Ding, dong,
November 29, 2023 5:58 PM Subscribe

Henry Kissinger, War Criminal Beloved by America’s Ruling Class, Finally Dies
posted by signal (250 comments total) 62 users marked this as a favorite

About damn time. Too bad Hunter S. Thompson isn’t around to write an obit.
posted by TedW at 6:00 PM on November 29, 2023 [60 favorites]

Finally.
posted by nevercalm at 6:00 PM on November 29, 2023 [30 favorites]

*
posted by OHenryPacey at 6:01 PM on November 29, 2023 [9 favorites]

I'm a bit saddened he managed to outlive Rosalynn Carter if only by a few days.
posted by supermedusa at 6:01 PM on November 29, 2023 [42 favorites]

Okay, well if good things can happen I got a list: [redacted], [redacted], [redacted], [redacted]
posted by Artw at 6:02 PM on November 29, 2023 [27 favorites]

100 goddamn years old. In case anyone ever needed proof that there is no such thing as karma.
posted by skycrashesdown at 6:05 PM on November 29, 2023 [32 favorites]

Ding fucking dong
posted by Mizu at 6:06 PM on November 29, 2023 [14 favorites]

Bourdain wrote the definitive Kissinger fuck-youlogy. Wish he could have seen today.
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 6:07 PM on November 29, 2023 [55 favorites]

OMG.

Do we have any equivalent of the brilliance of Elvis Costello's song Tramp The Dirt Down about Margaret Thatcher? Only this time about this fucker?

Because I want to sing that song for the next week at the top of my lungs.
posted by hippybear at 6:08 PM on November 29, 2023 [21 favorites]

The Rolling Stone obit amusingly seems to have been prepped ahead of time, reading

Like so many killers at the levers of institutional power, Kissinger died peacefully in his bed on DATE TK, spared the indignity and the violence that he guaranteed for so many. He was TK YEARS OLD.

when I viewed it just now (you beat me to the post, signal).

More anticipation of Kissinger’s death: Kissinger Death Tontine (includes an explanation of “Sure, fuck Kissinger, but why tho?”).
posted by eviemath at 6:08 PM on November 29, 2023 [17 favorites]

(Bourdain is quoted on the Kissinger Death Tontine page.)
posted by eviemath at 6:09 PM on November 29, 2023 [1 favorite]

Fucking finally.
posted by computech_apolloniajames at 6:09 PM on November 29, 2023 [2 favorites]

when I viewed it just now (you beat me to the post, signal).

I was waiting for a critical obit, not the mealy-mouthed "architect of foreign polciy" other outlets had.
posted by signal at 6:10 PM on November 29, 2023 [12 favorites]

Lotta grim reaper at playing the grabber arm machine memes right now.
posted by Artw at 6:11 PM on November 29, 2023 [27 favorites]

Fuck that guy.
posted by bowbeacon at 6:11 PM on November 29, 2023 [11 favorites]

I was waiting for a critical obit, not the mealy-mouthed "architect of foreign polciy" other outlets had.

Nailed it and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.
posted by Artw at 6:12 PM on November 29, 2023 [8 favorites]

Time for a useful test of different social media. Who's got the best celebration/denunciation; who's buttoned-up?
posted by CrystalDave at 6:12 PM on November 29, 2023 [1 favorite]

finally finally FINALLY
posted by a power-tie-wearing she-capitalist at 6:13 PM on November 29, 2023 [4 favorites]

!
posted by cosmic owl at 6:13 PM on November 29, 2023 [2 favorites]

He went home. Now floating on a sulphur lake on Io.
posted by Jessica Savitch's Coke Spoon at 6:14 PM on November 29, 2023 [6 favorites]

Artw, that was the first thing I did.
posted by computech_apolloniajames at 6:14 PM on November 29, 2023 [10 favorites]

I do admire that Rolling Stone has gone back to their roots in the late 60s with this article and headline.
posted by hippybear at 6:15 PM on November 29, 2023 [10 favorites]

All the *s ever and then some
posted by May Kasahara at 6:15 PM on November 29, 2023 [1 favorite]

I do admire that Rolling Stone has gone back to their roots in the late 60s with this article and headline.

Spencer Ackerman doing gods work.
posted by Artw at 6:16 PM on November 29, 2023 [8 favorites]

HuffPost: Henry Kissinger, America’s Most Notorious War Criminal, Dies At 100.
posted by signal at 6:18 PM on November 29, 2023 [18 favorites]

I saw the news and came running over here for the party. I suppose the mods would consider it unseemly to put a special confetti background on just this post?
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 6:18 PM on November 29, 2023 [43 favorites]

Obligatory Python
posted by credulous at 6:19 PM on November 29, 2023 [9 favorites]

Extreme sigh of relief
posted by riverlife at 6:22 PM on November 29, 2023

cueing up Billy Joel's "Only the Good Die Young"

may his rotting corpse finally contribute something to making the world a better place in some way, no matter how small
posted by DoctorFedora at 6:22 PM on November 29, 2023 [7 favorites]

If you want to complain about people gloating, maybe listen to the six-part Behind the Bastards series. Episode 1.

Apparently, he was quite popular with women in the 70s. While he liked being seen with beautiful and famous women, he apparently didn’t want to sleep with them and happily listened to their ideas. Imagine, having to choose between all 70s men and Kissinger!
posted by GenjiandProust at 6:25 PM on November 29, 2023 [16 favorites]

Once you’ve been to Cambodia, you’ll never stop wanting to beat Henry Kissinger to death with your bare hands. You will never again be able to open a newspaper and read about that treacherous, prevaricating, murderous scumbag sitting down for a nice chat with Charlie Rose or attending some black-tie affair for a new glossy magazine without choking. Witness what Henry did in Cambodia – the fruits of his genius for statesmanship – and you will never understand why he’s not sitting in the dock at The Hague next to Milošević.

― Anthony Bourdain

If there is a hell I hope you're enjoying it Kissinger you imperialist fucker.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 6:25 PM on November 29, 2023 [101 favorites]

The world's evil level has measurably, if minimally, diminished today
posted by Slackermagee at 6:25 PM on November 29, 2023 [13 favorites]

Hot damn
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 6:27 PM on November 29, 2023 [1 favorite]

Yes, the fact he was never held accountable for his crimes is terrible and an embarrassment.
posted by Windopaene at 6:27 PM on November 29, 2023 [15 favorites]

Any news on where ~~the Lake Kissinger Memorial Latrine~~ his burial site will be?
posted by mephron at 6:27 PM on November 29, 2023 [15 favorites]

I'm having a profoundly rough time of things, and dealing with a staggering amount of stress, but goddamn if this wasn't the first thing to make me smile all week. Goddamn, the motherfucker is finally dead.

There's the old saw about living a life so that people don't celebrate when you're dead. To go one further, maybe live a life so that there aren't several countries around the world you can't travel to because they'll extradite your ass to the Hague to answer for your war crimes.
posted by Ghidorah at 6:28 PM on November 29, 2023 [37 favorites]

Loomis lets loose with Kissinger is Dead, Finally Something Good Has Happened in 2023:

One of the most vile individuals to ever befoul the United States, Henry Kissinger is dead. A man responsible for the deaths of millions of people around the world and yet the most respected man within the American foreign policy community for decades, Kissinger’s sheer existence exposed the moral vacuity of Cold War foreign policy and the empty platitudes and chummy gladhandling of the Beltway elite class that deserves our utter contempt.

posted by NoxAeternum at 6:30 PM on November 29, 2023 [47 favorites]

Once you’ve been to Cambodia, you’ll never stop wanting to beat Henry Kissinger to death with your bare hands.

You don't even have to go there. Just watch the Spaulding Gray film Swimming To Cambodia [Internet Archive, 1h24m] and hear his descriptions of Cambodia and its ruler and its culture...

I'd wanted to punch Hank in the face for a long while more before I encountered that film, certainly, but that was certainly a finishing touch.
posted by hippybear at 6:30 PM on November 29, 2023 [10 favorites]

Bagel! Bagel! Bagel!
posted by WaterAndPixels at 6:31 PM on November 29, 2023

It's funny, I saw the alert on my phone, said "ding dong" to myself and came here to find out I wasn't the only one.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 6:31 PM on November 29, 2023 [5 favorites]

Not that he wasn’t a horrible monster - he surely was. But his harm was done and in the past. Fading away into memory, while there are new monsters rising before us. I’d have been happy to have him live another 20 years and give his place in line to, oh, any number of people.

But one in particular.
posted by Naberius at 6:34 PM on November 29, 2023 [9 favorites]

100? More proof there is no God.
posted by dobbs at 6:34 PM on November 29, 2023 [4 favorites]

But his harm was done and in the past.

He kept appearing on talk shows and being asked his opinion and any time he answered his voice was granted Great Portence because of who he was. He was doing harm every time he opened his mouth up until the day he died.
posted by hippybear at 6:36 PM on November 29, 2023 [52 favorites]

Web Archive version of article.
posted by zenon at 6:37 PM on November 29, 2023

Of the graves I'd like to piss on, his is definitely on the list. Good riddance to bad trash.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:37 PM on November 29, 2023 [7 favorites]

Let's congratulate Wikipedia user Asticky for winning the race.
posted by mhoye at 6:38 PM on November 29, 2023 [7 favorites]

Any news on where the ~~Lake Kissinger Memorial Latrine~~ his burial site will be?

It's a nice gravesite! For me to poop on.
posted by kirkaracha at 6:38 PM on November 29, 2023 [16 favorites]

About fucking time, I say, along with most everyone else.

