After more than ten years of blogging, I feel fortunate that I don’t have more than a couple of posts that I regret. And I don’t regret this piece on John McCain even though I felt ambivalent about even when I was writing it. It was a downright savage piece, but he deserved it and the bottom line is that it was just the unvarnished truth. John McCain was a terrible student at the Naval Academy who should have been kicked out. He was an awful pilot who should have been grounded. He was a prisoner of war, but not one of any kind of special distinction. He got captured and made a political career out of it.
I don’t agree with Donald Trump when he disrespects prisoners of war. I don’t think John McCain’s suffering in captivity should ever be diminished. The country had a debt to John McCain when he came back.
But that doesn’t make him a hero. It doesn’t make him a good cadet, a good pilot, or a man who had distinguished himself above and beyond his peers. I would suggest that exactly no one emulate John McCain’s choices in life, because he’s a horrible example and role model for students, naval officers, pilots, ethical politicians, husbands, and for people who might want to pick a vice-presidential running mate someday. He’s also a warmonger.
So, Trump basically told the truth about McCain, but he did it in a stupid way that wrongfully disrespected a bunch of people who didn’t deserve his contempt. McCain really did finish almost at the bottom of his class at the Naval Academy, and he really did turn getting captured into some kind of heroic act.
These days, we call people who get shot for no reason “heroes” in this country. The word has become so cheap, you can probably buy it for a nickel.
If you wouldn’t want a guy flying in your squadron because he’s incompetent, then that guy isn’t a hero.
Now, we’ll see if Ed Kilgore is right that these comments will hurt Trump. I doubt it.
This modern GOP ain’t your grandma’s Oldsmobile.
Trump’s boorish, scattershot disrespect is a statement of values and will absolutely turn off a majority of even Republican voters. But he’s the protest candidate who is not speaking for a majority of the minority.
The nativism and racism would seem to be an act given that he’s otherwise been a tacky globalist his whole life who owns hotels and golf courses in 80 countries or whatever the number is. He’s a cosmopolitan capitalist sponge who’s playing to the Joe Arpaio set. I personally think he’s doing it out of revenge towards the “Very Serious” Republicans who panhandle for money and pats on the head and are no less clowns and phonies than he is and he knows it.
I think his contempt for historical losers like McCain (or Romney) is genuine, and shared by a good chunk of GOP voters. If Obama is the worst thing that ever happened to America, then the people who failed to stop him are the GOP’s foremost villains. What respect is due to them for leaving this country in the hands of history’s greatest monster?
The term “hero” has now been so devalued that it refers to any member of the military for any reason. The latest are the marines who were victims of the shootings in Chattanooga, which is the leading edge of yet another Islamophobic campaign–this time for internment.
There are few heroes in war. But militaries love hero inflation.
OT Congrats on Naked Capitalism linking your Jeb at Little Big Horn piece on Washington Monthly.
Right on Booman
Just check comments at Redstate or Free Republic
They love him
Agree, the comments won’t hurt him. Because the people backing Trump at this time are not decent human beings of any stripe. They are traitors. They are wilful, feral, spoiled, cowardly slugs.
They savagely insult the President, his wife, his daughters in the most despicable terms. They threaten violence on anyone who dares to voice support.
They fly a traitorous battle flag as a call to action, and call for active, violent and murderous responses to Court decisions.
They laugh because violent thugs masquerading as defenders of society kill unarmed children. They make jokes at the suffering of decent people working 2 and three jobs to make life better for their children.
Trump deserves their support, and they deserve Trump.
Assume (for the sake of argument) that Trump DOES win the R nomination. At that point his support will balloon from about 5% of registered voters (RWTP)to about 27% of registered voters (rabid R voters). The REAL question will be: ARE THESE 27% ALSO TRAITORS?
Psychologically, I KNOW today’s Republican party is closer to a FORD Model T!
This is a trick answer!
Maybe. But this gives the rest of the GOP a cudgel to beat him with. They didn’t want to fight with him over Mexirapists, but this allows them to attack him as insufficiently reverential towards “the troops.”
Maybe the crazies really have taken over the asylum. But we thought that when Michelle Bachmann/Herman Cain/Rick Santorum and so on popped up and then were worn down by the weight of K-Street Republicans.
He’s not going to wear down, hawesg. I think that if he doesn’t win the RatPub nomination he’ll run as an independent. He can afford to do so all by himself. And…if he runs as an independent, he could win. There is a white, working class contingent that still votes straight Democratic. If he can capture that vote and the Tea Party types plus run the kind of sensationalistic campaign he is now running against two lameass, mainstream campaigners like Butch III and HRC?? And of course convince the serious PermaGov villains that he’s not after their ass so he doesn’t get assassinated?
We’ll have a President Trump.
Watch.
That’s a lot of “ifs,” of course, but it could happen.
Watch.
AG
Have to agree. After all look at how the entire Rep Party cheered on the swiftboating of Kerry. But hey, he’s a Democrat.
McCain deserved courage points for flying in a war zone. Kerry deserved courage points for fighting in a war zone. Trump’s 3 deferments negate anything he says inside that scope.
Never mistake stupidity for courage. Most people who voluntarily take part in a war that makes absolutely no sense are not “courageous” in any valid way. They are simply stupid, willful people. Most of them do not have a clue about what war is like. They think it’s some kind of big adventure, like in the movies. It ain’t. By the time the truth of the matter filters through their thick heads, it’s too late. They have to fight to survive. That’s not “heroism,” it’s survival. People fighting for their own land are “heroes,” some of them, but they are mixed in with the same stupid joyboys I referenced above.
