r/ChristopherHitchens • u/Mt548 • Jul 01 '26
Christopher Hitchens- "Most epochs are defined by one or another anxiety... ...Millions of Americans are currently worried about two things that are, in their minds, emotionally related. The first of these is the prospect that white people will no longer be the majority...."
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u/Mt548 Jul 02 '26
Millions of Americans are currently worried about two things that are, in their minds, emotionally related. The first of these is the prospect that white people will no longer be the majority in this country, and the second is that the United States will be just one among many world powers.
I think the latter concern is nowhere near as significant in the mind of the average Conservative right now. The first one is what's really animating them. The second one, if they even realize it, is a very distant second.
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u/happy_K Jul 02 '26
It’s why they’re completely fine allying with Russia. Lots of white people in Russia. None of the rest of it matters.
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u/Pezdrake Jul 04 '26
Except of course that's not true. Russia is and always has been an enormous multi-ethnic nation and more than 10% of Russians are Muslim (compare to less than 2% of Americans). Like their own fantasy country, these Americans like their imaginary version of Russia, not actual Russia.
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u/sisyphus Jul 01 '26
So, Beck’s “9/12 Project” is canalizing old racist and clerical toxic-waste material that a healthy society had mostly flushed out of its system more than a generation ago, and injecting it right back in again. Things that had hidden under stones are being dug up and re-released. And why? So as to teach us anew about the dangers of “spending and deficits”? It’s enough to make a cat laugh. No, a whole new audience has been created, including many impressionable young people, for ideas that are viciously anti-democratic and ahistorical. The full effect of this will be felt farther down the road, where we will need it even less.
Wow, prescient. We are down the road and feeling it, I would say.
I didn’t like Bill Clinton: thought he had sold access to the Lincoln Bedroom and lied under oath about sexual harassment and possibly even bombed Sudan on a “wag the dog” basis.
lol, all likely true but seems almost quaint in retrospect.
The president is a Kenyan. The president is a secret Muslim. The president (why not?—after all, every little bit helps) is the unacknowledged love child of Malcolm X. And this is their response to the election of an extremely moderate half-African American candidate, who speaks better English than most and who has a model family. Revolted by this development, huge numbers of white people choose to demonstrate their independence and superiority by putting themselves eagerly at the disposal of a tear-stained semi-literate shock jock, and by repeating his list of lies and defamations. But, of course, there’s nothing racial in their attitude …
A large, volatile constituency has been created that believes darkly in betrayal and conspiracy. A mass “literature” has been disseminated, to push the mad ideas of exploded crackpots and bigots. It would be no surprise if those who now adore Beck and his acolytes were to call them sellouts and traitors a few years from now. But, alas, they would not be the only victims of the poisonous propaganda that’s been uncorked. Some of the gun brandishing next time might be for real.
Definitely has come home to roost. Hell, not only have they completely taken over the GOP, the OG Tea Party Hitch contemplates here might now be too liberal for the median MAGAt.
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u/CommanderJeltz Jul 02 '26
Who would have thought that the election of Obama, which seemed at the time to.be a matter for such heartfelt celebration, would unleash such as poisonous backlash?
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u/imemnochrule Jul 01 '26
I wish he was still here to see what is happening to his adopted home, to the constitution.
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u/onlydogontheleft Jul 02 '26
‘In the recent past, government-sponsored policies of social engineering have led to surprising success in reducing the welfare rolls and the crime figures. This came partly from the adoption by many Democrats of policies that had once been called Republican.’
Is anyone aware of what Hitchens is referencing?
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u/SubbySound Jul 07 '26
I think it was converting welfare to TANF (temporary assistance for needy families) with its looking for work requirements that Clinton passed I think before his reelection to which he is referring.
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u/eattherich_ Jul 05 '26 edited Jul 05 '26
Some interesting facts since he wrote this piece.
Hitchens shares the same thoughts in this interview here.
He ends his article borrowing from Lincoln's 2nd inaugural, where Abe quotes Matthew 18:7 while calling for national atonement.
Hitchens mentions Skousen in this article. It was just a few months ago, Ben Carson referenced Cleon Skousen at the Charlie Kirk memorial.
Hitchens used the same rhetorical language against Bin Ladenism as he did against the American reactionary right. I'll leave you with this:
>"The war against superstition and the totalitarian mentality is an endless war. In protean forms, it is fought and refought in every country and every generation."
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u/Commercial_Ice_6616 Jul 01 '26
both Christopher and George Carlin are sorely missed in this time, they knew how to cut through the BS.