No dot for you Henry; enjoy the flames of hell.
posted by jokeefe at 6:38 PM on November 29, 2023 [5 favorites]

I'm a bit saddened he managed to outlive Rosalynn Carter if only by a few days.

In my head-canon the timing here is due to Mrs. Carter raising some objections upon arrival upstairs.
posted by Jarcat at 6:39 PM on November 29, 2023 [51 favorites]

This is all my fault, guys. My geriatric tuxedo cat is ailing, and we have an appointment with the vet tomorrow to figure out what’s going on and how to proceed.

This morning while I waited for my coffee, I distinctly thought, “Kissinger better not outlive DJ, or I SWEAR TO GOD…”

Deej is curled up with me now, snoozing, using the orange tabby’s butt as a pillow.

So, sorry about that. Totally my bad!
posted by armeowda at 6:39 PM on November 29, 2023 [101 favorites]

Better late than never
posted by Greg_Ace at 6:40 PM on November 29, 2023 [10 favorites]

This morning while I waited for my coffee, I distinctly thought, “Kissinger better not outlive DJ, or I SWEAR TO GOD…”

If you could do this on command, you could start up a hell of a Patreon with a talent like that.
posted by notoriety public at 6:42 PM on November 29, 2023 [48 favorites]

Okay Metafilter, you have finally won the "we don't have to be nice on obituaries" argument.
posted by corb at 6:42 PM on November 29, 2023 [95 favorites]

All I know is:
* Glad he wasn't immortal, was getting worried
* Shout out to the half-dozen or so unemployed blood boys tonight
* Looking forward to @dasharez0ne's next post
posted by credulous at 6:42 PM on November 29, 2023 [13 favorites]

Srsly, tho, “war criminal” feels so politely euphemistic for how banally evil he was
posted by dw at 6:44 PM on November 29, 2023 [11 favorites]

I was always taught never to say anything about the dead unless it’s good. He’s dead. Good!
posted by kirkaracha at 6:44 PM on November 29, 2023 [10 favorites]

Fuck yeah.
posted by Room 101 at 6:47 PM on November 29, 2023

Now do Trump.
posted by evilDoug at 6:49 PM on November 29, 2023 [44 favorites]

Irony died the day he was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize.
posted by Samuel Farrow at 6:49 PM on November 29, 2023 [33 favorites]

Check to make sure
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 6:52 PM on November 29, 2023 [6 favorites]

evilDoug I think that will break the site.
posted by computech_apolloniajames at 6:53 PM on November 29, 2023 [6 favorites]

Irony died the day he was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize.

Or was birthed anew in its own apotheosis, and emerged with disco and punk.
posted by hippybear at 6:53 PM on November 29, 2023 [4 favorites]

Okay Metafilter, you have finally won the "we don't have to be nice on obituaries" argument.

Clinton's will be the true shitshow of thread emotions, whenever that eventually happens.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:54 PM on November 29, 2023 [3 favorites]

CONGRATULATIONS.

IF YOU ARE READING THIS, YOU HAVE OUTLIVED HENRY KISSINGER.
posted by AlSweigart at 6:55 PM on November 29, 2023 [137 favorites]

Someone who knew I would approve of this news as well sent me a text letting me know, and after a bit of back and forth, they asked who I thought was his heir.

I considered it and responded with Kushner. Jared Kushner. Because everything corrupt and venal and crooked now is the same as everything that was corrupt and venal and crooked back then, except an order of magnitude or three dumber.

That’s my experience thus far in a Kissinger-free universe. Take from that what you will. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
posted by HVACDC_Bag at 6:56 PM on November 29, 2023 [8 favorites]

evilDoug I think that will break the site.

That is a sacrifice I'm willing to make
posted by a faded photo of their beloved at 6:57 PM on November 29, 2023 [11 favorites]

>Irony died the day he was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize.
-Tom Lehrer in 1972
posted by Fupped Duck at 6:57 PM on November 29, 2023 [22 favorites]

Okay Metafilter, you have finally won the "we don't have to be nice on obituaries" argument.

Why should we be nice? Why shouldn't we cheer when a war criminal, butcher, and traitor (among many other things) whose life's work was making the world a worse place finally dies?
posted by NoxAeternum at 6:59 PM on November 29, 2023 [16 favorites]

The Baffler had a great piece on Kissinger's political legacy in 2019: Dinner with a War Criminal. Useful both for an explication of the war crimes (lest we forget) and his influence on future US politics, on through to Trump.
posted by Nelson at 6:59 PM on November 29, 2023 [10 favorites]

If there was ever a time when I wished I could have a peek into helll, it would be now, just to see him being shunned by History’s Greatest Monsters, because even they weren’t dumb enough to get involved with Theranos. (And that being the least of his crimes…)
posted by Halloween Jack at 7:00 PM on November 29, 2023 [2 favorites]

Why should we be nice? Why shouldn't we cheer when a war criminal, butcher, and traitor (among many other things) whose life's work was making the world a worse place finally dies?

I posted that exact same song I posted early in this thread into the thread when Thatcher died. It's a song about dancing on Thatcher's grave after she's dead. That comment was deleted from that thread.

I've never forgotten that, because it felt like such a perfect intersection between the actual world and the performance of the ideal world that MetaFilter was wanting to embody at the time.

They deleted a post about a song about hating Margaret Thatcher and wanting to dance on her grave after she's died in a thread about her being dead.

I know basically none of the moderation team in place here in MetaFilter now were involved back then, but it was such an emblematic moment for me that it has defined this website for me in my mind ever since.

I participate here a lot, but I always keep in mind that they deleted my post of Tramp The Dirt Down from the Maggie obit thread. #NeverForget
posted by hippybear at 7:05 PM on November 29, 2023 [59 favorites]

fwiw Ackerman on bluesky said he wrote the obit a year ago. Which is actually quite common for obits of famous people.

anyway Ackerman’s piece is good because it clearly describes how Kissinger was critical to the creation of the system we still live under. US presidents bombing whoever the heck they want without congressional approval or sometimes even informing it comes from Kissinger to a great extent. Many of the people who have been influential in the last few decades consider Kissinger’s way of doing things something they respect. So sure the splashy crimes of Kissinger are from the 70s but he partly created the system that lead to many more horrors.
posted by R343L at 7:09 PM on November 29, 2023 [30 favorites]

Good riddance. Now I'm wondering, does anyone piss on Reagan's grave?
posted by mollweide at 7:09 PM on November 29, 2023 [2 favorites]

Two weeks ago, I posted this to social media: [nitter.net]

Nov 14, 2023 · 12:25 AM UTC

My drinking hasn't been at a level where it's a problem, but I feel like my drinking in the last, say, five years or so has been much higher than what's normal for me. So I'm making a public pledge:

I will not have any alcohol until Henry Kissinger is dead.

It could be a week. It could be ten years. However it goes, I'm going to stick to this.

I hope it isn't fifty years.

I'M SORRY EVERYONE. I SHOULD HAVE GIVEN UP DRINKING A LONG TIME AGO.
posted by AlSweigart at 7:12 PM on November 29, 2023 [128 favorites]

*
posted by kensington314 at 7:13 PM on November 29, 2023

Maybe the best time was years ago, Al, but you chose the second-best time. You did the right thing.
posted by a faded photo of their beloved at 7:15 PM on November 29, 2023 [11 favorites]

FTG

🔥👹🔥
posted by wenestvedt at 7:15 PM on November 29, 2023 [3 favorites]

As I posted in the Thatcher thread(swiped from a British Thatcher obit): I hope they bury him face down so he can see where he's going.
posted by Phlegmco(tm) at 7:17 PM on November 29, 2023 [23 favorites]

"...I can WALK"
posted by clavdivs at 7:18 PM on November 29, 2023 [12 favorites]

To quote Clarence Darrow, “I have never killed anyone, but I have read some obituary notices with great satisfaction.”
posted by merriment at 7:23 PM on November 29, 2023 [18 favorites]

I heartily agree with the recommendation to listen to the full 6 part series on him by Behind the Bastards. He just kept being evil in new ways. His literally traitorious sinking of the Paris peace accords to avoid ending the Vietnam war and help elect Nixon is one of ones currently on my mind, as I've been reading a lot of Watergate history lately. May he rot.
posted by gingerbeer at 7:25 PM on November 29, 2023 [30 favorites]

may he writhe in torment.
posted by scose at 7:25 PM on November 29, 2023 [5 favorites]

Death put like $20,000 in that claw machine but he finally got there.
posted by East14thTaco at 7:27 PM on November 29, 2023 [25 favorites]

So there's this thing... I think I saw it on poffin boffin's tumblr maybe? Where there's no video, dalegraciasadios, but what's reported to be audio taken from a pornographic film during which a gentleman is having an orgasm loudly and with great enthusiasm. I dare say, unpleasantly loudly to me. You should imagine the following in very large ascii-art letters, blinking, and if there were such a thing using [throb] and [onfire] tags: HRRRRRRRNGGGH YAAAAAAHH HAAAAAAAAAH HRRRRRRRNGH and it continues; the gentleman was apparently gifted by the gods with notably durable orgasms.

Anyway I've been thinking of that tonight for whatever reason, among other even less appropriate thoughts.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 7:27 PM on November 29, 2023 [6 favorites]

How many people who go to his funeral are going just to make SURE he's dead?

Will he have a stake driven through his chest to make sure he stays down?

How big will the party be?