Like dat.
I feel sorry for unwillingly drafted soldiers. Putting Trump down because he avoided the draft is foolish. It doesn’t make him a hero but neither does it make him a villain. He does that quite nicely himself.
AG
dRump’s teabag base already loathed McCain, but they need The Donald to explain to them why McCain’s VN War hero status is bs.
Related:
for keeping his crew together and making it to shore despite a broken back and him towing one of his men on his shoulders.
I don’t think anyone ever claimed he was Horatio Nelson or Admiral Bull Halsey as a ship fighting commander.
Will leave it to others to conclude if his actions were those expected of him under the circumstances of so exceptional that they warranted special acknowledgment.
My point was that he did make light of being accorded hero status and knew full well that his family had access to reporters was integral to his status.
claim all they were doing was what was expected of them.
It is just that they do it under circumstances where ordinary people freeze and cowards run away.
In the end I don’t think it was Jack Kennedy’s war record that made him Senator. Joe would have had one of his son’s elected, it was just Joe Jr.’s misfortune that his heroic act ended up with his plane blowing up. Jack just had the smarts and the looks and the charisma to easily be slotted in.
Those who freeze or flee have failed. The dividing line between expected and exceptional is fuzzy. Between exceptional and heroic not so much. Captain Sullenberger was uncomfortable with being hailed as a hero. Seemed to view himself as having performed at an expected level. Yet, sure looked exceptional to non-pilots.
JFK’s war record gave him a name. That likely made it easier for him to win an open (D) House seat. From a distance in time and little information, appears that JFK didn’t attempt to exploit his war record for political gain. (Wouldn’t have been opportune to do so in 1952.) That really wasn’t done back then. (Would anyone choose McCain over McGovern to pilot a plane they were riding in?)
Ed Kilgore says:
Obviously, Boo, you know Ed much better than any of us. But I have to wonder if, in hindsight he will stick with this idea that 1) McCain is revered, and 2) that criticizing someone who is regularly called a RINO, or worse, by all the GOP base is really considered a mortal sin anywhere outside the comfy confines of the Washington Beltway?
Being deeply embedded in the middle of that GOP base, I can say that there is no one who even holds a candle to Trump as far as popularity around here. He is giving voice to all the aggrieved white people and saying all the stuff that they have felt the need to suppress a bit since the coronation of the Kenyan usurper. Maybe the monied component of the GOP will look down their noses at his blustering, but only so far as it hurts business.
Trump is a rock star among the local Tea Party set, who are now running local Republican politics in my area.
Dunno.
Ed’s upbringing in Georgia and background in the South gives him a lot of insights that I don’t have.
I don’t defer to him, but I definitely stop and listen when he says something I didn’t expect.
But Ed is part of Versailles. Does he really understand how the GOP base operates now? How they don’t like the last 2 GOP presidential nominees, even though they were stuck voting for them.
He lives in California, Phil.
McCain is revered among the Village Punditocracy that has him on Sunday shows on average of once a week (counting multiple same day appearances). And as a veteran myself (non-combat) I think he is universally respected for not taking an offered early release as a POW. But I am with you, mostly military people don’t revere fuck-ups. Not least because they get people killed. As arguably McCain did during the USS ‘Forest Fire’ incident (which is what Navy people call the Forestal).
In the end there is very little ‘heroic’ about doing your duty. McCain had an obligation to hold out as best he could against torture, but nobody is expected to hold out forever, it is mostly a matter of buying time and limiting the release of harmful information. And by most accounts he did that as well as anyone could given his condition. McCain also had an absolute obligation not to accept special privileges or early release, the rule is first in, first out. And he did his duty there, and while maybe it didn’t actually merit the Silver Star, hey you give a guy a break for being a POW for five years with shoulder injuries so bad that to this day he can’t raise his arms above them (someone else has to comb his hair).
So good on him, you would expect no less of a son and grandson of distinguished top admirals. Still this doesn’t get him to ‘revered’. He was a fuckup who did his duty once his luck ran out for good and dropped him in the pot. He gets respect for that, but not much more. And I don’t know that the Tea Baggers give him even that much. Because it seems that there is a lot of overlap between the younger Baggers and the 101st Fighting Keyboardists of 2003-2005 who fought the Iraq War down to the last Cheeto but never themselves made it down to the recruiting station. I am not sure how many of them even understand the concept of ‘duty’ as it relates to the military. For these guys Tom Cruise is a Top Gun Hero and the guy that got shot down in a Zero. Just like the movies tell you.
Hmmm…that’s interesting. I guess would have expected that a reasonable amount of exposure to what I will call “grassroots, boots-on-the-ground southerners” would incline one to think just the opposite of what Ed said. But maybe I’m not considering some perspective that might be more obvious to someone with a different experience than I have had with southern people and the political culture there. I know that it is quite varied in different parts of the South, and maybe Ed has seen or experienced a part of it that I am not aware has resonance or relativity there.
That was a great post you wrote back then. I still remember it.
AD
They came and swiftboated Max Cleland but because I was not a Democrat I did not call out Ann Coulter and Saxby Chambliss.
They came and swiftboated John Kerry but because I was not a Democrat I did not call out my own party.
And then they came and swiftboated me and there was no one to protest at all.
I agree. Trump did say the truth about McCain. But that was entirely incidental. He didn’t say it because it was true, and he didn’t explain the real reasons why it was true, as you just did. He said it because it was red meat for his fans and because it would get him a huge amount of publicity.