A Different Drummer

Christopher Hitchens' long journey from radical socialist to lame propagator of nationalist myths seems complete - this Vanity Fair article about the death and funeral of an American soldier is as beautifully written as it is propagandistic. I doubt Goebbels was ever this fluent, but he was certainly as unashamedly supremacist:

"Everybody else also managed to speak, often reading poems of their own composition, and as the day ebbed in a blaze of glory over the ocean, I thought, Well, here we are to perform the last honors for a warrior and hero, and there are no hysterical ululations, no shrieks for revenge, no insults hurled at the enemy, no firing into the air or bogus hysterics. Instead, an honest, brave, modest family is doing its private best."

Because we all know, there is nothing worse than the bogus hysterics and hysterical ululations of those awful Iraqis as they bury their relatives and neighbors and friends ten at a time, day on day, for four years straight. Such a shock to the sensibility and decency of an Oxford boy like Hitchens - it would be much better of them to do it in the style of the all-American funeral he witnessed: held in picturesque "dunes by an especially lovely and remote stretch of the Oregon coastline", devoting the day to "reminiscence and moderate drinking".

The whole article is worth a read though, if for no other reason than to marvel at how swiftly Hitchens manages the navigate the tricky waters of being an unapologetic beater of the Iraq war drum whilst simultaneously trying to seem relevant and differentiated from the horde of morons that he is now an idealogical fellow-traveler of. He is getting worse and worse at it as time goes on.