Sitting behind his faithless blind and throwing "charlatan" darts at almost anyone within an arm's throw of 'religion', Chris Hitchens somehow manages to say a lot without really concluding anything.
In three parts:
1. The Bright Lights
He seems to find great theater that Obama was smart enough to know that Wright wouldn't withstand the scrutiny of our hypocritical public purity pedestals. Unless one is part of a true political dynasty, a clan that has lived life with the intension of having every cross-section of it dissected by the demanding public eye, I suspect everyone "authentic" would find at least one person of their acquaintance not up to full muster.
The implied notion that Wright represents an astonishingly open "dirty little secret" is hardly a case the Hitch has time to make or prove, sadly, relying instead on everyone else sharing his view of what "wicked" amounts to in life.
2. A fraud
He finds Obama a near fraud in expounding his faith. Obama is indicted for succumbing to pressure to get some churchin' up. It was all expediency, since Hitchens cannot imagine any other outcome.
Hitchens has no conclusions about why these pressures or perceptions existed, or whether they matured in a way that doesn't fit with his theory. All he's got is a good first line to a paragraph, but not the rest of the book or chapter, right?
3. Conspiracy is like religion
By Hitchens, we need look no further than AIDS and drugs to discover that religion is for dolts and that makes Obama "blind".
Hitch's own "breviary" chant on drug policy in America is breathtakingly circumscribed. He seems willfully ignorant that there is a very real racial divide in America in perceptions about government drug policy.
Frankly, how far a line is it from unimaginably monstrous indifference of the majority to actually positing conspiratorial or self-serving motives? During the late 80s, in America, it was possible to believe that some folks were just content to let AIDS victims be served their fate. Many people rightly wondered whether "America", to broad stroke a catch-all term for 'the majority', would have responded differently, if it weren't gays who were among the first wave to die.
What's more, I do not have a reference, but I believe there is some evidence that certain elements of the mob targeted the black community for drug trafficking in the past. Not all 'conspiracy', either express or tacit, is without merit.
There is more to layer in. How many people have been put in jail or prosecuted and what has been the cost of Sarbannes-Oxley? A dozen? Yet, compare the shrill intensity of opposition to that law - one that "criminalized" white collar folks in new ways - to the labored intensity of the debate over drug policy, enforcement, and laws, i.e. policies that criminalize a large portion of the populace that may or may not have the 'equal opportunity' in America (or, if not 'equal opportunity', then near zero margin for failure).
Factually incorrect assertions are, of course, insupportable, but the general idea that any given minority might be anxious about the degree to which the majority recognizes that it is its brother's keeper hardly sum to mere "tribalism".
In conclusion, Hitch warns us that all BO's weaknesses are yet to be revealed. Okay. Put another way, vote for people who promise to get things done and problems fixed, not for "great men", i.e. vote progressive and keep all politicians accountable.
That's sound advice, but it doesn't need to be rooted in Jeremiah Wright to have a foundation. In fact, Hitchen's brand of anti-clerical punching-for-Truth is probably most usefully focused on those, perhaps like Dobson, who have a will to establish power, rather than a desire to empower individuals.
Thursday, March 27, 2008
Hitchen's Faithless Blind
