Channeling Mencken: How Pot Can Save the Human Race

I have a confession to make: I am, at times, an idealist; which I admit is just a hair shy of being a total nincompoop. But idealism being a favorite American pastime practiced by pastors, politicians, and social reformers alike, I find it safe to admit here and now that I often entertain my own ideals so as to discover just how deep down in the marrow my own nincompoopery goes.

My guess is the deeper down I find such romantic silliness, the closer I will be to gleaning which circle of hell will be my eternal residence for dreaming up such utopian dreams contrary to those officially ordained as exclusively true by the culture.

So, today, join me if you wish, as I open the door to my ideal stricken mind in order to engage in a little old-fashioned metaphysical speculation on how to reform our world for the better. I enter into such speculation without much fear for my soul’s status. As Oscar Wilde says, metaphysical speculation, “has very little reference at all to the actual facts of real life, as we know them.”

But before we continue, allow me to summon a guide–a friendly ghost from beyond the grave–to help us in our descent through the many levels of my warped and wicked mind, else we may never find our way out of the woods and never reach our utopian ideal.

Who should I call upon to guide us in our journey?

Should it be my usual guide, Oscar Wilde? No, he is much too much in the heavens. His ideals lack practicality; he very rarely, if ever, comes down to earth.

How about one of my other favorites, the natural egalitarian George Orwell? No, he is much too much in the other direction–too austere, too close to earth with his ideals.

No, what we need is a guide who resides somewhere other than in heaven or on earth.

Someone with moxie and a righteous mind. Someone unafraid to bushwhack the everyday buncombe accepted by most of society. Yet, someone unencumbered by any ivory tower penchant to systematically prove common sense truths which really only require a rhetorical spotlight to reveal their veracity. We need someone willing to descend into any so-called hell, to play the devil’s advocate, and in doing so, show that many ideals thought to be devilish are actually quite good; merely called wicked by boring and petty people.

And finally, we mostly need a guide, if I may say so humbly, who shares some of my own ideals–in particular the ideal that government, or the State, is harmful to all people and should be whittled away as much as possible to the point of nada.

I believe, ladies and gentlemen, I have found that someone: a man who as we speak resides neither in heaven nor on earth, a man who suffered no fools, a man who once said, “The ideal Government of all reflective men, from Aristotle onward, is one which lets the individual alone—one which barely escapes being no government at all. This ideal, I believe, will be realized in the world twenty or thirty centuries after I have passed from these scenes and taken up my public duties in Hell.”

So, rise Henry Louis Mencken!  Take leave from your public duties in the underworld. Give all those poor demons and guilty sinners a rest and grace us with your acerbic spirit. Even God Almighty rested on the seventh day. You have been toiling in the bureaucracies below for nearly sixty years now. It is high time you went on a holiday. Or, at least, kept the spirit of the Sabbath.

I call upon you today, you old mammal, so that we may hash out your former “Portrait of an Ideal World.” I offer your portrait my praise and admiration, but much has changed here on earth since your passing. Unfortunately, the idiot class is alive and well, but I am happy to inform you we have discovered new methods for smoking out imbeciles, mountebanks, and tee-totaling tyrants.

In case your memory is rusty, you, H.L. Mencken, painted this portrait of an ideal world in 1924, first appearing in the American Mercury:

“Alcohol, so to speak, unwinds us. It raises the threshold of sensation and makes us less sensitive to external stimuli, and particularly to those that are unpleasant. Putting a brake upon all the qualities which enable us to get on in the world and shine before our fellows – for example, combativeness, shrewdness, diligence, ambition-, it releases the qualities which mellow us and make our fellows love us – for example, amiability, generosity, toleration, humor, sympathy.”

I could not agree more! I have found the effects of liquid spirits and other fermentations–whether from the fruit of the vine, the juice of some other glorious fruit, or the grain of the ground–to be at times one of the closest things to orgasm other than, well, orgasm itself.