Stand by for the hypocrisy meter to go off the scale, as all former presidents (except Carter) speak.
posted by Marky at 7:28 PM on November 29, 2023 [10 favorites]

A casual list of headlines on Google News right now:

Henry Kissinger, American diplomat and Nobel winner [Reuters]

Henry Kissinger, America's most famous diplomat [Politico]

Henry Kissinger: Divisive diplomat who towered over world affairs [BBC]

I'm sorry I can't score through this any more.

SERIOUSLY P0LITICO???

The whole "it's complicated" narrative around Kissinger is something that is a giant prelude/preview of a lot of the attempts to recast political figures and actions outside of what they actually did into some kind of special context.
posted by hippybear at 7:28 PM on November 29, 2023 [18 favorites]

THERE SHALL BE NO CELEBRATORY PHRASES DURING THE WAKE.

and a friendly reminder: please do not write f*** on the armaments.
posted by clavdivs at 7:32 PM on November 29, 2023 [5 favorites]

Good.
posted by ob1quixote at 7:34 PM on November 29, 2023 [2 favorites]

SCMP is going with "Charming, controversial..." but the article goes there in a couple of places. I didn't realize he was also a Tiananmen Square massacre stan.
posted by credulous at 7:36 PM on November 29, 2023 [7 favorites]

Henry Kissinger, America's most famous diplomat

The ghost of Madeline Albright unwraps her gloves...
posted by East14thTaco at 7:38 PM on November 29, 2023 [8 favorites]

I didn't realize he was also a Tiananmen Square massacre stan.

If you can name for me any authoritarian crackdown he spoke out against, I'll give you my first born.
posted by hippybear at 7:38 PM on November 29, 2023 [9 favorites]

Seen on Bluesky: "Before you say something mean about Henry Kissinger, take a breath and see if you can think of something meaner"
posted by Pronoiac at 7:38 PM on November 29, 2023 [97 favorites]

Chat with Hank.

MEMORANDUM
THE WHITE HOUSE
WASHINGTON'
'POP SEGRE9?-/NODIS/XGDS
MEMORANDUM OF CONVERSATION
PARTICIPANTS: Dr. Henry A. Kissinger, Secretary of State
and Assistant to the President for
National Security Affairs
Dr. James R. Schlesinger, Secretary ofDefensei
William Colby, Director, Central Intelligence
Agency
Adm Thomas Moorer, Chairman, JCS
M. Gen. Brent Scowcroft, Deputy Assistant
to the President for National SecurityAffair s
DATE AND TIME January 22, 1974 [Tuesday] 0
"(',\cr· 1: 00 p. m. (lunch)
PLACE: The Map Room ,
The White House
Moorer: Diego Garcia o Mansfield was fairly receptive. He didntt say
no.
Kissinger: They're all moving to the right -- and Fulbright wants hearings
on detente. His constituents think he is soft on Communism.

Scowcroft: How .about the Syrians? Pretty heady stuff.

KiSSinger: The Syrians and Israelis together -- what a combination! Sadat

is fairly wise o

[Discussed the limitation agreement]

We are committed to over-flights every 10 days to two weeks.

Colby: Can we go with the U - 2? DEQA88FlEDw/pottkI•••,,4*d ._.,
AU1HORf1Y 1f)~W'a.lal-c.;· ~/p" &~Z8llo Kissinger: I told them SR-71.
W <i.tJ NNIA. DAn;. Sl3tJ1tJ ..
Colby: Can we transit on Cyprus?
':POP SECRET{NODIS/XGDS .'
posted by clavdivs at 7:42 PM on November 29, 2023 [4 favorites]

And just a bit after Charlie Munger (previously, most recently) died!! We lost a couple of real jerkwads this week.

Unfortunately I'm sure they both made sure their "legacies" were ironclad and legally protected to the absolute max. But at least they're not still out here doing stuff.
posted by knotty knots at 7:43 PM on November 29, 2023 [2 favorites]

I really appreciate the fact that nobody's even mustering a . for that fucker. I'm seeing "rest in piss" all over Bluesky, and have to second it. Folks like him are what The Bad Place was made for.
posted by BlahLaLa at 7:46 PM on November 29, 2023 [3 favorites]

I had a professor once with a slight central European accent. Very nice man. For some reason we were talking about HK, can't recall why. The professor had had a parallel life experience, born in Germany about the same time, leaving before the war, academic success in America after the war, all that. He said that the accent was an affectation. Could be true for all I know.

The ghost of Madeline Albright unwraps her gloves...

Or unpins her brooches.
posted by BWA at 7:49 PM on November 29, 2023 [8 favorites]

@dasharez0ne has posted
posted by credulous at 7:54 PM on November 29, 2023 [11 favorites]

Let me join into this festival of irreverence by dredging up a favorite old joke from after HK divorced his baby mama in the late 1970s and was quite the bachelor about town:

I was riding in an elevator headed back to my hotel room when it stops on another floor and who gets in but gets Henry Kissinger, with a beautiful young blonde on his arm.
Stunned for a moment but I screwed up the nerve and asked "Hey! Aren't you Kissinger?"

To which he replied: "Actually, I'm Fucking her."
posted by Fupped Duck at 7:54 PM on November 29, 2023 [5 favorites]

This post seems like something you all might enjoy: https://mastodon.online/@lindih/111497258653901273
posted by wenestvedt at 7:55 PM on November 29, 2023 [16 favorites]

I met the news with glee. Now that’s tempered by the thought that he probably got away with it all.
posted by Capt. Renault at 7:55 PM on November 29, 2023 [1 favorite]

Bourdain wrote the definitive Kissinger fuck-youlogy. Wish he could have seen today.

I am contenting myself with the following thought:

Henry Kissinger is first brought up to the Pearly Gates. Where, no doubt, he assumed he would be headed. When he arrives, St. Peter meets him and says "there's someone who specifically wanted to greet you."

The Pearly Gates swing open, and Anthony Bourdain walks out.

St. Peter steps INSIDE, shuts the gates, and locks them, with Tony and Kissinger both standing outside,

And then Anthony Bourdain punches him in the face, kicks him twice (once in each kidney) and then gives him one last almighty shove that sends him plummeting downwards to his true destination.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:04 PM on November 29, 2023 [29 favorites]

I suspect some folks live to 100+ because they feel enough in control of their lives that the stress they experience isn't particularly physically corrosive (or altenatively they get satisfaction from corroding others by using their power/influence).

I'm disappointed that he didn't live long enough to come to realize that as clever as he was, he wasn't clever enough to succeed in his goals while avoiding the harm and suffering he caused. That realization would have mortally wounded his psyche in a way I would have felt appropriate for him.

He is unforgivable in so many ways, but the action that most turns my stomach is that he got noted skeptic and journalistic inquisitor Ted Koppel to be a personal friend and say kind things about him when asked. I want to take a shower every time I hear Koppel's Kissinger apologia.
posted by zaixfeep at 8:04 PM on November 29, 2023 [3 favorites]

May the memory that he's dead be a blessing.
posted by stet at 8:07 PM on November 29, 2023 [55 favorites]

Rest in torment
posted by tarantula at 8:17 PM on November 29, 2023 [2 favorites]

It's like the old saw: live your life so that when you die there isn't an impromptu celebration in the YouTube comments on "Crab Rave".
posted by phooky at 8:21 PM on November 29, 2023 [35 favorites]

Sic transit malum mundi.
posted by Pouteria at 8:23 PM on November 29, 2023 [3 favorites]

EPIC

epic thread feeling HAVEN'T FELT THAT WAY IN YEARS. ok ow ok ow

if Henry Kissenger were a figure in the French Revolution, who would he be?
(or grab bag)
posted by clavdivs at 8:26 PM on November 29, 2023 [2 favorites]

*
posted by Meatbomb at 8:31 PM on November 29, 2023

Seriously, poke his fetid corpse a few times. You don't want to have to bury him twice.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 8:34 PM on November 29, 2023 [1 favorite]

If tomorrow the flags aren't raised to double staff, I will be very disappointed.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 8:37 PM on November 29, 2023 [8 favorites]

With Bourdain unfortunately unavailable, I volunteer for wooden stake duty.
posted by tclark at 8:38 PM on November 29, 2023 [4 favorites]

Don’t know how to link from FB, but Corey Robin: “Gore Vidal was once in the Sistine Chapel, where he stumbled upon Henry Kissinger “gazing thoughtfully” at the Hell section of Michelangelo’s Last Judgment. “Look,” said Vidal to a friend, “he’s apartment hunting.”
posted by lassie at 8:43 PM on November 29, 2023 [39 favorites]

Now, will there be a state funeral and how howling mad is everyone outside the joint going to be?
posted by Slackermagee at 8:44 PM on November 29, 2023 [1 favorite]

stake isn't enough, gotta sever the head and pack the mouth with garlic too
posted by rifflesby at 8:45 PM on November 29, 2023 [5 favorites]

he was mean and i hated him for what he did but there is no way i could hate him enough or know what he did
posted by capnsue at 8:56 PM on November 29, 2023

Some choice quotes and observations on Kissinger, putative self-hating Jew, in this article from the Forward on his 100th birthday.

...ultimately, the closest bookish parallel may be with the 19th century Anglo-Irish statesman Lord Castlereagh, a subject of Kissinger’s doctoral thesis.

Hated for his attacks on liberty and reform, Castlereagh inspired the following lines in P.B. Shelley’s poem “The Masque of Anarchy,” evoking the carnage resulting from political rhetoric:

“I met Murder on the way –/ He had a mask like Castlereagh –/ Very smooth he looked, yet grim;/ Seven bloodhounds followed him… For one by one, and two by two,/ He tossed them human hearts to chew/ Which from his wide cloak he drew.”

