Revisiting H.L. Mencken’s 1922 essay in 2025, Craig makes some subtle changes to modernize and update the language and syntax, to see what may still ring true today.
Over 100 years ago, the Sage of Baltimore, H.L. Mencken, published a short, satirical essay in his 1922 collection Prejudices: Third Series. In "On Being an American," he portrays the United States as a chaotic, almost theatrical spectacle and revels in the nation’s political farce, religious eccentricity, and cultural vulgarity. Mencken delights in the “ribald combats of demagogues” and the “exquisitely ingenious operations of master rogues,” suggesting that the sheer spectacle of American democracy, stripped of solemnity and stuffed with “gorgeous humors," is what keeps him loyal to it, despite its flaws. Yet, beneath the sarcasm and the critique of the average American’s intellectual laziness and the nation’s obsession with shallow heroics lies a subtle fondness for America’s unapologetic embrace of the ridiculous. For Mencken, the country’s charm is in its raw, unpolished energy, and a certain grand, entertaining flair. It's a complex mix of affection and disdain for his homeland that, I suspect, we all may share.