The amiable effects of these elixirs have expectedly been dressed up in folklore: it is said, depending on one’s particular drink of choice, different effects will ensue. The scientists, of course, disagree with these folk tales. According to them, ethanol is ethanol is ethanol. But the superstitions persist, nonetheless, as superstitions are prone to do in the face of scientific facts.

If I had to tell my own, home-brewed tall tales, I would say wine makes me want to sit in a low lit room and share a suggestive word or two with a romantic interest (thus my bizarre confusion for many years seeing it featured as a prominent aspect of Roman Catholic mass). The fruit of the vine renders me switched on and adulterous rather than celibate or, even worse, monogamous.

Whiskey, on the other hand, warms my belly and my face and beckons me to those barroom tables where whiskered men talk politics and tales of lost love peppered with pauses to puff tobacco smoke. Beer reminds me of my college days; it eventually gets the job done, just barely, and after many bouts with bitterness, graduates to a higher shelf with a dated, possibly unreliable seal of maturity. Vodka numbs my face and my mind as though I have been confined to a Siberian prison cell. Tequila strips me of all my clothes and provides me with the added assurance that I do, indeed, look as pristine as a Greek statue of old in my birthday suit–in spite of how much the morning mirror tells me I look akin to Mr. Peanut.

So such stories go on and on, differing from day-to-day depending on the drink, and this tendency towards myth-making while under the influence of alcohol only provides further suggestion that you, sir, are onto something when you say that your “proposal would restore Christianity to the world.”

What was your proposal, you ask?

My, my you have grown forgetful in the execution of your under worldly duties. But I am happy to remind you as well as my fellow travelers exact what your proposal is:

“…I marvel that no utopian has ever proposed to abolish all the sorrows of the world by the simple device of getting and keeping the whole human race gently stewed. I do not say drunk, remember; I say simply gently stewed – and apologize, as in duty bound, for not knowing how to describe the state in a more seemly phrase. The man who is in it is a man who has put all of his best qualities into his showcase. He is not only immensely more amiable than the cold sober man; he is immeasurably more decent. He reacts to all situations in an expansive, generous and humane manner. He has become more liberal, more tolerant, more kind. He is a better citizen, husband, father, friend.”

But now, Mr. Mencken, I must end my unchecked praise of your ideal portrait. I must quibble with you a bit–though, no doubt, in a chummy way.

As I said before, we have found new ways of smoking out the booboisie as well as all the tyrants, charlatans, and various other stripes of prude. And as you admit, your proposal does run a risk of having many people falling into full-blown drunkenness rather being “gently stewed” or “buzzed” as many of us call it today. I find this risk is much too high to be any sort of ideal.

Americans today are particularly prone to binge on alcohol in many cruel and unusual ways to the point of oblivion. That is not to say most can’t handle our medicine; but the risk of creating more drunken tyrants is simply too high. The world has had enough booze hounds the likes of Churchill or Genghis Khan or LBJ. Let us not flirt with bringing more of them on the scene. But you are correct in your assessment that we cannot allow the teetotalers and drunks to run the place.

Something, indeed, must be done.

You see, Mr. Mencken, your ideal portrait succeeds in almost every way but fails in one crucial way: in your choice of intoxicant.

There is, however, another intoxicant that could take humanity to much greater heights.

Prohibited yet still pervasive, Cannabis (Cannabis sativa or Cannabis indica) is the stuff of a “gently stewed” world, Mr. Mencken. This is the ideal.

I must inform you, sir, that a robust culture has grown up around this plant.  To the everyday American, the generic drug goes by many slang terms–marijuana, weed, pot, dope, tea, ganja, good good, mary jane, fire, loud, wacky baccy, grass, bud, green, herb, tree, and devil’s lettuce–just to name a few. And the street names for all the different strains of indica and sativa are just as plentiful. You can smoke it, vape it, bake it, and grow it. Infuse it, wrap it, roll it, and toke it. You can rip a bong, smoke a j, pass a blunt, or even–God forbid–wake and bake on a Sunday.

And as you must have seen during your time with alcohol prohibition, there is certainly a contemporary culture of prohibition surrounding cannabis.