As he approaches his century with no remorse or reckoning for any possible human rights offenses, Kissinger’s legacy in Jewish matters retains the aura of Shelley’s bloodhounds and human hearts.

posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 9:01 PM on November 29, 2023 [16 favorites]

It’s nice that he’s dead
posted by rodlymight at 9:06 PM on November 29, 2023 [9 favorites]

“If it were not for the accident of my birth, I would be antisemitic... any people who has been persecuted for two thousand years must be doing something wrong.”
posted by credulous at 9:07 PM on November 29, 2023 [15 favorites]

Fucking FINALLY.
posted by EvaDestruction at 9:12 PM on November 29, 2023 [3 favorites]

The Castlereagh comparison is interesting. Calls to mind Byron's epitaph/epigram:

Posterity will ne'er survey
A nobler grave than this;
Here lie the bones of Castlereagh:
Stop, traveller, and ----.

posted by Pallas Athena at 9:12 PM on November 29, 2023 [26 favorites]

(posted in wrong thread, said something mean about elon vs henry kissinger, sorry)

No problemo — neither of them is undeserving.
posted by y2karl at 9:18 PM on November 29, 2023 [6 favorites]

People are rightfully remembering Kissinger's baleful influence on Southeast Asia but this is a vast oversimplification of the man's legacy. He contributed to misery all over the world and while it's hard to pick among his atrocities, let's at least spare a thought or two for his achievements in immiserating South and Central America.
posted by Nerd of the North at 9:20 PM on November 29, 2023 [42 favorites]

no matter your politics it’s disrespectful to joke about someone’s death. don’t say henry kissinger died from a grand piano falling on his head and his mouth turned into piano keys and then a big hammer fell on his dick and it honked like a bike horn. don’t say stuff like that
posted by DoctorFedora at 9:22 PM on November 29, 2023 [23 favorites]

If anyone needs a design for a monument, then a pyramid of ten million human skulls would be 18 metres high.
posted by happyinmotion at 9:32 PM on November 29, 2023 [7 favorites]

I hope hell is real
posted by riotnrrd at 9:43 PM on November 29, 2023 [4 favorites]

Not that it has anything to do with Kissinger, but I can’t help but think of this Fall song at this moment.
posted by gtrwolf at 9:45 PM on November 29, 2023 [2 favorites]

(posted in wrong thread, said something mean about elon vs henry kissinger, sorry)

It probably was apt anyway.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 9:48 PM on November 29, 2023 [5 favorites]

That's not a dot for Henry, it's a speck of fly shit.
posted by BlueHorse at 9:51 PM on November 29, 2023 [9 favorites]

Henry Kissinger is dead and Twitter’s not feeling so good either. Christmas is early.
posted by mazola at 9:59 PM on November 29, 2023 [10 favorites]

some of you may regret that we won’t have Kissinger to kick around anymore

but friends, we have shovels
posted by Kattullus at 10:00 PM on November 29, 2023 [28 favorites]

That good and helpful people die too young, and this colossal piece of garbage lived to 100? Infuriating. I'm pleased he's dead, but wish he'd bought the farm much, much sooner. Good riddance to toxic rubbish and all that.
posted by but no cigar at 10:01 PM on November 29, 2023 [6 favorites]

I'll say this for the guy: he was one heck of a guest voice on Futurama. And even though it turns out his character was actually voiced by John DiMaggio, you can't deny the fact that my momentary misremembering led to my watching several classic Futurama clips on YouTube. So you can't say his time on earth was *all* bad. Good job dying, rip bozo, etc.
posted by Rhaomi at 10:04 PM on November 29, 2023 [2 favorites]

And in Dedication To Spite news, Jacobin just released their novel-length obituary/condemnation of the man, which they had 50k units waiting for today.
posted by NoxAeternum at 10:06 PM on November 29, 2023 [18 favorites]

I can never quite tell if he was a control freak willing to do whatever it took to keep control/power due to the trauma of WWII. If he was arrogant and ambitious in the way that some folks are. If he was a true and righteous believer that justified evil by the "good" of preserving the American system

Or if he was just the shittiest shitgibbon to ever shit.

Or all of them in some toxic brew.

To honor Bette Davis: "Henry Kissinger is dead? Good"
posted by drewbage1847 at 10:13 PM on November 29, 2023 [6 favorites]

You also just know (or at least hope) that Trudeau will do something special for one of the Sunday Doonesbury strips to mark the occasion.
posted by gtrwolf at 10:16 PM on November 29, 2023 [12 favorites]

You Rascal You
posted by credulous at 10:46 PM on November 29, 2023 [1 favorite]

I want to believe that society advances one funeral at a time, and that with today, it has taken a giant bounding leap.

The irrational part of me feels that the evil has merely been redistributed to younger bodies. Somewhere in his Georgetown condominium, Stephen Miller stirs, regarding the Potomac with lightless eyes as jackals fawn at his palms.

Can we hold an exorcism and banishing ritual? Who's up for sealing Kissinger's grave/latrine with the best possible binding wards?
posted by LeRoienJaune at 10:48 PM on November 29, 2023 [14 favorites]

I hate to say this, but it seems how the world works these days...

I am glad Jimmy beat him. I hope Rosalynn had a word with the powers that be. But now, think Jimmy may think, "yeah, I'm good, I want to see Rosalynn again..."
posted by Windopaene at 10:50 PM on November 29, 2023 [8 favorites]

credulous, somehow, in all the cavalcade of ruin and evil he spread about the world, I'd somehow missed that comment. I don't know if it's possible to be more of a poster child for the wicked child at Passover than a sentiment that despicable.

Even with all that I did know of him, there's always another stone to overturn, with more of his rancid, worm ridden soul to find. He left this world an immeasurably worse place than he found it, and we are well shut of him. That he lived this long, and died in obscene comfort is a damning statement on the values of those that enabled it to happen.
posted by Ghidorah at 10:53 PM on November 29, 2023 [7 favorites]

i'm not missing yer
posted by inpHilltr8r at 11:01 PM on November 29, 2023 [4 favorites]

I had no idea Rolling Stone had grown its balls back. When did that happen?
posted by Paul Slade at 11:13 PM on November 29, 2023 [6 favorites]

Oh wow, Mastodon Trending is joyous right now
posted by Pronoiac at 11:52 PM on November 29, 2023 [4 favorites]

*
posted by farlukar at 12:08 AM on November 30, 2023 [1 favorite]

A few Bluesky posts this morning:

Amanda Smith: May we all live our lives so that social media sites don’t rejoice like Ewoks at the end of Jedi upon news of our death.

Linda Holmes: I mean, when I left for the movie the richest man on Earth had just told a bunch of people he supposedly was trying to win over to go fuck themselves, and then Kissinger, and like I feel like IT’S BEEN A BUSY EVENING.

Tim Howard: In his memoir Palimpsest, Gore Vidal describes encountering Kissinger at an event at the Sistine Chapel: ‘As I left him gazing thoughtfully at the hell section of The Last Judgment… I said to the lady with me, "Look, he's apartment hunting"’

Axel Taiari: love waking up to dozens of texts from friends telling me Kissinger's dead. the way I got out of bed and waltzed to the living room to open the curtains you'd have thought I was about to burst into a Broadway style song

Dante The K9: Honest to god, I just logged into Final Fantasy XIV and saw catboys dancing in lines around the Limsa Lominsa Aetherite while shouting "KISSINGER'S FUCKING DEAD" in the area chat

Joshua J. Friedman: Good luck to the Wikipedia editors tonight.

Ian Boudreau: Man, even the decorum likers have pretty much given up on this one, that's how fucked up this guy was.

JesseLTaylor: Before you say something mean about Henry Kissinger, take a breath and see if you can think of something meaner.

Thomas Fuchs: If we’d speak more ill of the dead, maybe it would remind the living not to be assholes.

Mark: I think the best possible reason to celebrate Kissinger's death - to be as loud and crude and discourteous as possible about it, to never stop saying what he did, to stink bomb the funerals and piss on the graves - is to let todays war criminals know that we will do it to them too.

Hagai Palevsky: Man goes to doctor. Says he's depressed. Says life seems harsh and cruel. Says he feels all alone in a threatening world where what lies ahead is vague and uncertain. Doctor says “Henry Kissinger died.” Man says “Oh holy shit this rules. This is so great thank you so much. Fuck.

buny: bluesky is fulfilling the essential function of waking up from a nap and learning about significant world news from contextless posts yelling and celebrating. thank you

JonGrayWB: Tomorrow morn you’re gonna see a lot of news outlets mournfully eulogizing Kissinger— glossing over his impact entirely, referring to him as “polarizing” rather than what he actually is to many planet-wide: a monstrous ghoul. This is b/c thas what our ruling class wants ppl to see & do. Reject that.

Paul Frazee (Bluesky Developer): Bluesky takes this opportunity to remind everyone to drink responsibly.
posted by Wordshore at 12:14 AM on November 30, 2023 [57 favorites]

Fedi also:

Paul Cantrell:
Many obituaries of Kissinger describe him as a “realist,” but I don’t think that’s accurate.

It’s not accurate in a “he served US national interests” sense; even if one thinks other countries don’t matter at all, he damaged his own nation terribly.

It’s not accurate even in a utilitarian “diplomacy is a trolley problem” sense where he sacrificed some lives to save even more. He repeatedly chose more deaths over fewer deaths, more suffering over less suffering.

1/2
If there’s any logic to Kissinger beyond sociopathic power-madness, it’s being willing to sacrifice an unlimited number of lives in order to counter leftism.

