Goodbye to John McCain

So long, John!  Fare Thee Well!

Goodbye to John McCain

They’re paying their respects to the late Senator John McCain today.  I’m reminded when Trump tried to denigrate Sen. McCain, claiming he wasn’t a real war hero because McCain had been captured.  Then he added some typically idiotic remark such as “I like my heroes not captured” or words to that effect. 

Well, Mr. President, I can tell you this much: sometimes you have to accept the opinion of the majority, sir.

I mean, you think less of him as a man because he was captured, badly injured in the crash, had broken bones and tortured? 

He fractured both arms and a leg, had his shoulder crushed by a rifle butt and then he was bayoneted. 

He was refused medical treatment and served 5 1/2 years as a POW, including two years in solitary confinement. At one point during his long captivity, he was bound and beaten every 2 hours. 

Not everyone remembers this detail but in mid-1968, when his captors found out he was the son of an admiral, he was offered early release as a sign of mercy.  Indeed, “McCain refused repatriation unless every man taken in before him was also released”. 

He could have gone home and received the kind of medical attention he so urgently needed but he refused the offer.

Now you can talk about party politics all you want: what’s politically correct and what’s not. 

You can talk about nationalism, race, and language being the major way we meet and judge people.  Maybe that’s still true but not now as much as in the old days. 

We are also are free to change the tone of the conversation.  We can talk about universal traits all people share like loving their families and teaching their children what words like honor, honesty, and courage mean.

Sometimes we can admire a man for his courage and set aside for a moment those concerns about race, ethnicity, culture and all such.

Now we are talking about a man’s character and the trait of courage.  Others will pay tribute to John McCain far better than I ever could when it comes to describing his independence of spirit, his open-hearted willingness to work with members of the other party, even his cantankerous, maverick, and ornery iconoclastic self. 

We are talking only about one virtue: courage.  When other people can say with confidence that they would have endured what John McCain endured, then those people should be free to speak up and express their opinion.  They have the right. 

His comrades and wounded friends, they should be allowed to express their opinion, too.  And maybe, just maybe, the rest of us who wouldn’t there in Vietnam with John McCain and can’t imagine those prison conditions, maybe we should keep quiet. 

That includes you, Mr. President.  We want to hear the story of John McCain, and remember.

I think most of us can see our way clear to saying at least this much: the way he endured his capture, imprisonment, and torture was brave, remarkable and heroic.  Yes, HEROIC. 

He himself made no secret where he found the strength: a deep-seated patriotism that reached down to the very roots of this country and takes its nourishment from the heroic actions of the brave American soldiers of the past. 

He’s drawing inspiration from Washington’s freezing soldiers at Valley Forge, the nameless men who endured exposure, disease, and starvation because of their love for their new country and the bedrock principles for which it stands: democracy, freedom, justice, and equality. 

They gave their lives for a cause in which they believed. 

And we think John McCain’s commitment to these principles was rather HEROIC, too.

No, Mr. President, you can’t always define “hero” the way your crazy mind would misleads you, just because of you enmity for John and your bitter jealousy of a man you could never begin to equal.

You can’t engage in bitter gossip against a fallen American soldier because the American people won’t let you . . . . and the spirit of John McCain won’t let you.

Sure, I get it, you don’t want to call John McCain a hero because he wouldn’t bend the knee to a tyrant, because he was independent and principled and showed no cowardice, no crack in his ethical armor for you to compromise and exploit.  So you impugn he wasn’t a hero.  That’s you, not him. 

You wish John McCain hadn’t been captured so you could call him a hero?  Well, other people have their wishes, too.

I wake up and wish you were not the president with all my heart and soul every day . . . . but we don’t always get our wishes fulfilled, do we? 

It seems your wish is to try and make light of Senator John McCain’s long captivity and suffering but I tell you again, the American people won’t allow it. 

We have our principles, too.  We show respect when a man’s personal courage soars above all other petty labels and disputes—if that’s courageous in our eyes and if we want to call John McCain a HERO and his actions HEROIC, that’s our affair! 

I feel sorry for you, Mr. President, if you don’t know how to set aside all your bickering bitchiness to just stop and breathe, listen and reflect and say with us: Here was a man who knew courage. 

He acted, as a hero always acts, in the most heroic manner possible under the given circumstances.  That’s why he’s OUR American hero. 

You go ahead with your snide jokes and rude insults, Mr. President, that’s who you are: a mean-spirited, combative, vulgar, crafty, lying, deceitful old fool.  You go ahead and be who you are; let John be the man he was, and is.

Truthfully, Mr. President, I believe the real reason you can’t say nice things about John McCain because you are unable to appreciate him.  You don’t have the scruples or the wisdom to understand a man like John McCain. 

You are missing the best common traits that the rest of us have: of respect for honor and loyalty and that special brand of patriotism that makes one willing, almost glad, to give his life for country. 

I bet you don’t know what I’m talking about now, do you, Mr. President?

You are missing a full spectrum of normal healthy emotions like love and kindness, gentleness and tenderness and the mercy and compassion that comes from deep within one’s own heart. 

You reach behind you into your emotional barrel and you find it empty; you can’t reach in and pull out an appreciation for what real courage looks like, the trait that more than any other defines HEROISM. 

Lacking utterly this quality yourself, you can’t appreciate what TRUE COURAGE looks like in the life of another human being.  It’s too bad, Mr. President, you never got to know one of the great men of the United States Senate.

 I think you would have liked him.

Goodbye, John,

and God’s speed!