Aug. 26 Open Thread: McCain Won’t Get to See Trump in Prison
This might be hard to believe, but there are even worse people than Donald Trump in the Republican Party. When the family of Sen. John McCain, who died last night at 81, announced last week that he was stopping treatment of his brain cancer, “Chemtrail” Kelli Ward, running for Jeff Flake’s senate seat in Arizona, complained that the announcement was timed to hurt her politically.
Even Trump relinquished his Twitter feed long enough to allow a staffer to send condolenscences to the family — you could tell it wasn’t Trump because all the words were spelled correctly — but the family will honor McCain’s wishes, which were that Trump not attend.
Politico looks at how McCain’s seat will be filled, which boils down to a governor’s appointee until the 2020 elections.
The Democratic Party took a step toward living up to its name by greatly reducing the influence of superdelegates in its presidential nominating process.
James Fallows of The Atlantic looks backward in his own archive to see how American institutions have held up against the Trump regime. He finds that — no surprise here — the institution that crumbled most completely is the Republican Party, which folded faster than a jack-high poker hand.
https://mobile.twitter.com/cameronkart8/status/1033745343542964224
Over Under. How many times did John McCain vote against sanction on apartheid South Africa?
Here’s a hint it’s more times than he voted against the MLK holiday. That was only once.
How many disabled wives did he leave compared to Newt Gingrich?
I’ll check in tomorrow. See how you did…
He only left the wife who stayed with him through his Vietnam service only to be subsequently dumped after she suffered a disfiguring accident. He left her for an exceptionally wealthy younger woman.
Oh, shut up.
It was W’s victory over McCain that first convinced me that our democracy is being hijacked by corporate interests. The only area where W was a superior choice is malleability. Say what you want about him, I don’t think McCain would have been stupid enough to go into Iraq.
We tend to demand perfection in our heroes and excel in diminishing both them and their accomplishments when we view them through the lens of those imperfections. But we humans can never be perfect and the best we can hope for is to be an imperfect hero.
I’m not going to list his accomplishments or his demonstrations of his character and principles. The media is doing that in spades. I also do not feel the need to diminish who and what he was. As with everyone, he had flaws. But what McCain did in his life are things that none of us have done and perhaps could never do. For those things he deserves respect and even admiration. And so from one flawed human to another, I give him my respect and my admiration.
I fucking hate everything about this argument.
Nobody is perfect. Flaws. Purity tests!
You can’t vote against apartheid sanctions and the MLK holiday and for tax cuts for oligarchs and be a “hero”. Hero to whom? That’s the problem.
He’s the fail son of a four star admiral and the fail grandson of a four star admiral. He was shot down bombing a civilian light bulb factory.
I know everyone is suppose to buy into the Maverick persona. I don’t.
And it’s not because McCain was flawed. It’s because he wasn’t a fucking hero.
It really doesn’t have to be an argument. At a person’s death, it’s traditional to remember the good parts about his life. Those who object to that are inevitably going to look churlish.
Let me put it like this: Trump agrees with you, albeit for different reasons.
Trump doesn’t agree with me.
One: There’s plenty of traditions that are horrible and disgusting. McCain was churlish in life so I’ll take the tag now for being honest. That’s fine by me.
Two: This shouldn’t/doesn’t apply to public figures.
If this bothers anyone I suggest that when you get word that the disgusting Jaba the Rat Kissinger croaks you log off for a few days. It’s going be bad.
Sure he does. He agrees that McCain wasn’t a fucking hero.
I found no fault in what you said. I was merely pointing out that if the reaction to it bothers you, you should probably avoid any story with “McCain” in the headline for a few days, because that reaction is going to be common.
Put another way, there are better times to dance on the grave than while they’re still digging it.
Trump doesn’t like McCain because McCain didn’t like him. It’s petty schoolyard garbage. Just because Trump said “I like heroes who aren’t captured” doesn’t mean anything. Trump just says words. He doesn’t like McCain for the same reason he doesn’t like say Jeff Flake. It has nothing to do with past positions, deeds, service or anything.
