Nov 1, 2010

Political Advice from H.P. Lovecraft

Not sure how much social commentary you want from a guy who had a cat named Ni**er-Man, but this is a pretty excellent rant.

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.
- Letter to C.L. Moore, August 1936 quoted in “H.P. Lovecraft, a Life” by S.T. Joshi, p. 574

(from Mark Tiedemann)

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Looks like the Depression changed his mind...

Unknown said...

Wow! It's amazing to me how LITTLE the Republican party/philosophy has changed since 1936!!!! The ideals that HPL ascribes to them in this letter are the same exact ideals they promote in 2010.

That...is...frightening.

God Help Us All.