Vandals in high places

… [H]e writes the worst English I have ever encountered. It reminds me of a string of wet sponges; it reminds me of tattered washing on the line. It reminds me of stale bean-soup, of college yells, of dogs barking idiotically through endless nights. It is so bad that a sort of grandeur creeps into it. It drags itself out of the dark abysm (I was about to write abscess!) of pish, and crawls insanely up to the topmost pinnacle of posh. It is rumble and bumble. It is flap and doodle. It is balder and dash.

H. L. Mencken on Warren G. Harding’s inaugural address of March 4, 1921, via George Weigel, whose mind turned to it upon encountering Vatican-inspired word salads of similar grandeur.

The vandals occupy the White House and the Vatican.