has around him.”
— Niccolò Machiavelli

“Democracy becomes a government of bullies, tempered by editors.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson

The next eight observations come from Mark Twain.

“Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.”

“To be good is noble, but to show others how to be good is nobler and no trouble.”

“Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured.”

“The trouble ain’t that there is too many fools, but that lightning ain’t distributed right.”

“There are basically two types of people. People who accomplish things, and people who claim to have accomplished things. The first group is less crowded.”

"There is no distinctly criminal American class — except Congress.”

“Under certain circumstances, urgent circumstances, desperate circumstances, profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer.”

“Napoleon once shot and killed a publisher. But he was aiming at an editor. His intentions were good.”

Moving right along:

“Politics, n. A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.”
— Ambrose Bierce, from his Devil’s Dictionary

The next two quotes are from the excrescence disgracing the White House today: Donald the john Trump.

“I have done more for African-Americans than any other president, with the possible exception of Abraham Lincoln.”

“Why are we having all these people from shithole countries come here?”

Now let’s hear from the man himself:

“The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”
— Abraham Lincoln

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