1) buy a house in [Tel Aviv, Israel], + live in it, permanently/with permanent status…for the next 10 years,

and THEN [ponder his opinons]…after he has lived in Tel Aviv…[with the shooting war happening between the Israeli military and the Hamas, terrorist group] around him,

and THEN, 2) tell us [what] he thinks the Israeli government, and the Israeli military [should do]…to protect all of [the Israeli citizens, and the non-citizens], who are living in Israel.

Do you think that he’ll take up that challenge?

I doubt that his [current views on this war] would last for four days.

After living in that war, for just a week- he would probably be asking for a MILLION tanks, and an army the size of China’s army, to come and defend him.

The ones who funded the wuhan lab and then pushed lockdowns who make crimethink a reality maybe the village from the prisoner is more apt an analogy

Yes i took strong exception to hitchens making excuses for the comandante as with the irish revolutionaries

Labour was part of the technocratic movement chsmpioned by wells and shaw

@Neo

I did not focus as much on it because history, politics, and war are more of my wheelhouses and were more cogent to the point of the essay, but…

It is as if the fire brigade went about starting fires.

Of course, almost any competent fire brigade or warden would tell you that there ARE times when you want the fire brigade to go about starting fires.

https://www.qtacfire.com/blog/what-is-a-control-burn-why-is-it-a-firefighting-technique

https://dnr.illinois.gov/content/dam/soi/en/web/dnr/conservation/crep/documents/other-firebreaks-prescribedburns.pdf

Whether it is doing a burn to remove a lot of the deadwood and combustibles, or doing it to try and pre-emptily contain a fire. It was a trite and lazy analogy, but even as a lazy analogy it falls flat on its face. And the fact that Peter did not know this is all the more jarring.

One issue I do pride Peter on and criticize Christopher on was the latter’s romanticism and whitewashing when it came to anti-Western totalitarian savages, so long as they were of the “Right” shade of identity and politics. Be Red and “Progressive” enough and he would defend you to the end, most famously with the Viet Cong. That he never seemed to have drawn the connection others correctly did to modern Islamism is a grave flaw in his judgement. Sure, I imagine we all have them in our world view, but on this issue it is even harder to defend.

All fair points, but I do think at a minimum the costs of the wars was a major contributing factor to the decline of the Empire. In particular it made Britain financially dependent on many of its colonies and dominions, and that made it much harder and ultimately untenable to hold onto India. Likewise the manpower losses, which were absolutely devastating and utterly scarred British demographics and psychology (and probably led to the rise of Labour and its feel good Cradle to Grave poison).

Also I’d argue war reconstruction wasn’t all over in the Communist Space of Eastern Europe, it’s just that the regime said “Good Enough” and pushed things in other directions, leaving some lasting holes such as Vistula rehabbing to rot. But the British certainly had one of the absolute worst post-WWII recoveries.

Actually, both Hitchens brothers learned they were 1/32 Jewish, at least according to Peter’s Wiki page:

Hitchens was brought up in the Christian faith and attended Christian boarding schools but became an atheist, beginning to leave his faith at 15. He returned to church later in life, and is now an Anglican and a member of the Church of England.

Hitchens has Jewish descent via his maternal grandmother, a daughter of Polish Jewish migrants. His grandmother revealed this fact upon meeting his wife Eve Ross. Though his brother Christopher was quick to embrace his Jewish identity following the principle of matrilineal descent, Peter noted that they were only one-32nd Jewish by descent and has not identified as Jewish himself.

I find this very odd, because if the Hitchens brothers’ grandmother was the daughter of 2 Jews, their grandmother would be 100% Jewish and they would both be 1/4 Jewish, as you write. At any rate, whether 1/32 or 1/4, Christopher was more into being Jewish and Peter is not. On the other hand, despite what I call Peter’s “stupid” point of view in the body of this post, Peter is far more kind to Israel than Christopher was. As an atheist, Christopher rejected the religious Jewish claim to Israel – thinking I guess that was the main claim or even the only basis of the claim, which it definitely is not. (I could go into that, too, but it would be a long long post). He remained true to his leftist roots in siding with the Palestinians for the most part. Of course, he didn’t live long enough to see 10/7. So I don’t know whether that would have mattered to him or not.

No, I don’t assume he could have done better. I am saying that his errors are so elementary that he should have done better.

Yes, we’re all flawed human beings. But I find his errors in these cases to be especially egregious. Are they cognitive, emotional, or what? I don’t know. I’d need to know him better – really well – to know that. But it isn’t of great import to me when I call his expressed ideas stupid.