Is it too soon for RUDE PUNDIT's "Dead Senator"?

[kpete]

8/27/2018
Dead Senator

Senator John McCain was an asshole. But he was the kind of smart, sarcastic asshole that, when he was on your side, you were just jazzed to have fight with you. When you were on the opposite side from him, he was just a fuckin' asshole. To understand the "complexity" of McCain, as so many like to say, is to misunderstand something basic in his nature: he obviously loved being an asshole.

Look, anything anyone writes about McCain, who died this weekend after battling brain cancer, has to acknowledge that the central part of his story is balls-to-the-wall badass, tragic, and heroic. McCain, who was a shitty pilot and a shitty student at the Naval Academy, was shot down in his fighter plane in North Vietnam and was beaten and tortured by his captors. He declined early release because he knew the NVA wanted a propaganda coup for doing it, so he was subjected to more and worse torture. For five years, he endured and then came home. If you want to know why McCain has engendered more sympathy than most figures in American politics, it boils down to the horror he experienced. We saw his sacrifice in every step his damaged body took.

It's too bad that he went through that for a completely useless war, but we're not supposed to say that. We're not supposed to acknowledge that McCain took pleasure in killing "gooks," as he himself said, or that he was likely hitting civilian targets in his bombing runs. But it doesn't take anything away from McCain's genuine heroism in the Hanoi Hilton. It doesn't take away an iota of the pain he suffered or the fact that it would have killed most of us. It's just that we tend to think in simple terms about the complicated reality.

..................


..... If this post isn't as mean and full of anger as you might have liked, it's probably because I've said so many terrible things about McCain over the years that I don't fucking want to repeat myself. I can't think of what more to say about him. Besides, everyone gets so upset if you say one negative word. People love and are so deeply invested in the lie of McCain, of the honorable public servant, of the war hero, that they don't give a shit that he didn't really do much of anything to help people. They need the lie.

Mourning McCain for most of the nation feels less like mourning a man than mourning an illusion of a lost America where people worked together for a common purpose. It was an illusion that McCain talked about all the time, even in his final message to the American people. Throughout his career, though, McCain did as much as anyone to keep the illusion from becoming reality.

.........


the rest:
http://rudepundit.blogspot.com/2018/08/dead-senator.html

[TreasonousBastard]

1. He's pretty much spot on.

[olegramps]

20. Well, he was the best of a lousy bunch is all I can say. He had moments.

[Autumn]

2. "They need the lie." that one sentence is all that needs be said.

The truth is people need their "heroes" so they bestow that term on anyone that says or does something they like no matter how trivial, ordinary or just how shitty their deeds really are.

However fucked we are now, he is one of the people who fucked us. That he did it with a limp and a quick wit fooled just about everyone.

[Proud Liberal Dem]

3. There's been a huge mythos created about John McCain

that is largely undeserved IMHO. He could often talk a good game but rarely followed through. I just realized too that, despite his ACA repeal bill, he apparently did vote for the Individual Mandate repeal in the Tax Bill, so he pretty much contradicted himself- without too many people noticing. The Hagiography of McCain has been working overtime since Saturday and even I sort of got caught up in it at first.

[Texin]

11. I agree with that. And when you stop to remember how rethugs vilified John Kerry in 2004 it burns.

But taken together in context with the current Commander-in-Chief, everyone would rather lionize McCain to fill the void at the top.

[Proud Liberal Dem]

18. I didn't think of it that way

but I can definitely see it. And what the Republicans did to Kerry in 2004 was shameful. The Swift Boats and purple band-aids at the RNC were despicable. Did McCain stand up for Kerry back then? I can't recall. I just remember him (literally) embracing GWB.

[malaise]

4. Rudie always keeps it

REAL
Rec

[dchill]

21. As opposed to Rudy.

Jewel yawnee, I mean.

[malaise]

25. DUzy

Nice.

[jodymarie aimee]

5. I remember in a debate Obama pointed out McCain couldn't answer the question how many homes he owned

.....he simply did NOT know. Obama was saying that McCain would not be good for the common man. My people (disabled, elderly and poor I work for every day)have no cars, no computers, eek by on $4 to $15 Grand a year. No eyes, no teeth care....I agreed with Obama....

I was never a fan when he was alive, and see no reason to canonize him when he is dead.

[SammyWinstonJack]

22. Agree. Completely.

[aikoaiko]

6. Mourning a man who would sometimes put country and decency above party.

[GoCubsGo]

7. Thank you, Rude.

You sum up my conflicting feelings about a very conflicted man to a tee.

[geardaddy]

8. Spot on.

[c-rational]

9. Well said. There is truth in you post and it passes my gut check.

[NoMoreRepugs]

10. Americans can overlook or ignore an awful lot to create a Hero.

I appreciate and admire his service to the country, who he was as a man and his beliefs not so much.

[bucolic_frolic]

12. As usual the dirt is in the details

Myth is a glossed-over caricature for political purposes. McCain rarely compromised, and usually only when a Senator from the opposite side worked with him. The rest of the time he was hard conservative for the wealthy, the insiders, the monied. But of course that's what America is about. Elections are when the people weigh in, governing is when the special interests exert influence, and ruling is what you get up top. Wealthy landowners have morphed into wealthy capitalists, people want some of that, so it was predictable. Telling us we can have freedom to earn a dollar a day is not very popular anymore.

[kpete]

13. well said

I enjoyed your reply, especially the last line:


Telling us we can have freedom to earn a dollar a day is not very popular anymore.

