02 November 2010

No Predictions from Me

My record sucks, and I will take Abraham Lincoln's advice, "Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt."

But I will leave you with a political quote on the horror that is Republicans the man who best understood horror in the 20th century,* Howard Phillips Lovecraft:
As for the Republicans—how can one regard seriously a frightened, greedy, nostalgic huddle of tradesmen and lucky idlers who shut their eyes to history and science, steel their emotions against decent human sympathy, cling to sordid and provincial ideals exalting sheer acquisitiveness and condoning artificial hardship for the non-materially-shrewd, dwell smugly and sentimentally in a distorted dream-cosmos of outmoded phrases and principles and attitudes based on the bygone agricultural-handicraft world, and revel in (consciously or unconsciously) mendacious assumptions (such as the notion that real liberty is synonymous with the single detail of unrestricted economic license or that a rational planning of resource-distribution would contravene some vague and mystical ‘American heritage’…) utterly contrary to fact and without the slightest foundation in human experience? Intellectually, the Republican idea deserves the tolerance and respect one gives to the dead.
H/t Fafblog for the quote, which is being circulated by movie director, and Lovecraft fan, Joe Dante.

*Or at least pre Holocaust, since I believe that it fundamentally redefined horror in the Western world by putting the lie to the myth of man's moral progress..

2 comments :

Donovan K. Loucks said...

“Democrats invariably ape the grotesque crudities of the lower orders and make conspicuous clowns of themselves; jeering at civilised speech, manners, and standards of accuracy and beauty instead of respecting these things and urging their beloved masses to work up toward them. As long as they persist in this position, they will win nothing but the distrust and hostility of men well-disposed toward civilisation and the fullest realisation of the human personality.” (H. P. Lovecraft to Woodburn Harris, 9 November 1929)

Donovan K. Loucks
Webmaster, The H. P. Lovecraft Archive
http://www.hplovecraft.com

Matthew G. Saroff said...

Thanks for the Lovecraft quote. My brother, who saw the quote, asked if "Given Lovecraft's fondness for slimy spineless creatures, it is strange that he didn't have anything to say about democrats..." Now I know.

I quoted you here.

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