I Miss Christopher Hitchens

I miss Christopher Hitchens.

Though we lived in the same neighborhood I never had the privilege of meeting him. Maybe that’s okay, sometimes the person can’t live up to the image we have of them.

I was drawn to his writing–a wordsmith with few peers. Reading one of his essays was like hearing an infectious tune on the radio. The melody is so strong that the words don’t matter. That’s what first drew me in. I didn’t care so much what he said, it was the way he said it. Even if I vehemently disagreed with his point, the reading was always a pleasure.

As I learned more about his worldview, I was stumped. How does one go from an avowed Trotsky loving, card carrying socialist to an alleged bloodthirsty, imperialist neocon?

How exactly does that crow fly from Point A to Point B?

He referred to himself always as a Leftist, with a capital L. He felt the American moniker “liberal” was too flimsy a label for his doing.

I just finished Hitch-22, which as the name suggests is a memoir of his life and internal conflict.

To read Hitchens is to sip a perfectly chilled and shaken, dry martini—in a Tsunami. You can’t just have a taste, you get the whole Magilla.His prose strikes the reader like poetry fired from an AK-47.

To say his literary knowledge is powerful is the same as saying Beethoven could carry a tune. His understanding of global politics is first hand, not derived from the writing of modern journalists in the comfort of one’s living room.

His penchant was not “learning so as to absorb,” it was “learning so as to challenge.” He challenged the thinking of colleagues, co-workers, world leaders, subject matter experts, and common wisdom like that unarmed, solitary Tiananmen Square protestor staring down a Chinese infantry tank. That was his style. Many loved to watch it in action; few wanted to be seated in the military tank.

He was a child of the 60’s, which explains a lot to a child of the 70’s. He did the obligatory organizing of workers, sat in on protests, spouted from the microphone on a soapbox in multiple locations on Oxford’s campus. He probably even owned some tie dyed clothing. But he needed to be closer to the action.

A confirmed socialist, he needed to be where the uprisings were taking place. So he traveled to Cuba in the early days of the Castro revolution in search of the perfect socialist system. It was not as he had hoped it could be, but he held the faith.

He traveled to the front lines of the Middle East, to war torn Northern Ireland, to the Balkans, to Iraq, to Afghanistan, to Poland. If there was an uprising (or the social converse), he had to be there to see it first-hand.

His awakening, if there is said to be one, was standing on the hillside with a band of Kurdish rebels, and casting eyes down on the mass graves which were evidence that one of Saddam’s primary lunatics, Chemical Ali, had recently made a drive by.

Many of his former friendswould say he betrayed his Leftist beliefs and became a war crazed Neo-con. Hitchens himself would say, he didn’t leave the Left, the Left left him. (Try saying that three times quickly).

As an outsider in both time and place, I would contend that he didn’t change. If anything his beliefs were as strong as ever, his confidence in tactics changed.

It is one thing to stage protests and mix it up with Bobbies armed with nightsticks. Such is the lore of leftist hero making. It is a whole other enchilada to stand unarmed with protest signs against militant goons in body armor with automatic weapons that they were, shall we say, dying to use.

His belief in the common man, socialist ideals didn’t change I would argue, the response to the enemy changed. And here’s the point. If you attack unrighteousness from the bottom up, you are a Leftist. If you attack unrighteousness from the top down, you are a Neo-con. For Hitchens’ support of the war in Iraq, he was pronounced the latter and rebuffed by his former comrades in arms.

If he became the slightest bit tarnished in his Leftist beliefs it was this. When the revolution ended, the leadership vacuum sucked in those who, well, sucked.  The leadership regimes, like Castro, like Hussein, like Stalin, like Arafat made the common man’s life much worse than the original inciting events. Thus died the cause, thus died the dream for the common man.

Now, how the hell does one reverse the damage done? Hitchens was to quote that of all revolutions, the American Revolution was the only one that turned out okay.

Of course I’m being too simplistic.Fine. But I still miss him. I miss the words he could put on a page. He could make you laugh, scoff, pull out your hair, but at the end, you simply wished he would go on.

Selfishly, I thought he always would.

To read Hitch-22 is to hear the ice cubes clinking in the single malt, to smell the backdraft of cigarette smoke, to hear words spoken and juxtaposed in a manner that hip checked your intellect and your passions.

No small feat.

More frequently than not, I disagreed with him topic by topic, but he made me think. He made me challenge my beliefs. He taught me that properly arranged words on a page can strike the brain like a symphony or a jazz quartet or a solitary six string guitar.

Not many writers can do that or ever will again.

I miss Christopher Hitchens.