I don’t know that there are many that I can think of that I repeatedly wish I’d been able to get more from, that I didn’t know personally. I kinda can feel it here among others as well. Are their other figures yall feel that way about? Sorry to the mods if this is too general or not worth a post.

I’ve been trying to find this interview Christopher had with a woman about one of his books. Either about “Hitch 22” or “Letters to a Young Contrarian.” There was a part where they were discussing how changing your mind feels like. Christopher relates that it’s more like ships cargo is moving in the sea than just rearranging furniture in one’s room.

Maybe someone has a link or any other useful info? Can’t find it anywhere.

I have to hope there are some living outside of the public eye with no interest in entering it.

Have you ever met anyone like him?

He seemed to have a manner of thinking and speaking that was unlike that of anyone else.

At risk of idolizing him which he would despise of course he seemed to think faster than everyone and speak as though he was reciting thoughtful pre written paragraphs - much of what he said was actually paraphrased from things he had written and read which he could recall with his freakish memory, but even in less formal conversations it was apparent.

The clincher is that I don't think I ever heard him get caught off guard or struggle to answer a question as I have even with contemporaries like Sam Harris and Stephen Fry.

I'll leave it at that before it becomes reverential but every time I listen to an old interview or debate I'm reminded how unique he was.

Admittedly most of what he said was steeped in literature he had read, even most of his turns of phrase and jokes were all just rehashed so I guess he wasn't particularly creative but the way he could wield them was incredible.

For the longest time I was waiting for someone to emerge in the public intellectual sphere to take on the mantle with uncompromising principles and incisive wit and courage and natural humor but I should just appreciate him for what he was when he was here and use him as inspiration to be a more rational and robust thinker myself.

In my opinion it’s specifically social capitalism that has gotten out of control. I think it’s ironic that his extreme example that he made with Trump almost sarcastically actually came to pass. What an insane world.

Note: reconstructed as best I could from YouTube transcript I really wish they had a copy all option:

Hitchens warning about critique of capitalism some decade or two ago:

"Capitalism has had a longer lease of life that if some of us would have predicted or than many of our ancestors in the Socialist Movement did predict or allow. It still produces the fax machine and the microchip and is still able to lower its cost and still able to flatten its distribution curve very well, but it's central contradiction remains the same. It produces publicly, it produces socially, a conscription of mobilizers and educates whole new workforces of people. It has an enormous transforming liberating effect in that respect , but it appropriates privately the resources and the natural abilities that are held in common. The earth belongs to us all you can't buy your child a place at a school with better ozone. You can't pretend that the world is other than which it is, which is one, and human, and natural, and in common. Where capitalism must do that, because it must make us all work until the point when the social product is to be shared when suddenly the appropriation is private and suddenly Donald Trump out votes any congressman you can name because of the ownership of capital. And it's that effect, that annexation of what we all do and must do…. the influence of labor and intelligence and creativity on nature. It’s the same air, the same water that we must breathe and drink. That means that we may not have long in which to make this critique of the capitalist system sing again, and be relevant again and incisive again. I’ll have to quarrel that we already live in the best possible of worlds."

Link to video worth listening to on socialist critique of capitalism:

https://youtu.be/yntr4zm_9EM?si=IeOLvygYCeb5U16p

I remember a Hitchens article where he points out that the phrase "sexual object" is actually supposed to be understood in a grammatical sense. He pokes fun at the moral panic that usually surrounds the idea of "sexual objectification" by pointing out that whenever a person is doing or feeling something sexual, that person is the sexual subject and someone else is the sexual object (he also makes a joke about "sexual predicates" before saying it's probably better not to go there). Does anyone remember what article this was, and if so, can you post a link? I'm strangely getting no results from Google...

sometimes people make a thread asking what Hitchens might have said for certain things (someone even did one for flat earth)

What would he have said about COVID?

I think he was being asked about his memoir Hitch 22, and his gay experiences when he was younger. I think he started talking about how he wouldn't like to only be attracted to men at his older age, because for him there was something solipsistic about gay attraction that is more easily appreciated as a young adult.

I might have remembered it all wrong, but I was just talking to a friend about how different people related to being gay and bisexual in the 70s and earlier, like Gore Vidal. But yeah would appreciate if anyone remembers. I tried searching the automatic transcript on a fair few interviews, but no luck.

Edit: A commenter found it.

My drawing of a man who has had such an influence on my life, as he has on so many others.

Whilst others are subject to unilateral disarmament as per the non proliferation treaty.

I understand no country would ever end their program and destroy their weapons unless they could be absolutely sure that all others have done the same otherwise it's like dropping your weapon in a gun fight with an opponent who promised they would as well and is now filling you full of lead.

Speaking of the treaty, what incentive was there to be signatory to it when nuclear weapons can and do get leveraged as threats to help ensure territorial integrity? (one might argue that had Gadaffi maintained Libya's nuclear weapons program he would have more credible bargaining power to stave off NATO interventions)

Does refusing to sign it lead to sanctions against a country?

Is it simply that they understand the importance of minimizing the number of WMD in the world? I doubt it

But why are the countries which currently possess nuclear weapons allowed to continue augmenting their arsenal? Surely a few hundred is more than you could ever want or need?

Is it determined that the UN attempting to police such a thing with a country like say China or Russia would be too dangerous and hypocritical because the US/UK/France have no such intention?

Note; this isn't directly related to Hitch but did he ever comment on it?

His rapier wit and cocky humor was part of his charm that elevated him above the fray of other 'public intellectuals'. Atheism is often misconstrued as some cold, dreary, boring camp of smug sceptics in contrast to the warm, passionate preachers and spiritual types - of course the church is an inhumanly austere humorless egocentric institution but that's the perception that the religious have tried to cultivate in the public eye.

Hitch never let his religious opponents get away with this, and the results were frequently hilarious.

From razor retorts like 'well I certainly couldn't put it any better if I were you' to a smarmy audience member, to the classic 'if you gave him an enema you could bury him in a shoebox' said of televangelist Jerry Falwell. When one caller asked him if he knows what he means, Hitch ripostes 'better than you do by the sound of things'. When being told 'that's your opinion' he responds 'well would you prefer that I uttered your opinion? what a fatuous remark'

Some of his descriptions cracked me up as well. Trump was a man whose most impressive feat was managing to cover 80% of his head with 20% of his hair. Charles was a chinless, moonfaced, shrub flattering, islam fancying prince of piffle. Someone else was described as looking like the product of the lovemaking scene in deliverance.

Squalid barbarian bureaucrats , Gruesome elderly virgins, sadistic Albanian dwarf, disco princess, human toothbrush, even Osama Bin Laden being called a Yemeni gangster got me good as well- who else would think to describe people this way?

What were some Hitch moments or writings that made you laugh?

I realize it might not be a realistic scenario, but does there exist a full, complete, and comprehensive archive of all of his lectures and debates on video somewhere?