something about Christopher Hitchens' "No One Left To Lie To: The Triangulations of William Jefferson Clinton"

In The Trial of Henry Kissinger, Christopher Hitchens assailed the supposedly murderous ambition of one American politician. In No One Left To Lie To: The Triangulations of William Jefferson Clinton, he tackles another. But Clinton does not have as much blood on his hands. Instead, most of Hitchens' blitzkriegs target Clinton for being a peerlessly sleazy, corrupt, debased fraud. Clinton seduced and raped women, then hushed them with threats. He pretended to be a populist, but pushed policies that benefited the elite at the expense of the people, especially the disadvantaged. He played to racial fears and stereotypes, and still managed to gain favor among minority voters. He and his wife, Hillary, pushed healthcare reform that favored the top four or five insurance companies. He tapped soft money resources and intentionally confused those secretive donations and private funds with public financing so he could use all the money to achieve his ends. He ordered bombing campaigns in Sudan, Afghanistan, and Iraq to provide political cover during his impeachment. He told lie after lie after lie. Hitchens is merciless here, peppering his insults with wit and delivering this diatribe in pointed prose. His sourcing leaves something to be desired, but Hitchens fires off good arguments that should give pause to any Clinton supporter.


Note: 
I sometimes come across conspiratorial claims about Clinton (and his political machine) murdering opponents or anyone capable of implicating his family in a crime. There is no such content here.

something about "The Trial of Henry Kissinger" by Christopher Hitchens

British-American author, intellectual, and journalist Christopher Hitchens spent most of his political life on the left, but spent much of his later years defending neoconservatives. Ideologically he seemed to move from socialist to constitutional republican with Marxist sympathies. Despite this shift, Hitchens consistently attacked abuses of power. One great abuser, in Hitchens' view, was Henry Kissinger.

Kissinger served as National Security Advisor and Secretary of State under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. For Hitchens, Kissinger's Realpolitik approach to foreign policy led him eventually to violate international human rights law, the law of armed conflict, international criminal law, and US domestic law. In The Trial of Henry Kissinger, Hitchens seeks an indictment; in fact, he expects it.

Hitchens organizes his case against Kissinger neatly, addressing each crime separately, giving crisp narratives describing the immediate contexts, characters, and instances of moral failings for which Kissinger should be held accountable. Kissinger's six worst crimes as detailed by Hitchens: mass killings in Indochina (Vietnam and places nearby), killings and assassination in Bangladesh, coup and killings in Chile, coup and violence in Cyprus, genocide in East Timor, plotting to kidnap and/or kill a journalist in DC. Hitchens thinks Kissinger guilty of all this (and more) via his complicity or direct responsibility, depending on the case and how much we feel comfortable deducing from the evidence.

Before reaching a verdict about Kissinger's guilt, I'd argue a jurist would need at least two things: (1) an understanding of Realpolitik in light of American foreign policy, and (2) a briefing on the broader Cold War context in which much of these events occurred. But Hitchens doesn't give us this context; for him, this has nothing to do with either. This a time to exact punishment on a man who acted out of pure, cold ambition.

This is a short, fast read, and Hitchens' style goes down smoothly. A good read for a quick primer on some very dirty politics.

briefly about "Mortality" by Christopher Hitchens

British-American author and public intellectual Christopher Hitchens was diagnosed with cancer in the summer of 2010 and died December 2011. Mortality is his final work, a meandering collection of essays penned during his painful physical decline. Mentally and emotionally, however, judging by this book, Hitchens stayed the picture of health. In these pages he imparts the experience of dying slowly, offers up a couple memories and lessons learned, and renews his atheism. Hitchens subtly urges us to appreciate health--our speaking voice, in particular. And, about that health, he aims to disabuse us of the idea that what doesn't kill us makes us stronger. This last point is not to say that Hitchens regrets his steady flow of cigarettes, scotch, wine, and the late nights he spent with friends; it just seems that life--his especially--necessitates many loosely calculated risks. In the way of an end-of-life perspective, he writes,

So we are left with something quite unusual in the annals of unsentimental approaches to extinction: not the wish to die with dignity but the desire to have died.

about Jonah Lehrer, making meaning, not making sense

Recently, audiences were disappointed to learn that author-journalist Jonah Lehrer fabricated and misrepresented quotes and self-plagiarized. His crime spurred a couple soul-searching response pieces, most of which are summed in Salon's "Jonah Lehrer throws it all away". Here, Roxanne Gay hits a few angles and floats the hypothesis that a guy like Lehrer "fits the narrative we want about a boy genius" because he can "make us feel smarter for finally being able to understand the complexities of the human mind"; he is the product of, and answer to, "a cultural obsession with genius, a need to find beacons of greatness in an ordinary world".

