The Mencken Prophecy: America’s moron arrived
How the Sage of Baltimore foretold Biden’s presidency
Nearly a century ago, H.L. Mencken peered into America’s future. No man, he warned, had ever lost a dime “by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people.” Mencken saw what our elites dare not confess: that democracy, for all its splendor, contains a fatal flaw—the unshakable faith in the wisdom of the mob.
With icy foresight, Mencken thundered in 1926 that, “as democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people … and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.” That day dawned on January 20, 2021, when Joseph R. Biden—shuffling, stammering, and steered by handlers—stumbled into the Oval Office.
Biden’s tenure fulfilled Mencken’s prophecy. From the chaotic flight out of Kabul to a border dissolved and a world on fire, Biden embodied a government of good intentions and feeble minds. The establishment media tried scrubbing the record, but the spectacle played out nightly—forgetfulness, confusion, endless blunders.
Even his loyal foot soldiers now murmur “cognitive decline,” a truth writ large in special counsel reports and whispered in Democrat back offices.
Contrast this with Trump—not a messiah, but a battering ram against the globalist order. His economic patriotism and bold defiance of cosmopolitan orthodoxy have revitalized a dying party.
Does he offend? Of course. But where Biden flattered the crowd with comfortable lies, Trump fights—however imperfectly—to drag national interest back to center stage.
Mencken knew democracy could breed disaster by raising mediocrity over merit. The experiment has run its course. The “moron” has had his day. Now, the reckoning waits on history’s doorstep.