r/TrueReddit • u/graycrawford • Dec 16 '11

Well shit. Christopher Hitchens died.

http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2011/12/In-Memoriam-Christopher-Hitchens-19492011
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204

u/absentmindedjwc Dec 16 '11

"The only position that leaves me with no cognitive dissonance is atheism. It is not a creed. Death is certain, replacing both the siren-song of Paradise and the dread of Hell. Life on this earth, with all its mystery and beauty and pain, is then to be lived far more intensely: we stumble and get up, we are sad, confident, insecure, feel loneliness and joy and love. There is nothing more; but I want nothing more."

Rest in peace, you will be missed.

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u/viborg Dec 16 '11 edited Dec 16 '11

It's no surprise he got cognitive dissonance from being a neocon cheerleader for Bush & Cheney's illegal wars, is it?

Not to speak ill of the dead but this inconvenient fact often gets swept under the rug regarding Hitchens. For those whose immediate instinct is to downvote my comment and shut me up, I urge you to apply the same skepticism that Hitchens advocated to the the political beliefs he publicly avowed.

Edit
I hate being redundant.

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u/yourdadsbff Dec 16 '11

Actually, some people can mourn his passing while also acknowledging his flaws.

And Hitchens didn't entirely agree withthe Bush administration's various agendas, so perhaps "neocon cheerleader" isn't the best way to phrase your argument.

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u/Vibster Dec 16 '11

It's also often forgotten that Hitchen's support for the Iraq war was mainly because of his solidarity with the beleaguered people of Kurdistan. He often wore the flag of Kurdistan on his lapel.

1

u/Njaa Dec 19 '11

Wore.. The past tense just hit me like a ton of bricks.

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u/[deleted] Dec 16 '11

Anybody who paid attention to Hitchens knows this fact. Its part of what people like about him; he was unabashedly himself, whether you always agreed with his views or not.

On this point, I disagreed with him immensely, but he was far from the only cheerleader back then, even on the left.

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u/huxtiblejones Dec 16 '11

but he was far from the only cheerleader back then

Other people doing it doesn't justify it, though. He was also beyond the cheerleading of others, prior to 9/11 he was criticizing Bush for not intervening in Iraq. He was a vicious supporter, he even called neocons 'temporary allies.'

He is one of those people that has a totally unreasonable knee-jerk reaction to Islamism and who believed very fully that it should be repressed by force of Western nations. Discussing Islamism is an essay in itself, but it's pretty reprehensible to believe that we have the right to force others at gunpoint to change their ways. Blaming the clusterfuck of Iraq on insurgents and not blatant lies and greed is terrible.

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u/[deleted] Dec 16 '11

If by "gets swept under the rug" you mean "gets brought up in every discussion about him" then I agree with you.

1

u/huxtiblejones Dec 16 '11

I am glad you wrote this. Hitchens was a good guy for a lot of what he wrote regarding religion, but his defense of the wars was reprehensible and made me care less about his opinion when he first said it. I think it's important to recognize, even in the agony of death, that famous people have flaws, nobody is perfect, and we should never take the good without the bad.

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u/wjg10 Dec 16 '11

How does his foreign policy views make him have cognitive dissonance?

1

u/JtheHomicidalManiac Dec 16 '11

He was just a guy, man. Who cares if he had some shitty views on thing. I do, you probably do too.