so i'm sort of trying to develop a reading of american cynicism of the mencken/bierce variety. and actually, though it doesn't seem that way, folks like that are moralists, even extreme and extremely passionate moralists. they've given up all their naive idealistic hopes, supposedly, but they are exquisitely sensitive to the forces that made them do so: in particular, hypocrisy. i would see bierce and mencken as disappointed emersons, emersons who finally let the actual world destroy their optimism.