There’s a warning for us all in that. And it’s not “leftism will meet violent opposition,” though that’s true. The warning is that if you think it’s justified to sacrifice a million lives for your political philosophy, you need to stop and take a looking in the damned mirror.

Nobody’s omniscient or infallible enough for that.

2/2

Evacide: Henry Kissinger was a collection of war crimes in a trench coat. He died many decades too late, beloved by generations of the ruling class across the political spectrum, proving that the only thing they really care about is power.

Ika Makimaki: The coup in Chile, the Argentinean dictatorship, the Indonesian massacres in East Timor, the Vietnam failure of peace talks, the expansion of the war into Laos and Cambodia, the carpet bombing of South East Asia.

Among many other war crimes.

His legacy is shameful. Not a corner of the world was untouched by the evil he unleashed.

The fact that he was not excoriated in life, that he never faced consequences, is a stain on society.

This is a monster who should be reviled, not mourned.

ansuz -friendly reminder to add alt text to your images so the visually impaired can also celebrate kissinger's death

Kevin Rothrock - many of us are currently grieving over the loss of our dear meme where Death is playing a claw machine and always grabbing the wrong person. please be respectful in your comments and remember our fragile state of mind.

SysAdmin 1138 - I was a student in the Minneapolis public schools in the 1980s, which means I had a lot of Hmong classmates. The Twin Cities was one of the major refugee settlement spots for the Hmong (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hmong_Americans) and the kids I shared a classroom with in K and 1st grade had almost no English. They came as a consequence of the Laotian Civil War, which was triggered by Kissinger's actions. The US accepted the refugees because they fought on our side in Vietnam, a war Kissenger ensured would keep being fought. Many of my classmates had family still in camps in Thailand, but I wouldn't find that out until later.

In 6th and 7th grade, I had a couple of Cambodian classmakes who fled the genocide there. Also caused by Kissinger.

When Rodney King's verdict happened and my school came a hair's breadth from joining LA in riots, my Hmong classmates had dark looks in their eyes. Their families had seen civil unrest the way the rest of us hadn't, all because of Kissinger. Something they admitted after the rest of us were talked down from the brink.

Kate Sherrod - POTUS should go ahead and make this day a National Holiday from now on. School kids should have to study why we celebrate this as a warning not to grow up to become monsters.

Michael W Lucas - Henry Kissinger may not see your jokes but your friends who are war criminals will.

Also: if you are in line to piss on HK's grave, *stay in line.*

Vx Princess Grace - Riddle me this, atheist. Suppose you, a Christian baby, and Henry Kissinger jump out of a plane-
posted by cendawanita at 12:25 AM on November 30, 2023 [23 favorites]

I think Earth has judged.
posted by eustatic at 12:25 AM on November 30, 2023 [2 favorites]

Not to be that elephant person, but Mastodon has also been pretty chipper at Kissinger's demise, if you check the hashtag #kissinger.
posted by JHarris at 12:27 AM on November 30, 2023

🦀🎶🦀🎶🦀🎶🦀🎶🦀🎶🦀🎶🦀🎶🦀🎶🦀🎶🦀
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 1:06 AM on November 30, 2023 [14 favorites]

Apparently you can order a death certificate from Connecticut without being family. $20 for the filing fee, and I trust you all to know how much is appropriate to spend on the frame.
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 1:07 AM on November 30, 2023 [33 favorites]

ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED

on to the next boss level
posted by flabdablet at 1:15 AM on November 30, 2023 [13 favorites]

Ok, finally, some good news to wake up to.
posted by eclectist at 1:56 AM on November 30, 2023 [1 favorite]

Jacobin is offering a limited time coupon code for subscriptions: KISSINGERDEAD
posted by kmt at 2:01 AM on November 30, 2023 [17 favorites]

Am I allowed to say on here that I hope he suffered, in some way, at the end? If not, then fair enough and a moderator can delete this comment. But that's how I feel this morning.
posted by Wordshore at 2:24 AM on November 30, 2023 [7 favorites]

I fear I'm not going to express this all that well but I've been reflecting on Kissinger's career and one of the things that strikes me about it and that I think will be too little discussed is that his legacy, which was monstrous, was achieved not so much through exercise of his own power - he commanded no armies, had no arsenal of weapons - but chiefly through providing intellectual and institutional cover for other men to do the things they wanted to do.

I say this not to excuse him in any way, but instead to marvel at how much destruction a person can enable by giving others permission and cover to act according to their basest desires.

I think there's a lesson there that is intensely relevant to many of our modern crises - that it is important not to dismiss or excuse the enablers or allow them to slip away to the op-ed and pundit-panel circuits. Because, while they might not have ever pulled a literal trigger or dropped an actual bomb, they are nevertheless frequently key and knowing actors in chains of decisions and actions that end in incredible destruction and suffering. And I recognize that as a society we are very uncomfortable with confronting that reality but if we're going to do better I think we very much need to learn how to restructure the incentives that enable the enablers.
posted by Nerd of the North at 2:24 AM on November 30, 2023 [41 favorites]

Cohost isn't really an algorhythmy place, but the #henry kissinger is dead tag has caught on. Lots of fun posts there. Me, I'm up too early but I don't care much because now I can catch up both here and there.

(Also, this MeFi post was where I first heard the news. Wouldn't have had it any other way; much love to you all)
posted by May Kasahara at 3:27 AM on November 30, 2023 [3 favorites]

Look like prayer DOES work..you just have to do it every day for 35 years or so.
posted by chronkite at 3:28 AM on November 30, 2023 [6 favorites]

If they vivisected him like in Speaker for the Dead, a corpse flower would rise. And I would pay to see it.
posted by seanmpuckett at 3:38 AM on November 30, 2023 [5 favorites]

From TFA: KISSINGER PLAYED A ROLE IN THE DEATHS OF SO MANY DIFFERENT PEOPLES that treating each with due consideration requires writing a book. Here is one example among many of the sort of carnage Kissinger inflicted indirectly rather than by edict. In 1971, the Pakistani government waged a campaign of genocide to suppress the independence movement in what would become Bangladesh. Pakistan’s Yahya Khan, an architect of the genocide, was valuable to Nixon’s ambitions of restoring diplomatic relations with China. So the U.S. let Khan’s forces rape and murder at least 300,000 people — and perhaps three million. “We can’t allow a friend of ours and China’s to get screwed in a conflict with a friend of India’s,” Nixon quoted Kissinger shrugging.

That perspective typified Kissinger.
posted by Bella Donna at 3:38 AM on November 30, 2023 [7 favorites]

Apparently you can order a death certificate from Connecticut without being family. $20 for the filing fee, and I trust you all to know how much is appropriate to spend on the frame.

And just in time for the holidays!
posted by corb at 4:04 AM on November 30, 2023 [17 favorites]

In my circuit of various websites chronicling the truly sickening amount of death and destruction that Kissinger was responsible for, I stumbled on a speech he gave in 2007, recounting when he was part of a US Army unit that liberated the Hanover-Ahlem subcamp of the Neuengamme Concentration Camp.

In case you think I’m presenting this as a “not everything Kissinger did was evil” data point, that’s the not the case at all. What I find remarkable is that he had to confront evil at its most obvious and horrific, and even though he was clearly affected by it, he chose to devote his life to increase the amount of violence and suffering in the world.
posted by Kattullus at 4:12 AM on November 30, 2023 [17 favorites]

The Washington Post's description of his "willingness to place strategic interest ahead of high-minded values" is absolutely pitch-perfectly in character for that paper. The Washington Post has never been more Washington Post than they are in this moment.

Indeed. Note how this passage simply accepts that Kissinger's many crimes, from Vietnam to Cambodia to Chile -- actually were in America's strategic interest as opposed to deadly mistakes.

Others have pointed out that several major papers obviously dusted off obituaries written years ago. Confusing "reflexive anti-Communism" with "America's strategic interest" is but one example.

In conclusion, Kissinger was a monster, and he died far too late, escaping far too many consequences for the evil he did.
posted by Gelatin at 4:13 AM on November 30, 2023 [13 favorites]

Shane MacGowan reported dead as well. Totally upstaged, and to be honest Fairy Tale of New York is infuriating but not exactly war crimes.
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 4:19 AM on November 30, 2023 [10 favorites]

A great day, ruined
posted by chavenet at 4:30 AM on November 30, 2023 [4 favorites]

I'd like to think that Shane is a perfect performer for the impromptu festival on the lawn in Heaven today: just crude enough to say the blunt truth about Kissinger as the picnicking angels and souls listen to his muffled screams coming up from Hell.

RIP to MacGowan.
posted by wenestvedt at 4:37 AM on November 30, 2023 [13 favorites]

Yes, gutted about Shane McGowan. If I Should Fall From Grace With God is about as great an album as you can imagine.

Kissinger? Ehhhhhh....
posted by fortitude25 at 4:40 AM on November 30, 2023 [2 favorites]

MacGowan was a great, great lyricist and performer and he had a strong instinct for a cover. There are hardly any songs I like so well as "A Pair of Brown Eyes", "The Dark Streets of London" or "Sweet Sally MacLennane". Of all the albums I liked when I was young, the early Pogues ones are among the small number that hold up musically and seem to have a lot to say even now that I'm not college age. He wrote songs that don't depend on him as singer to put them over - they're Pogues, songs, sure, but they're bigger songs than that.

I know that we do not like "Fairytale of New York", but really that's because it's one of his weaker songs that is overplayed for its treacly bits. "They've got cars big as bars, they've got rivers of gold, but the wind goes right through you, it's no place for the old" is good at least and has the virtue of being true.

