Mencken’s Forgotten Wisdom on War
by Jim Bovard | Jun 25, 2025
As a stampede of weasels just sought to con America into supporting another Mideast war, it is time remember America’s most underrated critic of bellicose folly. H.L. Mencken is famous for his smackdowns of politicians and ridicule of government and of much of American culture. But he also offered sage advice for citizens judging officialdom itching for carnage.
On May 9, 1939, The Baltimore Sun published Mencken’s essay on “The Art of Selling War.” This piece, included in the Second Mencken Chrestomathy published in 1995, deserves a far higher position in the Mencken and antiwar pantheon.
In words that are painfully relevant for today’s news, Mencken warned, “The fact that all the polls run heavily against American participation in the threatening European war is not to be taken seriously.” Mencken continued:
“Wars are not made by common folks, scratching for livings in the heat of the day, they are made by demagogues infesting palaces…The very unpopularity of war makes people ready to believe, when they suddenly confront it, that it has been thrust upon them…because their own demagogues have been pretending, all the while, to be trying to prevent it.”
https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/menckens-forgotten-wisdom-on-war/
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Two months after the U.S. and Israel bombed Iran on February 28, the Strait of Hormuz remains closed for most tanker traffic, forcing more than 10 million barrels per day (bpd) of crude output shut-ins across the Middle Eastern oil producers.
The two-month-long closure of the Strait of Hormuz is longer than analysts had expected at the start of the war. Most assumed back then that the Strait would open by April and producers could restart shut-in wells in May.
Even if the Strait of Hormuz opened to free tanker traffic today, oil supply from the Middle East will take months to start flowing again and reach consumers in Asia, who were the first to feel the supply shock.
The longer the chokepoint remains off limits to most tanker traffic, the worse the scars would be on global supply and economic growth.
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The impact of the war in West Asia is being felt by farmers in major exporting countries such as Thailand and Vietnam, as well as in import-dependent nations like the Philippines and Indonesia, according to growers and traders. Disruptions to fuel and fertilizer shipments through the Strait of Hormuz, a key global shipping chokepoint linking the Gulf to international markets, have contributed to the strain.
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🛢 “Why aren’t oil prices higher?” “How can the oil market be so complacent?”
Oil prices almost always trade to extremes. Right before it does, it always gets “obvious” from a fundamental setup standpoint.
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