Thus I suspect (though confessedly without knowing) that the vast majority of the honest folk of Westmoreland county, and especially the 100% Americans among them, actually admire the houses they live in, and are proud of them. For the same money they could get vastly better ones, but they prefer what they have got. Certainly there was no pressure upon the Veterans of Foreign Wars to choose the dreadful edifice that bears their banner, for there are plenty of vacant buildings along the trackside, and some of them are appreciably better. They might, in- deed, have built a better one of their own. But they chose that clapboarded horror with their eyes open, and having chosen it, they let it mellow into its present shocking depravity. They like it as it is: beside it, the Parthenon would no doubt offend them. In precisely the same way the authors of the rat-trap stadium that I have mentioned made a deliberate choice: After painfully designing and erecting it, they made it perfect in their own sight by putting a completely impossible penthouse painted a staring yellow, on top of it. The effect is that of a fat woman with a black eye. It is that of a Presbyterian grinning. But they like it.
因此，我相信(盡管坦白地說，我不敢絕對肯定)，威斯特摩蘭縣絕大多數正直誠實的人，尤其是其中的那些百分之百的美國人，確實很欣賞他們居住的房屋并為之感到自豪。雖然他們可以用同樣多的建筑成本造出好得多的房屋，他們卻寧愿要他們現有的那種丑陋不堪的房屋。可以肯定地說，海外戰爭退伍軍人組織總部將自己的旗幟插在那樣一幢丑陋的大樓上絕對不是出于無奈，因為鐵路沿線多的是閑置未用的建筑，而且許多建筑都比他們那幢大樓要好得多。他們如果愿意的話，也完全可以自己建造一幢像樣一些的大樓。然而，他們卻眼睜睜地選擇了那幢用護墻板造起來的丑陋的大樓，而且選定之后，還要讓它發展演變成現在這副破爛相。他們喜歡的就是這種丑怪樣子，如果有人在那附近豎起一座像希臘巴特農神殿那樣的漂亮建筑，他們一定會感到惱火。前面提到的那個形如捕鼠器的鋼架運動場的設計建造者們也是這樣有意地作了一個深思熟慮的選擇。在費盡心血，辛辛苦苦地設計并建成那個運動場之后，又想進一步美化完善它，于是便在建筑平項上加造一間極不協調的小棚屋，并涂上鮮艷奪目的黃色油漆。這樣造成的效果是使該建筑看起來就像一個肥胖的女人面上帶著一只被打腫發青的眼圈，也可以說像一位長老會牧師面上突然露出勉強的笑容的模樣。但他們喜歡的就是這種模樣。
Here is something that the psychologists have so far neglected: the love of ugliness for its own sake, the lust to make the world intolerable. Its habitat is the United States. Out of the melting pot emerges a race which hates beauty as it hates truth. The etiology of this madness deserves a great deal more study than it has got. There must be causes behind it; it arises and flourishes in obedience to biological laws, and not as a mere act of God. What, precisely, are the terms of those laws? And why do they run stronger in America than elsewhere? Let some honest Privat Dozent in pathological sociology apply himself to the problem.
這里涉及到一個心理學家迄今未加重視的問題，即為了丑本身的價值而愛丑(非因其他利益驅動而愛丑)，急欲將世界打扮得丑不可耐的變態心理。這種心理的孳生地就是美國。從美國這個大熔爐中產生出了一個新的種族，他們像仇視真理一樣地仇視美。這種變態心理的產生根源值得進行更多的研究，它的背后一定隱藏著某些原因，其產生和發展肯定受到某些生物學規律的制約，而不能簡單地看成是出于上帝的安排。那么，這些規律的具體內容究竟是什么呢?為什么它們在美國比在其他任何地方更為盛行?這個問題還是讓某位像德國大學的無薪教師那樣正直的社會病理學 家去研究吧。
(from Reading for Rhetoric by Caroline Shrodes,Clifford A, Josephson, James R. Wilson )
(摘自卡羅琳什羅迪斯，克里福德A約瑟夫遜，詹姆斯R威爾遜編《修辭讀物》)
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