In these contentious days where some Republicans and Democrats are literally ready to kick each others’ asses if only they could just get off Facebook long enough, it’s hard to remember that on the other side of “the aisle” in politics there are people with heart. Even if their views on how society should be shaped seem lacking in morality or are intellectually offensive in some way, you know that these people love just like you do most of the time. I believe we want to go to the same place, we just have very different ways of how to get there.
No. That’s bullshit. A lot of people can go get bent. You’ve all gone fucking crazy and you should be put down before you infect the rest of the herd.
I think Senator John McCain is one of those who had heart though, even if he allied with forces I do not understand anymore for most of his political career. Since that is so, I am very saddened to see him begin the process of leaving.
For those of us born yesterday, you’ll probably remember John McCain best for dramatically torching the Republican attempt to “skinny repeal” Obamacare. It went something like this:
That thumbs down may have well been a middle finger to Yertle The Turtle and his entire crooked-ass quorum. While the Republican assault on healthcare continues, it was nevertheless rousing to see someone over there say at a critical juncture, “Enough. We’re being bigger dicks than I am comfortable with. Enough.”
Then there was that time when he talked some fearful, whacko racist constituents down from their conspiratorial perches at a campaign stop in 2008. As you all know, conservatives have been fed a steady diet of hateful, dangerous media blather for almost 30 years now, beginning with Rush Limbaugh and the emergence of Fox.
And McCain just couldn’t. He listened patiently, but he couldn’t.
Those were probably the most television-worthy moments of John McCain’s tenure in politics in my adult generation. I could be missing much more vintage McCain, beginning with the footage of his captivity in Vietnam because I am still relatively young.
I should not fail to mention that he also took a courageous stand against our wanton use of torturing combatants during the Bush era when we were collectively balls-deep in avenging ourselves upon anyone we could catch for those buildings that came down in 2001. More recently, he’s been a vocal opponent of the nomination of Gina Haspel for CIA.
Of course, there are moments I remember which are regrettable. He made a star out of Sarah Palin. He will always be known as the old man who joked about bombing Iran to a Beach Boys tune:
And long before I became interested in politics or even my own johnson, he was a member of something called the Keating Five in the 80s. You see, back in the day from what I gather, buying a politician was not as easy to hide, and savings and loan king Charles Keating wanted some regulations undone to expand his empire. So, he feted a few key senators in order to achieve his goal. Apparently that was weird back then. In an ironic twist, he helped Russ Feingold enact campaign finance reform, though.
And that’s kinda the lion’s share of what I know about John McCain. I suppose that’s not much. I wonder, am I sad because he’s been famous for much of my conscious political life, or am I sad because he was an OK guy and that’s what you do when OK people are dying or dead? Maybe it’s a little of both, I don’t know. Famous deaths may remind me of my own fleeting mortality. It’s been on my mind.
Whatever the case, peace be upon John and his family. I think the only regret he might have about leaving at this time is that his passing will interrupt, at least for a little bit, the news of the unraveling of that dumb son-of-a-bitch who said to him that he preferred soldiers who don’t get captured.