Since discovering the writings of Christopher Hitchens in
the pages of The Nation (before he
had a post 9/11 hissyfit and stomped off its pages) many years ago, I’ve had an
odd relationship with him as a reader, mixed with admiration and disappointment.
Given his passing, I’ve found myself revisiting these
feelings, and offer the following thoughts for whatever they might be worth . .
.
First, cancer can suck it.
Second, seriously, cancer can suck it. Hard.
Third, my ambivalent feelings about Hitchens come in part
from the mixed bag of his political positions.
Yes, Kissinger did criminal things.
But the man who made the case against Kissinger turns around and
supports an illegal and immoral war in Iraq?
Yes, waterboarding is obviously torture.
But Bush deserved reelection?
That, however, is garden-variety differences in opinion on
specific issues. I feel a bit more
conflicted about Hitchens because (I think) of a deeper disconnect. On one hand, I admire his rhetorical skill
greatly, as well as his willingness to take on conventional wisdom. But on the other, I found myself turned off
by what I felt was too often a boorish and bullying style when he turned his
sites on targets that, while perhaps in need of criticism, also called for a
more nuanced approach than Hitchens was willing or able to deliver.
Take, for example, his infamous skewering
of Mother Teresa. On one hand, it’s
probably good to cast a skeptical eye on figures in society who seem beyond
reproach and ask if our unqualified praise is merited. Is it possible that, in celebrating the
alleged virtues of poverty and championing policies of the Catholic Church
(e.g. no contraception), Mother Theresa at times did and said things that might
have run counter to her professed mission to help the poor? I don’t know, but it’s a question worth
asking. On the other hand, to lambaste
the woman as a “fanatic, fundamentalist, and a fraud” is like lighting a candle
with a flamethrower: obscene overkill lacking any careful use of that quality
Hitchens professed be committed to—reason.
It was that needlessly bombastic, pugilistic rhetorical
style that made me feel a bit uncomfortable even when I found myself in general
agreement with him. It’s also what made
his career, so I can’t say that he would have been better off taking a more
nuanced approach to his topics, but I felt he sometimes gave “reason” and “intellect”
a bad name by wielding them like a Bowie knife rather than a scalpel.
When turned against those with status and power, Hitchens’
sharp-bladed wit could make him a rhetorical freedom fighter. But when used against those without, it could
be bullying plain and simple. The latter
was on inarticulate display when he loutishly flipped off the
audience on Bill Maher’s television show twice because they had the
temerity disagree with him. And like
most bullies, Hitchens seems to have had an utter inability to admit he was
wrong. In that same Maher telecast, he
made the risible claim that al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein had some sort of
working relationship. The fact that the
war in Iraq had proved to be a disaster based on false premises was not an
occasion for him to rethink his position, but to double-down on his claims to
infallible wisdom, to the point of simply lying to cover the fact that he was obviously
and horrifically wrong.
Hitchens’ passionate (fundamentalist?) atheism also revealed
this tendency to simplify a complex issue for the sake of skewering
others. Yes, certainly fundamentalists
of a variety of religious stripes are largely ignorant and all too happy to
dehumanize and persecute those they deem heretical. But to call religion in general the “sleep of
reason” is to betray a colossal ignorance of huge swaths of intellectual
history (See: Aquinas, Thomas).
Contrary to Hitchens’ claims that religion has been the
primary cause of inhumanity and misery in human history, I’d suggest that the
true culprit is utter conviction in one’s own certainty. True, religion is the most obvious place to
find this enemy of basic humaneness in its undiluted form, but unquestioning certitude
is not a necessary component of religious belief. Nor is religion the only place to find
it. People have demonstrated equal
devotion to utterly non-spiritual beliefs and entities (the “People,” the “Worker,”
the “Ubermensch,” etc.) with equally appalling results. Even reason itself cannot ‘scape a whipping. Like religion, reason can be, and often has
been, used clumsily, wrongly, and contradictorily to excuse all manner of
evils.
To me, Hitchens often seemed to partake in the same sins he
so effectively pointed out in others. He
derided those who claim to have absolute metaphysical knowledge, but claimed
just such knowledge for himself in his evangelical atheism. He rightly nailed to the wall those who saw
nothing wrong with inflicting death and destruction on innocents for the sake
of realpolitik, but championed just
such action himself in the case of Iraq.
He championed “reason” as a God-term, but often showed an inability or
unwillingness to examine issues with the degree of subtlety reason demands.
But such are contrarians, of which Hitchens was certainly
one. We probably need such folk, in all
their self-contradictory, self-satisfied pugnacity. And God knows (said this agnostic) that we
need more good writers of Hitchens’ large caliber.
It’s just a shame that such qualities often bring with them a
degree of obnoxiousness and bullying aggression that diminishes the many
positive qualities that folks like Hitchens possess.
But maybe, in a time when critical and creative thinking is
denounced as heretical or treasonous, and demonstrating an ability to
communicate above a sixth-grade-level is derided as “elitism,” we are beggars
who shouldn’t be choosers.
And we are certainly the poorer in many ways for Hitchens’
passing.
Peace.
No comments:
Post a Comment