First off, this entry is completely unorganized and boring. So read on at your own risk:
In recent weeks, between getting married and moving in the Russians, I have been reading some really interesting stuff.
It started with an interest in Richard Feynman and his travels to Tuva, and then I read a book about Einstein's brain that my brother gave me. This all culminated and withstood a resurgence of Russian history by way of Orlando Figes and
The People's Tragedy, and has emerged in
American Prometheus, a history of Robert Oppenheimer, written by Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin.
Anyway, in an effort to update this blog I will discuss some of this here. The book on Oppenheimer has challenged me to reassess the politics of today as we trudge through this war in Iraq, heading toward a new political season of elections, promises, and pundits. I am a political junky and look forward to the days approaching. I am also interested in our subversive government and the power of the Bush/Cheney junta. These are very interesting and terrifying times. Nobody can be trusted. The Bush regime has infected the American people with a scourge of political abuses and lies. An unfocused war with seemingly no end in sight. And yet Bush dressed up in flight garb on an aircraft carrier that day long ago, declaring victory and "mission accomplished." A bit premature? All of this has been said before, but I am constantly amazed how little the American public speaks up, out, or at all. Nothing but silence as we continue this war fueled by fear and lies; and against a phantasmagoria that has no face or central identity. Hatred is invisible. It exists everywhere and nowhere. We cannot fight it with linear tactics. The complexities of this age are astounding.
This brings me to three things: Robert Oppenheimer, Tom Paine, and
Christopher Hitchens.
All are brilliant thinkers (even Hitch's article in Vanity Fair on the history of the blow job was really, really interesting...believe me!). And all live(d) in extraordinary times. Thus I dig what they do. I have used Tom Paine in the classroom in an effort to challenge student perceptions by presenting ideas regarding responsibility, citizenship, and democracy. After all, as Jill Lepore writes in this months New Yorker, Tom Paine's
Common Sense would "convince the American people of what more than a decade of taxes and nearly a year of war had not: that it was nothing less than their destiny to declare independence from Britian." Not bad for a radical.
But behind the presence of Oppenheimer, Paine, and Hitchens, it is their ideas that explode like bombs. And it is their ideas which make them targets to a larger populace. I do not pretend to align Hitchens with Paine and Oppenheimer’s accomplishments and contributions, but I do align the originality of their thoughts.
This brings me to the question of Christopher Hitchens. Ever since my brother turned me onto Hitchens's
Letters to a Young Contrarian I have been interested in his work and ideas as they drastically change and challenge those who read and know him. He was once a scrapper for the Left and now a strong supporter of the Bush regime and the war in Iraq. He is now one of the only right wing journalists I read and respect. He has clarity, intelligence, and a gift for writing arguments. What is challenging, for me, is tracing the shifting thoughts of Hitchens while understanding my own. It seems that Hitchens jumped ship in order to sell books. I know this is cynical, but even though I enjoy his work immensly, he seems to be an opportunist. Ian Parker nails it right when he writes, “did Hitchens maintain high principles while the left drifted from him, or did he lose himself in vanity and ambition?” I do not praise the right nor support it, but have moved further and further to a center, independent ground where there are no walls of identity to any party. Democrats are a pathetic party with no center. The only chance they have is in Obama and the fall from grace the Republicans have been facing in the last half year. But these are just idle musings. So how does one go about embracing such a monolithic GOP? To complicate the Hitchens’ question even further, and to show you what a cool writer he is, I will quote at length from
Letters to a Young Contrarian:
"There is a saying from Roman antiquity: "Fiat justitia - ruat caelum"; "Do justice, and let the skies fall." In every epoch, there have been those to argue that "greater" goods, such as tribal solidarity or social cohesion, take precedence over justice. It is supposed to be an axiom of "western" civilization that the individual, or the truth, may not be sacrificed to hypothetical benefits such as "order". But such immolations have in fact been common. Zola could be the pattern for any serious and humanistic radical, because he not only asserted the inalienable rights of the individual, but generalized his assault to encompass the vile roles played by clericalism, racial hatred, militarism and the fetishisation of "the nation". His caustic and brilliant epistolary campaign of 1897-8 may be read as a curtain-raiser for most of the great contests that roiled the coming 20th century . . .
I think often of my late friend Ron Ridenhour, who became briefly famous when, as a service-man in Vietnam, he exposed the evidence of the hideous massacre of the villagers at My Lai in March 1968. One of the hardest things for anyone to face is the conclusion that his or her "own" side is in the wrong when engaged in a war. The pressure to keep silent and be a "team player" is reinforceable by the accusations of cowardice or treachery that will swiftly be made against dissenters. Sinister phrases of coercion, such as "stabbing in the back" or "giving ammunition to the enemy" have their origin in this dilemma and are always available to help compel unanimity.
I have had the privilege of meeting a number of brave dissidents in many and various societies. Frequently, they can trace their careers to an incident in early life where they felt obliged to take a stand. Sometimes, too, a precept is offered and takes root. Bertrand Russell records in his autobiography that his Puritan grandmother "gave me a Bible with her favourite texts written on the fly-leaf. Among these was 'Thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil.' Her emphasis upon this text led me in later life to be not afraid of belonging to small minorities." It's affecting to find the future hammer of the Christians being "confirmed" in this way.
There is good reason to think that such reactions arise from something innate rather than something inculcated: Nickleby doesn't know until the moment of the crisis that he is going to stick up for poor Smike. Noam Chomsky recalls hearing of the obliteration of Hiroshima as a young man, and experiencing a need for solitude because there was nobody he felt he could talk to. It may be that you, my dear X, recognize something of yourself in these instances; a disposition to resistance, however slight, against arbitrary authority or witless mass opinion, or a thrill of recognition when you encounter some well-wrought phrase from a free intelligence.
Do bear in mind that the cynics have a point, of a sort, when they speak of the "professional nay-sayer". To be in opposition is not to be a nihilist. And there is no decent or charted way of making a living at it. It is something you are, and not something you do."