At least Kissinger didn't outlive yet another better person.
posted by Frowner at 4:50 AM on November 30, 2023 [4 favorites]

Shane and Henry’s rendition of Fairytale of New York is a highly sought-after collectors item.
posted by dr_dank at 4:51 AM on November 30, 2023 [5 favorites]

"If I should fall from grace with God
And no doctor can relieve me.
If I'm buried 'neath the sod,
And the angels won't receive me.
Let me go, boys.
Let me go, boys.
Let me go down in the mud where the rivers all run dry!"

He'll be remembered for magnificent songs and performances like that one. Already, many of MacGowan's songs are feeding back into the folk tradition that inspired them. People will still be singing those songs in a century's time.
posted by Paul Slade at 4:54 AM on November 30, 2023 [2 favorites]

Every picture of this motherfucker newspapers run should be matched with an equal sized picture of any one of the millions of horrors he inflicted on the world.
posted by seanmpuckett at 4:55 AM on November 30, 2023 [8 favorites]

Shane MacGowan reported dead as well.

(He really deserves his own post on MetaFilter, and not a bundle of comments in the Kissinger celebratory thread)

Also Dean Sullivan which was an Ooof! moment to Brits of a certain generation. Somewhat mad at The Grim Reaper; under the "rule of three" you were supposed to take Trump and Murdoch with Kissinger, not Shane and Jimmy Corkhill FFS.

Stop Press: Alastair Darling now? Is there some kind of weird rapture shit suddenly happening?!
posted by Wordshore at 4:59 AM on November 30, 2023 [10 favorites]

Note how this passage simply accepts that Kissinger's many crimes, from Vietnam to Cambodia to Chile -- actually were in America's strategic interest as opposed to deadly mistakes

To be fair, WaPo doesn't specifically identify the entity whose strategic interest Kissinger was so willing to put "ahead of high-minded principles".

Obviously the suggestion is that it was America, but I'm pretty sure it was Kissinger.
posted by flabdablet at 5:00 AM on November 30, 2023 [7 favorites]

anti-dot
posted by The Vice Admiral of the Narrow Seas at 5:24 AM on November 30, 2023

Dibs on his magic murder bag!
posted by Catblack at 5:27 AM on November 30, 2023 [3 favorites]

Shane heard Kissinger kicked it and said "My ghost has an ass to kick! Gotta go!"
posted by East14thTaco at 5:34 AM on November 30, 2023 [2 favorites]

Our long (inter)national nightmare is over.
posted by tommasz at 5:37 AM on November 30, 2023 [2 favorites]

"CONGRATULATIONS.

IF YOU ARE READING THIS, YOU HAVE OUTLIVED HENRY KISSINGER."

To which I say Woot ! 🎊🎈
posted by Faintdreams at 5:51 AM on November 30, 2023 [5 favorites]

All I'm saying is that Kissinger better have fallen from grace with God. If he's not down in the mud where the rivers all run dry, then it is time to attack and dethrone God.
posted by Frowner at 5:59 AM on November 30, 2023 [8 favorites]

My one regret is that Kissinger's demise was not via being in the wrong place at the wrong time, then being abruptly cut down by faceless bombs dropped by faceless pilots, following the orders of some bureaucrat ghoul who simply wanted him erased without the slightest concern for his basic human rights, dignity, civilian status or inherent humanity.

Because after a lifetime of inflicting that upon others, he really deserved to know the feeling firsthand at least once.
posted by delfin at 6:13 AM on November 30, 2023 [3 favorites]

*
May his memory forever be an ominous warning.
posted by wicked_sassy at 6:19 AM on November 30, 2023 [1 favorite]

2023 will always go down as A Good Year for me because both Henry Kissinger and my mother-in-law died.
posted by briank at 6:29 AM on November 30, 2023 [5 favorites]

Also: . x4x10^6 for his victims
posted by TedW at 6:32 AM on November 30, 2023 [5 favorites]

Y'all, if you don't have anything nice to say, seriously, it's better not to say anything at all.

Personally, I think it's very nice to think of worms and maggots feasting on his corpse.
posted by Tom Hanks Cannot Be Trusted at 6:35 AM on November 30, 2023 [5 favorites]

I've just give MacGowan his own post. As someone said above, he deserves more than to be a footnote to Kissinger's death.
posted by Paul Slade at 6:48 AM on November 30, 2023 [19 favorites]

So fin’lly that gravel-tongued devil
Has given us reason to revel
Though not at the Hague
Let’s suffice with a vague
Relief he’s at last on the level.
posted by graywyvern at 6:52 AM on November 30, 2023 [3 favorites]

The article linked to up top is magnificent.
posted by andreaazure at 7:06 AM on November 30, 2023

Hat tip to dorothyisunderwood for sharing the following on Tumblr: It feels like a good time to plug the organizations that the Kissinger death tontine accepted donations-as-submissions from!

☞ Cambodian Children's Fund
☞ Desafío Levantemos Chile
☞ East Timor and Indonesia Action Network
☞ Guatemala Forensic Anthropology Project
☞ The Halo Trust
☞ Yemen Relief Project
posted by merriment at 7:07 AM on November 30, 2023 [17 favorites]

Note how this passage simply accepts that Kissinger's many crimes, from Vietnam to Cambodia to Chile -- actually were in America's strategic interest as opposed to deadly mistakes.

One of the thing that gets me about US foreign policy during the cold war is how cowardly it was.

Like, if you really sincerely believed that capitalism and liberal more-or-less-democracy were better, watching Chile or Cuba flirt with communism or socialism-in-the-hayek-sense wouldn't be threatening. You'd just wait for them to get tired of their system's own contradictions and stop doing it. Helping dictators overthrow left-leaning regimes just admits how worried you are that they were right, that their system really would have succeeded if you hadn't you know shot a bunch of its supporters. That your own system can only succeed if it's propped up by foreigners killing its opponents.

It's like watching American culture warriors whinging about immigrants. If you really believed your own culture had any merit, you'd just relax and watch their kids become mildly-different kinds of just more Americans. Your complaining about them is an admission that you think your own culture is so shitty and awful and weak that anyone who experiences themselves as having a choice about it would wholly reject it.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 7:08 AM on November 30, 2023 [44 favorites]

Jacobin: Only the Good Die Young (also a book, expected ship date in December)
posted by box at 7:09 AM on November 30, 2023 [1 favorite]

You can find him in the background of every major American atrocity of the latter half of the 20th century. Henry Kissinger was the Forrest Gump of war criminals.
posted by AlSweigart at 7:31 AM on November 30, 2023 [8 favorites]

rent is due, work sucks, it's fucking freezing and yet too hot, everything is so damn expensive, our political systems and democratic norms are falling apart and rights being abrogated and denied, and multiple genocides are going on

but kissinger is dead, and you know what? a win is a win. a win is a fucking win.
posted by i used to be someone else at 7:34 AM on November 30, 2023 [16 favorites]

When I worked at Catholic Charities in Washington, DC in the early 80s, I was in charge of a Christmas meal for the homeless at the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception. I received a phone call in my office. The woman said, This is the office of Henry Kissinger and we would like to know if you have a Santa Claus for your event.
I told her that we already did. It was only afterwards that I realized she was probably calling to volunteer Kissinger to play Santa Claus.
That's my brush with Kissinger, signifying nothing.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 8:41 AM on November 30, 2023 [13 favorites]

The one time where children urinating on Santa's lap would have been an unquestionable good.
posted by delfin at 8:43 AM on November 30, 2023 [11 favorites]

“If it were not for the accident of my birth, I would be antisemitic... any people who has been persecuted for two thousand years must be doing something wrong.”

Fresh off of welcoming antisemites to a march ostensibly against antisemitism and giving an attaboy to Elon Musk, the ADL honors Kissinger with this turd claiming "he was unapologetic about his heritage and his embrace of American global power and democratic values"

Thankfully, other users have very usefully pointed out the quote mentioned above, which has since been added as a note to the tweet.
posted by Glegrinof the Pig-Man at 8:45 AM on November 30, 2023 [10 favorites]

"The world's loss is hell's gain." James Thurber
posted by The Ardship of Cambry at 8:54 AM on November 30, 2023 [2 favorites]

It's less well-known than his evil in Cambodia and Vietnam but as a person with Bangladeshi heritage, learning about his support of Pakistan's genocide in Bangladesh clarified for me for the first time that America is kind of evil in terms of its place in the world and also, that the lives of people like me and my ancestors are worth very little in the eyes of the American foreign policy establishment.

"Nixon and Kissinger were not just motivated by dispassionate realpolitik, weighing Pakistan’s help with the secret opening to China or India’s pro-Soviet leanings. The White House tapes capture their emotional rage, going far beyond Nixon’s habitual vulgarity. In the Oval Office, Nixon told Kissinger that the Indians needed “a mass famine.” Kissinger sneered at people who “bleed” for “the dying Bengalis.”'

This is kind of my perspective on it.

In short, Kissinger was not some demonic outlier from establishment policy and culture. He was perhaps its ultimate symbol—the wickedest example of the casual disdain with which the U.S. treats the lives of people all across the globe, and the way that the people in charge of our government, our media, and our economy reinforce this imperial villainy. Really, trying to get the pundits and the politicians to condemn Kissinger was always a losing battle, because they were all in the same club.
posted by armadillo1224 at 9:21 AM on November 30, 2023 [25 favorites]

Henry Kissinger and the Moral Bankruptcy of U.S. Elites (Democracy Now!, Piped/YouTube, 15m6s)
posted by flabdablet at 10:04 AM on November 30, 2023 [2 favorites]

The world was worse for his existence and better for his absence. His life is proof that there is no such thing as justice other than what we ourselves create. The universe is uncaring and people like Kissinger will live to 100 while those deserving of long life die young.