Because there must be some deeper reason he did what he did. Symptomatic of some disease rooted in our culture and in our souls that caused this thing. This fucking thing.

Doesn't this kind of ponderous speculation, this pathologizing, just create, replicate, and self-serve our need for meaning and significance in this "ordinary world"? Or our need for a need for meaning? Couldn't it just be that Lehrer is dishonest? Or that maybe he got lazy? Or that he tried to produce too much too soon? Or maybe we don't know. And it doesn't matter.

Finding the work of guys like Jonah Lehrer and Malcolm Gladwell interesting is one thing, but to mistake these pop-sci/pop-soc writers for preeminent thinkers of relevance and genius undermines the fearlessness, moral courage, and intellectual vigor of the better writers (and artists) who act as critics, stewards, and producers of culture.

Note:

• I'm not convinced self-plagiarism is a thing or that, if it is, it should be so damnable an offense. But in Lehrer's case, if nothing else, it's sort of ironic considering his big theme was creativity.

A possible trend in journalism and writing

I bet critical obituaries will grow more common. The most recent high-profile example is Salon's "Andrew Breitbart, 1969-2012". This trend--if it is one--I first noticed after Christopher Hitchens died. Yes, some figures, like Hitchens and Breitbart, are more likely to draw fire after death, but now everything is politics. So look out--after a celebrity or politician of any stripe dies, writers will rush to publish something harsh. Doing so, they imagine, is just setting the record straight. (Weird how that runs parallel to current journalism's rampant fairness bias--reporters giving equal weight to opposing views when one side's argument doesn't deserve it.)

Something about Christopher Hitchens

For me he fell into that category of people who are impressive but not necessarily admirable. Although I generally disliked the piece as a whole, my favorite passage of his comes from the second installment of "On the Limits of Self-Improvement", his chronicling of a makeover. Here he describes getting a Brazilian wax:

Here’s what happens. You have to spread your knees as far apart as they will go, while keeping your feet together. In this “wide stance” position, which is disconcertingly like waiting to have your Pampers changed, you are painted with hot wax, to which strips are successively attached and then torn away. Not once, but many, many times. I had no idea it would be so excruciating. The combined effect was like being tortured for information that you do not possess, with intervals for a (incidentally very costly) sandpaper handjob. The thing is that, in order to rip, you have to grip. A point of leverage is required: a place that can be firmly gripped and pulled while the skin is tautened. Ms. Turlington doesn’t have this problem. The businesslike Senhora Padilha daubed away, took a purchase on the only available handhold, and then wrenched and wrenched again. The impression of being a huge baby was enhanced by the blizzards of talcum powder that followed each searing application. I swear that several times she soothingly said that I was being a brave little boy … Meanwhile, everything in the general area was fighting to retract itself inside my body.

That's laugh-out-loud funny to me.

Now he's dead so a lot of praise is being thrown his way--not necesarrily at him, but at his talent, wit, and powers of consumption. The best piece written about him ever, though, is this book review called "‘No Bullshit’ Bullshit". It isn't complimentary.

Notes:

I take issue with one point in Stefan Collini's review; he parenthetically writes,

It is interesting to note that Hitchens, loyal to aspects of the Trotskyism he has for the most part abandoned, always says Stalinism where most people would say Communism.

I'm not so sure Hitchens avoided the term "communism" because he had some affinity for it still. Rather, I like to think he recognized that we have never known a pure Communist system that wasn't just a front for a totalitarian government, and so he used (as many pundits do) the name of the fascist who ran the place.