Sure, there's nothing wrong with changing your mind, and I didn't mean to imply that there was. A person who's never changed their mind about anything significant probably has never really thought about anything in any depth.

It's more like the Jewish Israelis save the Palestinians from the zombies because the Israelis are nice like that, and then the Palestinians and other Arabs learn the error of their ways in opposing Israel out of sheer irrational prejudice against Jews.

Well, I'm not a qualified expert, but it seems like certain traits of sociopathy/psychopathy are encouraged in modern politics. Particularly: superficiality, insincerity, egocentricity, lack of real empathy, lack of genuine remorse, etc…

"Milo is smart, but just in a pressing buttons, manipulating people kind of way. He's intellectually vapid…"

"Hitch was one of the first people to make me realize that you don't have to agree with all of a person's views, to greatly respect them, and see great value in their other writings"

Isn't everybody, to some extent, performing their personality and their beliefs? Isn't who you really are equally about who you choose to be and who you can't help but be?

Like when far-right groups (EG: the EDL or the BNP) wave Israeli flags. They still hate the Jews who live in the same country as them; it's just that they also approve of the IDF bombing Arabs. It isn't a contradiction, just a statement of priorities, or alternately pure trolling.

Ernst Rohm was gay, also leader of the Sturm Abteilung (original paramilitary wing of the Nazi Party) and a close personal friend of Adolf Hitler. Being gay and a Nazi is nothing new. Still, the Nazis in power persecuted gay men, including those within their own ranks.

Exactly! It's not done in an intelligent way; it's just like Brooks is shaping the human response to the zombie apocalypse to conform to his own (apparently simplistic) political ideas without any regard to existing political realities and how they'd actually be effected.

The question is: does it really matter how sincere Milos is? His MO is exactly the same as Trump in the US, or Farage/UKIP in Britain, or Le Pen/FN in France, etc.

The real problem isn't that Trump (or his political equivalents in other countries) exist; it's that millions of people are willing to support the politics that he represents, and to put him (or someone similar) and his (or her) allies into state power.

Aye, well that's what I find surprising. Regardless of the politics, it just wasn't a very good book for the reasons that I've already mentioned. It reminded me strongly of Jeffrey Archer, who is similarly a terrible writer.

Yeah, fair enough yourself as well: I don't know if Hitchens ever turned against the idea of the welfare state (formerly middle of the road, today considered left/far-left in mainstream British politics).

Except not really. Reaction is still reaction, still looking back to some mytholigsed past that never existed, still blaming everything on immigrants or whoever, rather than the people actually directly responsible (IE: you yourself, or people who have power over you (bosses, landlords, government, etc)).

Oh, I don't know. Have you ever watched 'Vikings'?

"I fuckin' love Jesus, and/or your alien overlords! Marry me, Scarlet-Johanson-alien-serial-killer"

The younger Christopher Hitchens was a member of the International Socialists (later the Socialist Workers Party) and his arguments in the 80s were directly opposed to the kind of arguments that he later made in support of the 'war on terror',

Islam is a religion that has spread over continents and centuries, and that can be interpreted in various different ways, just like Christianity, or Judaism.

Yeah, personally I thought the worst ones were the Arab Characters, the Japanese characters, and the character with learning difficulties. None of them sounded like real people.

With any religion, or other form of ideology that encompasses vast numbers of people in hugely varied circumstances (time, place, social class, gender, etc, etc), you have to take into account the specific ways in which it is interpreted.