He was, also, and we must NEVER forget, not some mastermind superman manipulating innocent America to commit acts of intolerable evil. Kissinger only had the power, influence, and respect he did because he represented what America wanted.

We could have had a govenrment that was repelled by his evil. Instead we have always had a government eager to listen to the Kissingers of the world. Democrats and Republicans alike will join to praise him in death as they welcomed and respected him in life.

For all that he was a terrible person, he was not the cause of American evil in the world. America was. And is.

I'm still glad he died and he's one of the few people about whom I can say I truly, genuinely, not just using a phrase would piss on his grave. I wish he'd died sooner.
posted by sotonohito at 10:39 AM on November 30, 2023 [16 favorites]

One of the thing that gets me about US foreign policy during the cold war is how cowardly it was.

The tell is how hard Kissinger and his cronies worked to keep their involvement secret. If they were so confident they were right, they could have announced to the world that in order to defend democracy, the US needed to make war on Cambodia, like FDR did with Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. But no, they knew they were doing wrong, because they tried to keep it all secret.
posted by Gelatin at 10:54 AM on November 30, 2023 [16 favorites]

NO DOT FOR YOU
posted by Stoof at 11:09 AM on November 30, 2023 [16 favorites]

i love how you can tell exactly when the news of Kissinger's death hit from the Google Trends graph of the number of people searching for "crab rave"
posted by Jacqueline at 11:41 AM on November 30, 2023 [13 favorites]

He deserves, amongst other things, to have his body left unattended and devoured by rodents before it can be prepared for burial.
posted by dry white toast at 12:25 PM on November 30, 2023 [1 favorite]

He even had his fingerprints on the current Gaza crisis, notably by preventing a peace settlement in 1969.

Kissinger explained that the Soviet Union later agreed to principles even more favorable to Israel, so favorable that Kissinger himself didn’t understand why the Soviets acceded to them. Nevertheless, Kissinger wrote, “the principles quickly found their way into the overcrowded limbo of aborted Middle East schemes — as I had intended.”

(The Intercept)
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 12:30 PM on November 30, 2023 [4 favorites]

The National Security Archive:
The Primary Sources on Kissinger’s Controversial Legacy

Archive Obtained and Published Previously Secret Records on Kissinger’s Role in Secret Bombing Campaigns in Cambodia, Illegal Domestic Spying, Support for Dictators, and Dirty Wars Abroad
posted by gingerbeer at 12:46 PM on November 30, 2023 [5 favorites]

Finally.
posted by mike3k at 1:26 PM on November 30, 2023 [2 favorites]

I spent my internet time yesterday watching & listening to some really great dance videos. (I'll link them elsewhere, they deserve their own light). When my partner came home I made them watch a couple videos, too; and somewhere in their they casually mentioned that Kissinger had finally died.
I was tremendously pleased that my habits are such that I had no inkling of it from you tube at all, just watching dance videos.
So there, another hell for you, be forgotten. Be despised in death, reviled, an example of all that is worst in the rhetoric and power in America, and shrink to insignificance against art.
Let's hope whoever gets charged with designing the grave really thinks about the drainage issues.
posted by winesong at 2:02 PM on November 30, 2023 [5 favorites]

Q: What was the first thing Kissinger learned in hell?
A: The devil will let you kiss his arse all you want, but if you do you'll burn your lips clean off.
_{(his nickname is now 'Fire Marshall Bill')}
posted by zaixfeep at 2:04 PM on November 30, 2023

Frank Sinatra and Henry Kissinger in a phone call.
check out the last line of the conversation.
posted by clavdivs at 2:19 PM on November 30, 2023 [2 favorites]

Clinton's will be the true shitshow of thread emotions, whenever that eventually happens.

Speaking of the Clintons, I do hope someone is looking in on them today and sending flowers. They must be mourning the loss of their good friend Henry.
posted by kensington314 at 3:24 PM on November 30, 2023 [5 favorites]

Ok, so we make things pleasant:
Those who want to dance on his grave go first.
Those who want to piss on his grave go second.
posted by luckynerd at 3:26 PM on November 30, 2023 [9 favorites]

He went silently. He knew what is in store for him, as did Nixon. This contrasts with types such as Reagan and Don Rumsfeld, who died in shrieking terror at the shadows from the abyss closing in on them.
posted by Jessica Savitch's Coke Spoon at 3:46 PM on November 30, 2023 [1 favorite]

It is wild how the flames of hell, whether we believe in them or not, appeal to our sense of justice.
posted by kensington314 at 3:53 PM on November 30, 2023

To quote Futurama:
"Pry out his fillings, feed him to the jackals and lets get on with this."
posted by lkc at 3:56 PM on November 30, 2023 [3 favorites]

Ok, so we make things pleasant:
Those who want to dance on his grave go first.
Those who want to piss on his grave go second.

Hey, no kinkshaming!
posted by praemunire at 4:11 PM on November 30, 2023 [1 favorite]

praemunire, let me add:

Those who want to dance in piss go third. :)
posted by luckynerd at 4:22 PM on November 30, 2023 [2 favorites]

“Wait, there’s a whole subreddit celebrating the death of Henry Kissinger? Are you guys aware of this?
posted by jenfullmoon at 4:47 PM on November 30, 2023

SCMP is going with "Charming, controversial..." but the article goes there in a couple of places. I didn't realize he was also a Tiananmen Square massacre stan.

I read his book "Diplomacy" way back when I was a college student, not knowing much about him at the time.

That he was a Tiananmen Square massacre stan makes sense, because he was also a huge Metternich stan. He idolized the repressive way that things were done between 1815 and 1848. Murder a bunch of protesters here; massage the egos of a couple of powerful people there; be the charming diplomat at the centre of it all. As long as there wasn't a major European war, he could pretend he was saving the world, one quashed democratic movement at a time.
posted by clawsoon at 4:51 PM on November 30, 2023 [4 favorites]

It's funny, for the last...year? year and a half, maybe? I would hit the front page of metafilter on my a.m. web checking, looking to see if this fucker had finally bought the farm. But last night, I was watching random YouTube videos after a really tough day, and saw the breaking news that he'd kicked it, at last (the day after my birthday, so close enough to be a gift), and of course immediately came over to see if there was a post. It honestly put me in a much better mood to see all the nastiness, because I just couldn't handle the thought of all the media responses that would laud his accomplishments and long life and whatnot.

I was never the type to wish suffering on someone, but how these past years have changed me. He didn't suffer enough, he got to have a long, privileged life, and he didn't deserve that after the unspeakable crimes he was the architect of. I wish I believed in an afterlife.
posted by kitten kaboodle at 5:08 PM on November 30, 2023 [6 favorites]

Here's something distressing to think about: What if this is the best possible timeline and things are uniformly much worse in every alternate timeline where he didn't exist? _{thatsenoughinternet4todaykthbye}
posted by zaixfeep at 5:10 PM on November 30, 2023

Here's something distressing to think about: What if this is the best possible timeline and things are uniformly much worse in every alternate timeline where he didn't exist?

There are much, much, much, much, much, much more likely things to be distressed about.
posted by clawsoon at 5:16 PM on November 30, 2023 [4 favorites]

Biden's "condolence" statement is hilariously ice cold and doing the absolute least. Props to the staffer who wrote it.
posted by yasaman at 5:34 PM on November 30, 2023 [32 favorites]

In my circuit of various websites chronicling the truly sickening amount of death and destruction that Kissinger was responsible for, I stumbled on a speech he gave in 2007, recounting when he was part of a US Army unit that liberated the Hanover-Ahlem subcamp of the Neuengamme Concentration Camp.

Oh hey my grandfather lived in Neuengamme for a while!

He survived the camp, and survived the sinking of the prisoner ship they put him in after the camp, but it still meant I never got to meet him because his health was never the same and he died of a heart attack at a very young age.

I know that wasn’t Kissinger’s fault, but I don’t think my grandfather would have been any fonder of Kissinger than he was of Hitler.
posted by nickmark at 5:42 PM on November 30, 2023 [2 favorites]

Here's something distressing to think about: What if this is the best possible timeline and things are uniformly much worse in every alternate timeline where he didn't exist?

It's nothing to do with Kissinger, but it turns out that this is the only timeline with mammals and reptiles and suchlike. All the other timelines just have rocks with googly eyes.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 5:51 PM on November 30, 2023 [8 favorites]

Biden's "condolence" statement is hilariously ice cold and doing the absolute least.

wow.
The whole thing is *chef's kiss* but that last line...

It's even more brutal when you compare it to his statement on the passing of Rosalynn Carter.
posted by cheshyre at 5:59 PM on November 30, 2023 [29 favorites]

“The New England Review of Henry Kissinger Obituaries: Vol. 1, No. 1,” Rusty Foster, Today in Tabs, 30 November 2023

I can only assume that when he first tapped this out on his trusty Underwood in a world where the internet was a novelty, Lippman meant “loud voices on the left” to mean “a few cranks like Sy Hersh.” Today it means “virtually everyone under 50” which leaves the eighty two year old Lippman representing an ever shrinking pool of chronically lead poisoned early Boomers who set the bounds of acceptable discourse in the last century but who never took in the heady views from above the second level of Maslow’s Pyramid.

posted by ob1quixote at 6:10 PM on November 30, 2023 [10 favorites]

Nice.
posted by Greg_Ace at 6:38 PM on November 30, 2023 [1 favorite]

I am glad to have lost the death tontine in the right direction (my dates were in Dec 2024).
posted by deludingmyself at 7:04 PM on November 30, 2023 [2 favorites]

His overdue death reminds me again of the great 1995 NY Times editorial that followed Robert NcNamara's admission that the Best and Brightest were wrong about the Vietnam war.

