The fear mongers were working overtime in the days leading up to Tuesday’s election, which is the last election in Wisconsin until next April, thank the Lord. We are theoretically free for awhile from commercials proclaiming what a dirtbag such and such a candidate is.
I remembered H.L. Mencken’s warning about imaginary hobgoblins as all this transpired: “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.” Little has changed since he wrote that passage in 1918. So many of us are still alarmed and clamorous to be led to safety, and the practical politician is still eager to lead us not to safety but astray.
It’s easy to forget that freedom does not depend on any government actions — in fact, government by definition acts to restrict or curtail freedom, or otherwise why would it be called government? The right ruler of any human is the person s/he sees in the mirror. No one has a greater stake in your well-being.
Mencken is often misquoted — and at one time I was one of the culprits — as saying that “all” of his hobgoblins are imaginary, rather than “most.” Some of the hobgoblins that practical politicians warns about are indeed real, not the least of which are those very politicians. We are besieged with political ads that warn an opponent is a threat to safety and well-being if not democracy itself. It behooves one to consider that all of these ads are correct and that none of the alternatives are fit to run our lives.
To the extent that they stay in their lane, keep the streets paved and plowed and defend our shores, Leviathan employees are useful public servants. When they stray into micromanaging our lives, as they inevitably do, they become very real hobgoblins.
Election campaigns have become more of a blood sport than a competition to determine who is more qualified to run the apparatus of government — and the sport takes our eyes off the question of whether the apparatus of government is even necessary.
I try not to have a stake in the outcome because I often don’t have one anyway. I am usually a disinterested observer, like a World Series between the Washington Nationals and Texas Rangers. Neither team engages my passions.
And so when fear mongers start trying to stir up emotion, I remind myself to refuse to be afraid, free myself from the shackles of fear, and dream of a better tomorrow.