On the one hand, there is a beautifully defiant culture of admirable lawbreakers and lawmakers searching for liberty in the best way possible–by acting as though they are already free because in fact they are free to do as they wish.

And on the other hand, there is a brutish coalition of loathsome lawbreakers, lawmakers, and law enforcers (not to mention the alcohol lobby in D.C.) who act as though they are addicted because in fact they are addicted to the deadliest intoxicant of them all: State power.

Many among us rightfully decry this regime of cannabis prohibition. But most prescriptions for ridding us of this awful state of affairs lack gusto and vision. Even those who wish to abolish the DEA altogether–ending not only pot prohibition but the prohibition of all drugs in the process–do not go far enough. This abolitionist position on drugs is perfectly respectable. It is a practical idea. The idea of ending evil systems is always worthy of practical consideration.

But this is nowhere near close to the ideal. And if we do not strike at the root of what creates evil individuals in the first place, evil systems have a way of growing, well, like a weed.

So, allow me to propose a cure to most of the world’s ills. You have guided us well, Mr. Mencken, out of the woods and through the many levels of my utopian mind. You took us down so that we may climb up to heaven once again. And now, we have reached the summit.

I propose that by any and all means possible, including by passage of an amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America, that once a week everybody must get stoned.

Call it the Rainy Day Woman Amendment.

This could be administered as you put it in terms of alcohol Mr. Mencken by “impregnating the air” with sweet THC packed vapors, meaning the world would smell of spring all year around; it would be a perpetual year of rebirth and renewal.

Or, if crop dusting the populace with pot smoke isn’t your cup of tea, we could ship each citizen a care package of specialty baked cannabis brownies or hire a whole team of music playing ice cream trucks to travel from village to dell, offering cannabis infused ice cream treats.

And if we didn’t wish to abandon the buzz of alcohol altogether, barkeeps across the nation could start offering cannabis cocktails. A whole variety of industries could arise, each seeking to help the citizenry carry out their weekly obligation to get baked in a subtle way.

Mind you, I am not calling for an army of pot-heads. My goal is not to couch lock the nation, but simply and gently draw out the better parts of their human nature. And it is an obvious fact that cannabis could accomplish this goal of “gently stewing” the world in a much more humane and nuanced way than alcohol ever could.

Cannabis is much safer than alcohol. Less deaths. Less health complications. Less risk of maudlin displays. Less chance of fist fights breaking out.

It may be said this proposal will lead some to go the way of the slacker. This is a true concern. But I would rather risk this possibility all day everyday than any alcoholic concern.  We need less Churchillian drunkenness and more Cheechian humor, more Chongian mellow, and more Nelsonian sing songs.

Furthermore, this proposal would succeed where the proponents of abolishing the drug war fall short. If we were to simply legalize pot, there would still be a collection of former DEA enforcers, fear-stricken parents, political drug warriors, and the like sowing discontent with their moralizing and tee-totaling. These people, above all, are the ones most in need of a bong rip, else they may find themselves unemployed and run for office only to discover new ways to meddle in the affairs of us amiable souls.

If there is one thing the Puritan prohibitionists cannot stand, it is people engaged in beautiful merriment. But after a weekly dose of cannabis, I imagine their resentment of revelry would surely subside or, at least, be greatly reduced. War-making as such and on all levels would slowly come to a halt if my proposal were put into practice.

Now it may be said that forcing people by law to consume cannabis would create a whole new type of tyranny–that the worst drug in the world is man’s power over man. This is a completely respectable position. A sensible concern. I cannot argue with it. But when it comes to idealism, you cannot expect me to entertain the respectable and the sensible.

No, my idealism screams out that we must go further and farther, onward and upward, and be ever vigilant in applying our remedies to the fallen world!

Call me a devil if you like, but the restoration of Christian love hangs upon our efforts. Though it may smack of quackery and nincompoopery, the salvation of the human race relies upon, not the fruit of the vine, but the propagation of bud.