By
Joshua
Michail
17
December, 2011
Only a few days ago now [at the time I wrote
this, in December of 2011], the world lost
a prolific writer, an potent intellectual, and provocateur of thought.
It seems that perhaps he was taken for granted by many, both by those
who loved him and those who hated him. I know that I always had admired
his intellect and work, even when on the odd occasion I may disagree.
Though, no one is truly perfect, his most noticeable foibles – smoking
cigarettes and drinking plenty of Johnny Walker Black Label to keep
those companies in the black almost single handed – in some way seemed
to only add character to him in a quite charming way. But then, on
hearing of his death, I realized just how much the work of
Christopher Hitchens really means to me.
First, I should offer some background
information, and I'd feel remiss if I didn't do so. Christopher
Hitchens was born on the 13th of April of 1949, in Portsmouth, England.
Both his mother and father served in the British Royal Navy during
World War II. The two had met in Scotland during that time. Skipping
ahead a bit for brevity's sake, in 1970 he began his journalistic
career working as a corespondent for a British magazine called
International Socialist, and his political inclinations at the time
were quite leftist. But over time his political views would shift,
though as is often the case with well reasoned people, his later
political views were not entirely “conservative” either. In fact, he
was mostly moderate, with leanings to conservative opinion on some
issues, while still leaning liberal on other points. It's best to
describe him as having been independent.
He had immigrated to the United States
in 1981, but only gained his American citizenship on his 58th birthday,
the 13th of April, 2007. He even made his affirmation of citizenship on
the steps of the memorial to one of his favorite men of history, Thomas
Jefferson, in Washington D.C. Thomas Paine and George Orwell were two
among the others he had admired. He began writing for The Nation magazine
after moving to the US, and later he was also a columnist who wrote for
Slate,
The Atlantic,
Salon,
Free Inquiry,
and Vanity Fair
magazines. He was also an author, who's 2007 book, God Is Not
Great, three weeks after being released reached number one
on the New York Times
'Best Seller' list, it was also, in its first week, the number two
'Best Seller' on Amazon.com. He also wrote critiques that often ranged
from less than flattering to outright infuriating to his subjects,
among whom included both Bill and Hillary Clinton, Mother Teresa, and
Henry Kissinger, among many others.
In deed, Hitchens was often called
“shrill” by those who felt uncomfortable by his anti-theism. He was not
the quiet, 'don't rock the boat' kind of atheist that so many religious
people prefer. He felt that, beyond being a mere atheist, he had good
reason to be an anti-theist because religion has caused so much
suffering throughout the world for thousands of years. While one would
naturally expect many in the religious communities to dislike, disagree
or even, as so many do, despise and revile Hitchens, there are those
among his fellow atheists who have seemed to discover now that he is
gone that they too disliked him. Some of them even to the point of
hatred and name-calling. Even I, a fan of his, have some points on
which I wholeheartedly disagree with him. But I wonder how much of the
“churlishness” is fostered by misunderstanding, I'm sure some of which
is reasonable. An example of the expected, even reasonable, displeasure
with Hitchens can be seen in an article he wrote for Vanity Fair
magazine: “Why
Women Aren't Funny”.
However, and it certainly seemed clear
to me, Hitchens in this article was not saying that women are truly
never funny. Not in any real misogynistic sense. Rather, he was
exploring the evolutionary reasons why women tend to find the ability
to be funny more important in men, than the other way around. He
mentions that women very often list a man's ability to be funny as a
characteristic that matters. Even if a woman doesn't explicitly say
that it matters, she is likely to say, when telling her friends about a
man, how funny he is. Among other things. And yet, men often don't make
such a point about whether a woman is funny. Hitchens acknowledged
that women can be, and many are in fact, funny. But his all too often
misunderstood point was that through our evolutionary course, thus far,
women evolved to be attractive to men without the need to be funny,
while men had to evolve to be funny as a significant part of being
attractive. That must not in honesty be taken to mean that women are
somehow incapable of being funny.
Another case in which Hitchens is
mistakenly cited against himself is his position on the Iraq war. He
was not in favor of war, per-se.
He was a humanist after all. In being
a humanist he saw the oppression and murders on the scale of tens of
thousands of men, women and children non-combatants as a serious
problem. Apparently those who have chosen to dislike, or even to hate,
Hitchens can find anything to support their claims regardless of the
truth. It should be known that he was no fan of George W Bush, nor
Cheney, nor Rumsfeld. His point was that if we are to be intellectually
honest, and if we are to care about the suffering of our fellow humans,
then removing from power a torturous and murderous mafia-don of a
dictator was a good thing. To the Kurds and Shi'ites in Iraq, Bush's
reasoning for the invasion and removal of Saddam was not particularly
important. Far more important to them is the fact that their heinous
oppressor of the past several decades is now gone, never to return.
