Hitchens R.I.P. and Weekend Open Thread

 

"Virgin" - Manchester Orchestra

- There has been an awful lot of words written about Christopher Hitchens over the last twenty-four hours.  I don't have too much to say that would add a lot to what I wrote about Hitchens last year (back in more convivial times around the blog by the looks of the comments).  He seemed to have faced the horrors of his illness in an incredibly resolute way.  But I think that the last thing Hitchens would want is to be white-washed beyond recognition.  And to me, he remains a dubious thinker -- a guy with a sharp tongue and pen and a gift for insult, but not really someone whose work really holds up all that well.  And for fuck's sake, he was no George Orwell.  To me, he will always be the guy who gave aid and comfort to those who were trying to impeach Bill Clinton, was contemptuous of Al Gore during the 2000 election -- he really was the original firebagger --  and was an unending enthusiast for the disaster that was the Iraq War.  None of these mark him as either a terribly serious thinker or practical man of the left.  He was a bit of a wrecker and a vandal, albeit a sometimes entertaining one.  Anyway, I think Kevin Drum and Amanda Marcotte both have useful correctives to the general hagiography.  Steve at No More Mr. Niceblog concurs.

What else is going on?  I am going to decorate the tree tomorrow with the family and then settle in to watch the Patriots ask Tim Tebow "where's your God now?"

Comments

[nancy]

I'm wont to stay away from this right now, but I can say that Hitchens, whose work I encountered many years ago, impressed with his ability to introduce new reasons to dig into the archives of both fiction and and non (I'm forever grateful for the introduction to Victor Klemperer's diaries.) That said, more hubris and consciousness of his extreme privilege might have made him a deeper thinker.

When he and his cohorts (Michael J. Totten, now of Pajamas Media is one, probably Michael Kelly who didn't make it past the initial assault in Iraq another) headed off for their various manly 'soldier of fortune' tests over the years, I wish he'd looked to Samantha Power. Having studied genocide in the 20th century, she opposed these actions. Almost anything is easy and inarguable when one is 'fortified.' Thought he was earning his Kipling Award instead of understanding that lots of 21 year-old kids with no alternatives would be standing in his stead. Rudyard Kipling redux in some sense, although Kipling's son had family 'honor' to fulfill. I doubt Hitchens' progeny are signed up for these tasks. And risks. But yes. RIP.

Driftglass had a good and kind post about this. And aren't I brave for wandering into this minefield? Tree tomorrow for us too Sir C.

[beckya57]

We're doing the tree thing tomorrow too. This has been a tumultuous holiday season in my group of friends and colleagues, and right now I'm profoundly grateful that we're all alive and well.

I'm no Hitchens admirer, and I thought even less of Kelly (I still remember a particularly vicious column about Gore); I know it's unkind to speak ill of the dead, so I'll stop there.

[Crissa]

All of mom's wrenches are missing from the garage, except the actual ratchets arms. All the car-sized ones and crescents are gone. She's rightly pissed, but I'm giving it a chance they were misplaced under a shelf when we moved things... Still, that's several hundred dollars (and about twenty pounds) of tools. I'd think her power tools would've been stolen before those, but it's hard to tell with thieves, they often steal crap that's shiny instead of what's actually expensive.

So I gave her Christmas present early: http://www.cooperhandtools.com/PDFs/rapidslide.pdf

[KN]

I've already said my piece about Hitchens in an earlier thread. I am assuming his doctors were forthright with him, so he was aware early on that he was doomed. As such I think he behaved pretty well. He's finished with this mess of a world now, lucky him. Luck to us all that we will come upon our natural end and not be caught up in an orgy of carnage because of some fool's delusions.

[kathy a.]

enthusiasm for that hideous war is not a strong selling point for clarity of thought. he did manage his illness with grace, though.

we did the tree last weekend. it still features a lot of kid-made ornaments, and a mish-mash of other things acquired over the years. the cats are delighted, having their own personal forest and some new toys.

i totally scored good relatives for christmas day -- my favorite cousin, his wife, and my fabulous aunt, plus my own kids and son's fabulous girlfriend! daughter will return from her internship in DC this week. we are going minimal on presents, but santa has some good stockings planned.

crissa, you're such a good daughter.

[nancy]

excuse me -- that would be 'less hubris/more consciousness'. theraflu fog at work and i will need another gallon of the stuff today. ugh. not a good time of year to be fogged in.

upside -- maybe the impending christmas tree allergy sniffles will go unnoticed.

