Twenty-one minutes

I long ago stopped suggesting that people read books that I have read – why would they anyway? There’s an element of “should” in there, as if one person’s work has more merit than others based on my judgment which must therefore be superior to that of others. There is an objective reality and we are all trying to find it in some fashion, but our own view of that reality is deeply mired in our own emotions and values. It’s difficult, takes time and effort, and each person’s path and effort produces a different outlook. Some are worthy, others nonsensical.

With that in mind, I humbly suggest that the reader might enjoy the podcast linked here – a twenty-one minute lecture by the late Christopher Hitchens. You get to use your own judgment about the worth of his words. My only thoughts are that the man had a well-developed mind and a sharp wit, that the talk was very entertaining, and that I miss him.

4 thoughts on “Twenty-one minutes”

  1. I bought a couple of books you mentioned. Then I discovered internet porn, so I burned all my books.

    I’ve read some of Jacques Ellul’s “Propaganda”, a collection of his essays. I feel that I should read more before I fisk the thing, but he’s mainly concerned with considering soldiers in the military. And French intellectuals of his era are anxious to account for Vichy.

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    1. Ellul was not a good/evil guy. He merely described propaganda as it existed in his time in the three major centers, the USSR, China and the US. He made it plain that propaganda was easy to defeat and that it’s biggest impact is not what we call agitprop, but rather the indoctrinary system we are brought up in.

      I think the reason why he is slighted is not due to his Frenchness, but rather that he did not condemn propaganda, even said it was unavoidable when we have mass media and also that it served many good and useful ends. In fact, it does.

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      1. That is wonderfully insightful. Thanks for the link. It’s also unsatisfying, isn’t it? To know that democracy is an illusion? I liked this passage:

        …official propaganda (even supposedly anti-government actions can reinforce the narrative, often strongly; Timothy McVeigh was a better propaganda asset than Bill Moyers), is essentially a safety valve that prevents real and effective collective action by bleeding off its energy source.

        Events like Boston also bled off energy, and interestingly, McVeigh and OKC were also not spontaneous, but carefully planned and executed by forces inside government.

        And his reference to the Tea Party – the guy is very sharp and so must know that TP was the product of suggestion in a mass scale to create the illusion that Obama represented the “left” (since he was so viciously opposed by a reactionary right wing force). Insidious propaganda, that was. It gave Obama political cover to be a right wing hack perceived as a lefty. So it s no surprise that Obama out-Bushes even Bush and is still widely perceived as a lefty.

        But most of it is benign. Governments cannot possibly rely on public opinion, and so must control it. It can be no other way. The problem, as we face now, is a rogue government taking control of the more civil one in 1947, and usurping more and more power over time to the point where today we are nothing but a criminal enterprise with a population saturated not in benign propaganda, but incessant agitprop.

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