Republicans. From a 1936 letter:
“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.”
Of course, he wasn't a big fan of Democrats either. From a 1929 letter: “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.”
Cool finds. Only Lovecraft could use the phrase "distorted dream-cosmos" in a political tirade :D
ReplyDeleteAre you reading his published letter, Dan, or is this just something you chanced across?
just no pleasing this guy.
ReplyDeleteThey mentioned them in the Lovecraft podcast I listen to.
ReplyDeleteOf course, he feared neither as much as he feared black people. Or Asians. Or really anybody who wasn't white.
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