True confession time.I do not like Christopher Hitchens!
I have watched him many times on "Real Time" with Bill Maher, among others programs, and I simply do not like the pasty, wheezy, arrogant pig.
He was an aggressive supporter of the Iraq war at its start, and an unyielding defender as the bottom started falling out of it. He always seemed either half in the bag, or just coming out of a terrible hangover, and he mumbles his words making it hard to make out just what he is saying so that I can disagree with it.
Even after he wrote a book critical of Christianity ("God is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything"), a book that would seem to have been written just for me, I still found him physically repugnant and intellectually crippled.
But I just read the article that is linked above and now I have to say that Hitchens is a pretty damn good writer. And what is more he is a pretty damn good "honest" writer. And now I have to reconsider my former dismissal of his writing and its importance. I may even have to buy his book.
Damn this open mind of mine!
So Hitchens got waterboarded, and even though I should be thrilled that he was tortured, instead I feel that he may have written something that will finally shine a light on this horrible practice and that many who have refused to see it will finally be forced to confront the reality of what we are doing to human beings in the name of our own "safety" as a nation.
I really feel that this quote, the first portion which is attributed to Abraham Lincoln, sums it up best: “If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong.” Well, then, if waterboarding does not constitute torture, then there is no such thing as torture.
Hitch is an over-educated blow hard, but he is a wicked good writer. For you, I'd recommend Letters to a Young Contrarian and Why Orwell Matters.
ReplyDeleteIf you can get past his need to cite from often obscure canons of western polemics, he has (or had, before he started to become a right wingnut) some excellent things to say.
I still like reading him, but I have to ignore his politics, which I sometimes can do.
Last time I was in Title Wave, they had some of his stuff used, so you won't really be contributing much to his overblown, alcoholic ego...
Peace.
He is a good writer. Unfortunately, like several "very good writers" in the UK, he arrives at his conclusions without allowing any kind of science-based research to get in his way...until this.
ReplyDeleteI'm very glad he had them videotape the demonstration. It was painful to watch...and it should be.