RIP Christopher Hitchens
I was going to keep my mouth shut, but the hagiography is making me hurl. Yes, he was a good writer. Yes, when he was young he seemed to want atrocities to stop. After 9/11, however, he realized that people like him could die senselessly and became an apologist for an unprovoked war (the same war crime the US hung Germans for) and for torture. Atrocities were ok to protect lily-livered upper class white people like himself.
Christopher Hitchens helped make the world you live in, the one most of my readers spend time complaining about. As a prominent ex-lefty he was very useful to the powers that be in excusing their policies.
Also a quick note to my atheist friends. Because someone is an atheist does not mean they are in any way, shape or form a good person or someone who has made the world a better place. Richard Dawkins is a noxious human being and was before he defended an inappropriate pass. Hitchens was a war crimes apologist.
If there is life after death, I hope Hitchens is treated kindly, because I don’t believe in torture. But for the last 10 years of his life he was a profoundly bad man.