This idea that we agree is a very weak way of boiling some complex thing down to some premise that’s coincidentally the same between Trump and me. Trump and I both don’t like McCain. Trump couldn’t tell you anything about McCain except the Vietnam story and that McCain didn’t like him.
Actually if Trump knew McCain voted six times not to impose sanctions on apartheid South Africa, and voted against the MLK holiday, and called Asians ‘gooks’, and had a hard on to bomb Iran, and left his disabled wife for a wealthy heiress, he probably like him fine.
I decided to stop worrying about political etiquette about 10 years ago. I suggest everyone else do the same.
You’re right, I never said you disliked him for the same reasons. Maybe I shouldn’t point out that your scorn of politesse, regardless of context, also is shared by Trump.
My point isn’t that you’re wrong, it’s that you should expect the pushback instead of letting it annoy you.
Fair enough. I get that I’m the contrarian. I’m not annoyed. I just think my argument is better, but no one argues on the merits.
The guy died. Everyone says he was great and a hero… So that’s that. Nobody questions it. And when you bring up what he actually did and stood for no one disputes it. They just say it’s bad taste. He was just “flawed”. It’s fucking weak.
I say whitewashing history and swallowing the “conventional wisdom” is in bad taste.
My comment wasn’t etiquette. John McCain accomplished things worthy of note and praise. It’s nothing more than that. It’s simply recognizing that a person’s cup is either half empty or half full. To me, the cup of his life’s story was half full. I tend to try and humanize people rather than demonize (though there are those for whom it is almost impossible to humanize). Creating false demons is just as bad as creating false heroes.
@Dave and REV: He also cast the vote that preserved the shreds of Obamacare. We are all both angel and demon, though in different measures. Rob, if you want I can assemble for you all the stories that brought up the points you did. There’s little of that in legacy media, where they’re careful not to offend, but there’s no shortage of it in the left-leaning alternative media.
You can also find it in Fox News viewer comments, which the network disabled because of the ugliness displayed.
Having notable accomplishments doesn’t make someone a hero. By that logic Joe Biden is a hero.
I’m not creating a false demon. I’m telling you the other side of the story. Stuff that’s, you know, true.
I just don’t like the post mortem hagiography …
Joe Biden will be hailed as a hero when he dies, and you know it. Having notable accomplishments means you’ll get hagiography in your obituary.
Love ’em or hate ’em, traditions endure. It’s tautological.
True. Proves my point, no?
And I’ll be here to shit on his grave! That much you can count on.
Only if your point is that what we call “norms” of human behavior are called that because they apply to most people. Acting outside those norms is neither good nor bad, but the people adhering to those norms often think differently.
If your point is that everybody fucks something up sometime and you get to respond by directing vitriol at transgressors, again, point made, though perhaps not the point you think.
So Biden, for all his flaws, never did any good things at all? Obama, would you shit on his grave too? And you don’t think people should call you a purist. Sometimes you’re like a Trump cultist, just on the other side.
Don’t be so fucking obtuse. I said they had some accomplishments. However, to call them heroes is queer and flies in the face of actually history. To fawn over their memories is moronic.
The difference between me and a Trump cultist is I know what the fuck I’m talking about.
Not all critique us equal. But you knew that already.
The more I think on Nathan’s comment the dumber it seems.
I can hate on Obama for drone strikes.
My uncle can hate on him because he’s a Kenyan Muslim.
Same thing!
Fucking ridiculous. You should log off the rest of the day.
So, you would shit on Obama’s grave too? (Metaphorically, I guess, but with you I’m not really sure.) Should your uncle also shit on his grave? There’s some ground between hagiography and total condemnation. Maybe you know this, maybe you’re being misinterpreted, but I guess it’s hard to be clear with all that foam coming out of your mouth.
And don’t forget, a lot of this McCain praise is an implicit jab at Trump. I’m for that.