The PPJ Gazette

Duty to Warn

By Gary G. Kohls, MD

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“When a candidate for public office faces the voters he does not face men of sense; he faces a mob of men whose chief distinguishing mark is the fact that they are quite incapable of weighing ideas, or even of comprehending any except for the most elemental ones. The whole thinking of such voters is done in terms of emotion…(and the) dominant emotion is dread of what they cannot understand. So confronted, the candidate must either bark with the pack or be lost…All the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre – the man who can most adeptly disperse the notion that his mind is a virtual vacuum. The Presidency tends, year by year, to go to such men. As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.” — H. L. Mencken – known as the “Sage of Baltimore”

“Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.” – Voltaire

NOTE: This column was written the day before the dreaded Election Day of 2016 and submitted for publication before any election results were announced. Because I had already done everything in my power over the past decades of my political activism to influence the vote of thinking folks, I intend to turn off the TV on election day and try not to pay any attention to any of the over-analyzed political commentary and election-season information overload until the morning after.

At this point I think – since it is too late in the season to take the day off and go fishing – that I might actually go – right after I vote – to some distracting daytime movie that my wife wouldn’t want to see anyway. Then, following my regular Tuesday night tennis match, I will come right home and go right to bed without getting myself all tied up in knots.

I realize that it is futile to try to change the political minds of folks who have already chosen to affiliate with anti-democratic folks who exhibit behaviors that are compatible with sociopaths, sexists, xenophobes, racists, homophobes, Islamophobes, anti-Semites, neo-fascists, pro-war/pro-violence Christian fundamentalists, aggressive militarists, climate change deniers, anti-science types and the varieties of demagogue-devotees who have already pledged their allegiance to certain candidates who refuse to be influenced by rational pro-democracy arguments. More