[Crissa]

I think I'll mostly miss Hitchens because he won't have a chance to get more things right - his actions in the last few years I think showed he knew he was on the wrong side of some things, like feminism and equality.

But for the little things he got wrong, there are big things he got right, and loudly so. I liked that.

I wonder if we'll just lose argumentarians that don't lie, since we seem to have a slow evolution biased towards ones who do.

[nancy]

Crissa -- I have to ask since I've not been around these parts that long. What does Mom do with the wrenches?

Yes. Hitchens still had more to say, but I wanted to hear him reconsider his stance about invading a sovereign country. How, when and why? Burden of proof? A response to this I think merited his attention. As far as I know, that didn't happen. I wish it had.

[Crissa]

Mostly, they're leftovers from my father, who did various mechanical things. Right now, though, she's building one of those gym-in-a-chair doohickies for exercising. She's a bit of a do-it-yourselfer, as things go, even though she's not well read on how to do things. Read the manual all the way, but she gets it done.

She's not really an afficianado of new things, but every once in awhile I can find something that makes things alot easier. So like, she bought a tankless water-heater after I did, and even though the first installer set her house on fire (I just heard about that today) she really likes it. I'd have never gotten her to buy one /before/ I bought one myself. Same for the wrench.

Strangely, the 10" wrench was really hard to find - my local hardware store had to order them directly from Cooper.

[Tina]

This is a great article, and a great topic to explore. Thanks for sharing.

[Paula B]

tiny tina spammer

[Paula B]

This should be all anyone needs to know about Mitt Romney:

http://nyti.ms/uNxcH2

An image of a turkey vulture comes to mind.

[nancy]

And with this comment, our leather goods spammer goes into the deep six.

Too often I find I'd like to understand monetary policy better. This seemed an intriguing take at The American Scholar . 'How to Pay for What We Need'.

"The United States is not broke—and we should laugh at the delusion that we are. The potential for abundance is everywhere around us, but it stagnates for sheer lack of funding. We have contracted our nation’s power to produce and consume just to prove that we can live within our means. And that’s a formula for economic ruin. There are some (the economic historian Niall Ferguson, for instance) who think we ought to sell our public assets, like our interstate highways, to increase our nation’s stock of hard currency. That’s preposterous. There’s a better course of action once our citizens and leaders understand what money is, once they understand that hard currency—the Federal Reserve Note, for instance—is just a representation of a force that has been summoned by bankers out of nothing. We can summon it ourselves, and use the great power of the Federal Reserve—in partnership with Congress—to preempt the threat of inflation."

Any thoughts?

[oddjob]

You create money by promising to pay back borrowed money with interest. As weird as it is, that's more or less the truth.

The trick is not to promise to pay back so much interest that you can't do it when the time comes.

The "money" is more or less a numerical assessment of a certain set of human emotions involved in the transaction. That's why in both good times and bad the economy runs the risk of going off into a spiral that feeds back on itself (whether into excess speculation in good times or excess pessimism in bad ones). When FDR said the only thing Americans had to fear was fear itself, he was right. In that economic climate that was precisely the biggest problem. In bad times fear can feed on fear, making it more difficult to get to a recovery. In good times optimism can feed on optimism, making it more possible to get swept up in risk taking that will lead to large losses.

[Sir Charles]

nancy,

I am not realy sophisticated enough in these matters to give a good critique of the article. A couple of things strike me though -- one, that in fact the Federal Reserve has done just what the author is arguing for, by its program of quantitative easing and making huge amounts of credit available to banks. In effect, thaty have greatly increased the money supply. However, the problem in our economy right now is less the unavailability of credit than it is a lack of overall demand. Corporations are sitting on huge quantities of cash right now because they cannot see a profitable way to invest it.

The reason to support Krugman's call for Keynsian intervention is that it would allow for the creation of jobs through government expenditure, which in turn would stimulate demand in such a way as to encourage companies to invest in creating greater supply. In an environment in which people are living in fear for their jobs and in which large quantities of people don't have jobs, it is difficult to increase consumer spending.

[oddjob]

In another 2 or 3 election cycles the GOP pres. candidates will no longer have the luxury of answering this question this way.

Hat tip, TPM.

[oddjob]

Americans who voted Republican in the 2010 midterms? Congratulations, you elected lunatics to run the House of Representatives.