The kind of thinking that appears to be
prevalent lately is exemplified here: “I do think the media
contributes to an overall mood that drives public opinion. He [Christopher
Hitchens] does hold some
responsibility for that. I think if his voice had been absent we would
still have gone to war though.” That is a quote of an
actual response to an online article about Hitchens. I won't attribute
the quote, for the sake of originator, and because it will distract
from the point here. To put this in context, the originator was talking
about Hitchens' writings and media presence in which he explained why
he thought that ultimately invading Iraq and removing Saddam Hussein
was good. In the first sentence the media is accused of being complicit
in the war in Iraq, in that the media influenced the public opinion,
and thus the public support, in favor of the war. In the second
sentence Hitchens is lumped into that group share of responsibility as
part of the media. But then, in the third sentence, Hitchens is
absolved of his share of responsibility for the war in Iraq that was
thrust upon him. It's a bit absurd, and I've been seeing much of this
on the web. But, all-in-all, this is all tiresome nonsense, a sort of
'much ado about nothing'.
It is also no small point to address
the issue of whether Saddam had WMDs (Weapons of Mass Destruction).
Though the popular notion is that he did not, the fact is we know that
he had used them before on, most especially, the Kurds in Iraq and on
Iranians during the Iraq-Iran war. WMDs are not just nuclear bombs and
missiles. Though the Bush regime may have very well preferred that the
population think of it the way they did, that “nukes” were the issue.
The very same chemical weapons that Saddam used to murder tens of
thousands of Kurds, along with biological weapons like the anthrax that was
delivered in mail to Senator Daschle and to Tom Brokaw, are
also weapons of mass destruction.
The US Army has a school devoted to
teaching soldiers about these weapons, and a special MOS (Military Occupational Specialty)
devoted to handling them. The abbreviated and somewhat jargonistic term
is known as “NBC” (Nuclear,
Biological, and Chemical). If anything the use of nerve
agents, and blistering agents like mustard gas and chlorine gas, surely
must count as both horrific and murderous to masses of people and
animals in a single use. It's an undeniable fact that Saddam ordered
his military to use the chemical weapons on more that a few occasions
and incidences spanning years, including after the Gulf War had ended.
Regardless of whether Saddam possessed nuclear weapons or as he
actually was, hoping and trying to get his bloodstained hands on them, he did have WMDs in the form of chemical
weapons. The evidence that he had them could not be more
clear than the fact that we knew, at the time, that he had gassed
innocent people with bombs.
But it should be realized that
Hitchens knew what he was doing. He would deliberately stimulate the
minds of people, whether they liked it or not. After all, if you wish
to show a captive tiger the truth of his vicious and terrible nature
you must first rattle his cage. What Hitchens was doing was not mere
ungracious antagonism nor face-spitting for it's own sake, but rather
to cause discussion for the sake of getting the discourse into the
light of day. He knew well the need for provocation, the sort that many
who knew less would call contrarian, as if he were to them a simple
unruly rebel. As he agreed with, and Ayaan Hirsi Ali has said about
getting people to really start examining their beliefs “You must expose cognitive
dissonance”. And to the intellectual dishonesty exposed by
that dissonance as he would say “up with it we will not put”.
Throngs of religious people, of the many
various flavors: Christians, Muslims, Jews and Hindus, remember
Hitchens with a sour taste in their mouths. But, in perhaps a bit of a
vindicating legacy many also remember him with great fondness. Many who
were members of the religious cacophony once now give joyous thanks for
his shining torch light. There will always be detractors, and certainly
his blatant unapologetic, call-it-as-he-saw-it, style has given plenty
of inconvenient discomfort and so aroused many an ire. But then the
truth often hurts, and those who don't like hearing the truth will call
those who speak it all sorts of foul names. This really is just a
lashing-out, a rather expected childish behavior, of the sort that is
rightfully dismissed with ease, pejoratively.
What we'd be best to remember is the
call to critical thinking and the rally around intellectual honesty
that was Hitchens' labor of love. In deed, such is the manifestation of
love for one's fellow humanity. To wish and to work for the betterment
of humanity, especially by challenging the status-quo
and preconceived notions, is far too noble to be dismissed so
easily on some trivial or contrived disagreement. So it is with
gratefulness that we are to pick up the torch that Hitch has left for
us. We are to proceed and continue the 'good fight', to promote honesty
in intellect and thinking of a critical manner. To this end we must
pick up his torch and appreciate his legacy. We must go forth and
antagonize the world, to provoke a recognition of cognitive dissonance
where it infests. We must ceaselessly, and en-masse, promote
and defend intellectual honesty and critical thinking. This is the
legacy of Hitch and this is our charge!
Copyright © 2011 by Joshua
Michail
All
Rights Reserved.
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