Christopher Hitchens As Proto-Culture Warrior/Proto-Intellectual Dark Webber?

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
Who is better at dodging punches and strangling people.

Although this "X destroys Y" thing isn't like watching two UFC fighters fight it's more like (As you say) those wrestling matches where some no-mark fights Big Van Vader and gets savaged. The satisfaction of it is that the person arguing for the thing you don't like is clearly totally out of their depth.
 

luka

Well-known member
A 15 year old getting stomped out by Jordan Peterson in a tweed blazer and a bow tie
 

craner

Beast of Burden
Chomsky’s facts are no better than Hitchens’ facts. They are shorn of context and deployed strategically for the demands of the argument. Chomsky is notorious for his ideological selection, but his monotone delivery and rhetorical arrangements create an illusion of impartiality. It takes some patience and commitment to take that apart, but it can and has been done.
 
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craner

Beast of Burden
Hitch vs Chomsky is something from another era, but I agree with the point Barty makes that their style of contention and presentation is at the root of the new online culture wars. I’ve always thought that you could find a fine thread running from Orwell’s Tribune column to Hitchens’ Nation column to Johan Hari’s Independent column to Owen Jones’ Guardian column. A declining style that attempts to match critical rhetoric with political commitment, but eventually just devolves into a form of self-fashioning and opinion peddling. The style got increasingly shrill in the 2000s and Hitchens had a large role to play in this, but the template and the emotional pitch added to the youth of its primary exponents now adds an extra dimension of hysteria. Also, the expansion of media outlets and their relative inability to offer any secure employment or even pay people properly has created the situation where young writers have to desperately promote themselves on social media in order to secure work. This has simply added grift to hysteria.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
Champion, one who fights in behalf of another. During the Middle Ages a feature of Anglo-Norman law was trial by battle, a procedure in which guilt or innocence was decided by a test of arms. Clergy, children, women, and persons disabled by age or infirmity had the right to nominate champions to fight by proxy.
Always blows my mind that anyone ever thought that this could decide innocence or guilt.
 

luka

Well-known member
If you think God takes an interest in our affairs and works through us etc then it makes sense
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
It made for a great way to introduce Bronn, in that early phase of Game Of Thrones when it was written by intelligent human beings and not some sort of glitchy, primitive AI.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
So he asks his 50k followers to write the essay for him, then shows it to his followers and expects them to be impressed?
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
But you would never get an agreement over who "won", ofc, because their respective fanbases want different things.
Very frustrating that. Today Gullis asked a question in some parliamentary committee and some expert answered it by Zoom - I saw the exchange shared by Tories claiming she was floundering desperately unable to answer, and also by Labour types celebrating the meticulously forensic takedown of the response.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
There needs to be some way of actually winning like in an actual fight so we get an actual official winner. Then everyone can argue about whether the winner deserved it instead of who the winner was.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
There needs to be some way of actually winning like in an actual fight so we get an actual official winner. Then everyone can argue about whether the winner deserved it instead of who the winner was.
In principle it ought to be possible by now to program an AI that can determine who's made the best points and landed the most rhetorical punches in any sort of argument or debate.

However, these sorts of things in practice tend to have the prejudices of their creators baked into them, and anyone who'd have the skills and inclination to make such a thing is likely to be the sort of person who thinks Ben Shapiro is a generation-defining genius.
 
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