[bucolic_frolic]

16. As I get older I paint with a broad brush

but I'm finding the path of life and history is drawn by seemingly small events that seem not too important at the time

Thanks, kpete!

[mountain grammy]

14. Thank you, Rude.. Well said.

thanks for posting, kpete.

[SunSeeker]

15. McCain's vote to repeal the mandate was not the same as repealing the ACA.

Last edited Tue Aug 28, 2018, 12:22 PM - Edit history (1)

We still have protections for pre-existing conditions, we still have 100% coverage for preventive care, children can still stay on their parents' policy until 26. Yes, repealing the mandate spiked costs and made the markets unstable, but we still have the ACA. Turns out, even without the mandate, people are still buying insurance on the market places.

McCain's dramatic vote to stop the repeal of the ACA is something I will always be grateful for. It cost him the approval of GOP voters, but it saved thousands of lives. So, I will have to disagree that he "didn't really do much of anything to help people." That vote alone helped millions of people and saved thousands of lives...and will continue to save thousands of American lives for each year the ACA is on the books.

And there is his heroism with regard to the Steele dossier that Rude ignores. DUer pwnmom put it succinctly:

John McCain sent his assistant to Europe to hand-carry the Steele dossier to him in the US, and then McCain personally delivered it to the FBI 

He didn't get the dossier and sit on it or otherwise suppress it. 

The Rethugs in power must have hated him for that. And we should all be grateful.

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100211062177#post9

[PufPuf23]

17. Appreciate that McCain could not stomach Trump.

Feel for his suffering and for his family because of his passing.

That said, USA politics will be better and would have been better without McCain.

Granted McCain did work across the aisle more than most current GOP.

McClain introduced the USA to Sarah Palin, fortunately she has become a side show and a standing joke for most and not to be taken seriously.


So RIP John McCain.

[Major Nikon]

19. While people are describing McCain as a hero, we shouldn't forget he voted party line 87%

The average senator votes party line 91% of the time, so McCain's assholery is only slightly less than the other GOP assholes and the difference is so minor you wouldn't even notice unless some were cherry picking his votes as examples of his non-assholery.

We also shouldn't forget his military service just wasn't all that honorable. Had it not been for his provenance, he would have never gotten into the Naval Academy to begin with and would have been drummed out several times over had daddy not gone to bat for him. The only reason he went into politics is because he finally realized his name would only take him so far in the Navy.

[calimary]

24. I will forever be bothered by the way he threw away his first wife.

She was a beautiful model and devoted wife who waited for him while he went to Vietnam. But during his absence she was in a traumatic car accident that messed up her beautiful body, especially her long shapely legs. When he finally came home to her, he didn’t REALLY come home - to HER. He soon became enamored of a pretty young blonde from a fabulously wealthy family and threw over Wife #1, making the newer younger prettier woman Wife #2. They married a mere couple of months or so after his divorce was final.

I’m certainly no angel myself, but I’m bothered by that. I’ve tried to leaven that with the reminders of his service. He actually DID go over to Vietnam and got his hands dirty - doing the dirty and bloody work that preening vainglorious cowards like donald trump managed to avoid. So I’ll gladly give him that.

I didn’t like most of the votes he cast (I tend not to like whatever it is that republi-CONS support) but occasionally he did the right thing. Like that thumbs-down on the ACA repeal. So I’ll gladly give him that too.

He was a complicated man and admittedly not perfect. He was graceful in defeat, and his moment with that pathetic woman in the red shirt whose idiot “opinion” about Barack Obama’s background he corrected - live, in public, and on camera, was towering and admirable, courageous and honest. I’ll very gladly give him that, too.

I won’t mourn him with eyes glazed over by the soft fog of denial or fantasy about what one WISHES were there. But I will mourn him.

[niyad]

28. we also have his views on women's rights. and, I do not forget that he called cindy a c***

during one of his temper tirades, on a live mic.

[DinahMoeHum]

33. +1000s

That, and according to a fellow POW, he did not really have the temperment to be a POTUS. . .

Phil Butler, BTW, is now a member and chapter head (Monterey, CA) of Veterans For Peace.
https://www.middlebury.edu/institute/people/philip-butler

https://www.veteransforpeace.org/who-we-are/member-highlights/2017/01/05/gathering-storm-letter-phil-butler

[Lordquinton]

23. Spot on

I wonder if the lionization here at DU is a part of that. The need to believe that the republican party isn't 100% past trump, that the dream of bipartisanship isn't gone, that there is someone there we can work with.

[whathehell]

26. The answer is YES IT IS..

like Trump, much?

[KG]

27. big time phoney

along the lines of colin powell - a life-long p.r. job about being a 'maverick'. as if.

[Kind of Blue]

29. Thank you very much for posting this.

I can continue living in reality and not a one-sided bastardization of it.

[Solly Mack]

30. Whew. Finally.

K&R

[Javaman]

31. Spot on. I always referred to mccain as a political opportunist. nt

[Jokerman]

32. K & R

[zipplewrath]

34. A complicated man

It's just that we tend to think in simple terms about the complicated reality.

You say alot with a few words there.

He was a complicated man. My problem with the man was that he wasn't just "true to his principals", he was stubborn as hell. Alternately, he was well capable of acknowledging, unfortunately after the fact, when he was wrong. He acknowledged the mistake of the Iraq war. Alternately, I don't think he ever admitted (publicly at least) the gross error of Palin.

He was a bit like George Wallace. He was what he was which was somewhere between a devil and a saint, which is about all any of us can claim. I hope I'm judged by my best days, and not my worst.

[Mosby]

35. K and R

As a native Arizonan, he never fooled me, or most dems I know.