This paragraph would seem to apply to Kissinger as well:
His regret cannot be huge enough to balance the books for our dead soldiers. The ghosts of those unlived lives circle close around Mr. McNamara. Surely he must in every quiet and prosperous moment hear the ceaseless whispers of those poor boys in the infantry, dying in the tall grass, platoon by platoon, for no purpose. What he took from them cannot be repaid by prime-time apology and stale tears, three decades late.

https://www.nytimes.com/1995/04/12/opinion/mr-mcnamara-s-war.html
posted by etaoin at 7:20 PM on November 30, 2023 [6 favorites]

Slate has The Lesson Henry Kissinger Took When He Liberated the Concentration Camp That Held My Grandfather:

Before Henry Kissinger, who died at the age of 100 on Wednesday, became the most powerful and morally bankrupt secretary of state in modern American history, he was part of the 84th Infantry Division that liberated the Ahlem concentration camp on April 10, 1945. Among those who were rescued was my grandfather, who was likely hours away from death when Kissinger’s infantry arrived...

What did Kissinger do with those memories? I think they must have haunted him—otherwise, why did he try so hard to ignore them, to bury his participation in the liberation of Ahlem as a footnote for decades? But I also think he learned from these memories, from his firsthand exposure to hell on earth, and drew out a very different lesson from most liberators. Germany led the murder of 6 million Jews, and almost no one did anything to stop it. Afterward, a conspiracy of silence stifled discussion of the Holocaust among survivors and their families...

Perhaps the lesson that Kissinger saw in the Holocaust was that mass murder during a geopolitical conflict was, if not quite forgivable, then eminently forgettable by those with the will to do so. That a clash between great powers could cost the lives of millions of innocents, and the world would still shrug and move on once the smoke cleared...

posted by clawsoon at 7:56 PM on November 30, 2023 [8 favorites]

The Onion with their unerring unfaltering genius, included Bashar al-Assad at the bottom of the "React to the Death of Kissinger" article.

The Bashar al-Assad satirical quote?
“Game recognizes game.”
posted by spamandkimchi at 8:13 PM on November 30, 2023 [6 favorites]

Perhaps the lesson that Kissinger saw in the Holocaust was that mass murder during a geopolitical conflict was, if not quite forgivable, then eminently forgettable by those with the will to do so. That a clash between great powers could cost the lives of millions of innocents, and the world would still shrug and move on once the smoke cleared...

And, sadly, he might be correct. :(
posted by Pouteria at 8:14 PM on November 30, 2023 [2 favorites]

Let's hope whoever gets charged with designing the grave really thinks about the drainage issues.

I'd rather it had no drainage at all. Keep it all well contained. Nuclear waste isn't the only thing that does damage if it's allowed to leak into the environment.

Also, I can think of no more fitting tribute to the man and his works than for the overwhelming reek of anaerobic piss rot to become the most notorious attribute of his memorial site.
posted by flabdablet at 9:53 PM on November 30, 2023 [1 favorite]

Jello Biafra has reposted this on his social media.
posted by brujita at 10:05 PM on November 30, 2023 [3 favorites]

Speaking as a Bangladeshi, how I wish my father and grandfather had been alive to see this moment.
posted by unicorn chaser at 2:33 AM on December 1, 2023 [10 favorites]

The great thing is that you can fill a water balloon with piss and lob it over a fence, so even if they try and cordon off stream pissers, that's no proof against ballistic pissers.
posted by seanmpuckett at 5:05 AM on December 1, 2023 [5 favorites]

It’s been mentioned a couple of times, but I just came across the full quote from Gore Vidal’s memoir about running into Kissinger at the Vatican (the Agnellis are a family of Italian industrialists):

The Agnellis had taken over the newly restored Sistine Chapel for an evening; then dinner for 150 in the Hall of the Statues, a brilliant long room with statues in niches like front-line troops poised to defend Olympus from the Titans. Among the crude Titans was Henry Kissinger. In the next few days he and I attended a half-dozen functions together. I have no idea what he was doing memorializing the American Academy; but the people who give money for such causes have made something of a pet of him, rather as they had made one of Truman Capote in an earlier time. I could hear the ceaseless rumbling voice in every corner of the chapel. The German accent is more pronounced in Europe than on television at home. He has a brother who came to America when he did. Recently, the brother was asked why he had no German accent but Henry did. “Because,” said the brother, “Henry never listens.” As I left him gazing thoughtfully at at the hell section of “The Last Judgement” (as pretty and bright now as Tiepolo), I said to the lady with me, “Look he’s apartment hunting.”

Also, that’s a quality sibling burn.
posted by Kattullus at 5:51 AM on December 1, 2023 [18 favorites]

Nobody dripped better than Gore Vidal. Nobody.
posted by flabdablet at 5:55 AM on December 1, 2023 [2 favorites]

> That a clash between great powers could cost the lives of millions of innocents, and the world would still shrug and move on once the smoke cleared...

And, sadly, he might be correct. :(

Heck, Hitler is supposed to have justified his actions by pointing out that people had forgotten all about the genocide of the Armenians only 20 years after the fact.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 6:21 AM on December 1, 2023 [2 favorites]

It's even more brutal when you compare it to his statement on the passing of Rosalynn Carter.

Or Tony Bennett.
posted by Gelatin at 7:04 AM on December 1, 2023 [4 favorites]

Teen Vogue: "Henry Kissinger Was a War Criminal Responsible for Millions of Deaths"
posted by Pronoiac at 7:47 AM on December 1, 2023 [14 favorites]

The Onion: "Iconic Napalm Rights Advocate Dead At 100"
posted by Pronoiac at 7:54 AM on December 1, 2023 [11 favorites]

Also leave it to Gore Vidal to get a dig at Capote into the mix.

Odd to think that people had ever forgotten about the Armenian genocide. Then again I live in one large Armenian pocket and near Glendale which is the Armenian pocket to out size them all, there's a monument to the genocide a short walk from here.
posted by drewbage1847 at 7:55 AM on December 1, 2023 [4 favorites]

And in rule of 3 news, former Supreme Court justice, Kissinger successor (at the College of William and Mary), and architect of the US' current political instability Sandra Day O'Connor has passed.
posted by NoxAeternum at 8:19 AM on December 1, 2023 [2 favorites]

“The New England Review of Henry Kissinger Obituaries: Vol. 1, No. 1,”, linked above (thank you, ob1quixote!), is excellent and worth a click.

The Post’s entry is by Thomas W. Lippman, a “33-year national, foreign and financial reporter and author” who retired at the end of the 1900s. It’s impossible to tell how much updating this obit has received in the potentially forty-some years since it was first sketched out, but my guess based on reading it is: not much. I was alive in the 1990s and this is exactly the kind of garbage that passed for Serious Journalism then, and to a very slightly lesser extent, now.

That section on WaPo's obviously pre-packaged obit is the most brutally appropriate takedown of boomer journalist obits ever. I mean, this is perfection:

Everything Lippman attributes to “critics” in these four paragraphs is well-documented history. These are things that unambiguously happened; things Kissinger caused to happen. This passage is like writing “Critics claim that Napoleon invaded Russia in 1812.”

And this bears repeat quoting:

I can only assume that when he first tapped this out on his trusty Underwood in a world where the internet was a novelty, Lippman meant “loud voices on the left” to mean “a few cranks like Sy Hersh.” Today it means “virtually everyone under 50” which leaves the eighty two year old Lippman representing an ever shrinking pool of chronically lead poisoned early Boomers who set the bounds of acceptable discourse in the last century but who never took in the heady views from above the second level of Maslow’s Pyramid.
posted by mediareport at 8:25 AM on December 1, 2023 [17 favorites]

Ha'aretz: Hero and Villain: Why Henry Kissinger Was Such an Ambivalent Figure for Jews and Israelis [archive]

The headline is gentler than the piece, which incorporates many of the shithead's anti-semitic thoughts described and linked above in this thread.
posted by mediareport at 8:30 AM on December 1, 2023 [4 favorites]

Case Against Henry Kissinger: War Crimes Prosecutor Reed Brody on Kissinger's Legacy of "Slaughter" (Democracy Now!, Piped/YouTube, 22m51s)
posted by flabdablet at 10:15 AM on December 1, 2023 [2 favorites]

Odd to think that people had ever forgotten about the Armenian genocide.

I don't recall learning about it until I was an adult (American public school educated from the mid-1970s - mid-1980s)
posted by cheshyre at 10:32 AM on December 1, 2023 [3 favorites]

ever shrinking pool of chronically lead poisoned early Boomers

This is so accurate, such an accurately devastastating summation of ... *gestures wildly* ... all of this.
posted by riverlife at 4:33 PM on December 1, 2023 [2 favorites]

Tomorrow I'll look for a copy of Wallace Shawn's play Aunt Dan and Lemon, which I haven't read in decades but remember for its critique of the Kissinger worldview, and how attractive it can be make to sound.
posted by goofyfoot at 10:29 PM on December 1, 2023 [2 favorites]

I didn't know about the Armenian genocide until the Serdar Argic bot Streisand Effected it into public consciousness (or at least into what passed for it in those heady just-past-Eternal-September days).
posted by Halloween Jack at 10:58 AM on December 2, 2023 [1 favorite]

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