A famous political figure has died, and I don’t know how to eulogize him tactfully, so I’ll leave it up to Matt Lubchansky.
Oh, is that metaphorical treatment too distancing and obscure? You don’t even know who it’s about? OK, we can get explicit.
I’m sorry he’s dead. Even sorrier that he was a senator.
The paeans being sung to John McCain are making me queasy.
I’m sympathetic to his friends and family who will undoubtedly miss him, but I’m more sorry for the wars he helped start.
I wonder what John McCain’s historical legacy is going to be?
He was responsible for inflicting Sarah Palin on us, which in a way (the popularity of an unqualified and non-Washington candidate who would ‘shake things up’) led to Trump’s Presidency. It seems to be a logical progression.
i am ambivalent. i remember his thumbs down vote on repealing obamacare, and he did vote against repeal 17 times. but this war hero was a rich white entitled kid who crashed a bunch of jets. but he was heroic in viet nam prison. so. i am conflicted. he treated his 1st wife terribly. he voted for the gulf war and we are still there. he did some good. he did some evil
The website ‘Splinter’ had a good write-up on the legacy of John McCain. https://splinternews.com/the-myth-of-john-mccain-1828587230
Folks, help me out
Did some nice guy called John McCain die and I’m just terribly confused about all the nice things people are saying because I keep thinking of the racist war monger who voted whatever Trump wanted?
Someone pointed out that the Senate does not have a quorum with less than 51 senators, so if all the Democrats just stay away they should be able to stop all proceedings.
So that’s one good thing McCain has done (if true).
But shouldn’t he get some veneration for saying Obama is a decent family man and citizen and therefore cannot be Arab?
McCain is/was so much better than Trump that I find myself basing my judgements on that instead of having a more accurate historical perspective.
It’s not that hard to be better than Trump.
But… but… he was a maverick.
/s
It grieves me that he’ll probably be replaced by someone who is more of a Trump lackey.
I find very distasteful to call McCain’s first wife “disfigured” for political reasons.
In which sense? I see two possibilities:
1) the general, “I’m sorry when a human being dies”: this actually means nothing.
2) the specific “I’m sorry that McCain died”. This conflicts with your opinion that he was a bad person and that the world would have been better off without him (this is how I interpret the comics above)
The third, in-between option is “I despise McCain’s actions but I’m still sorry that he died” again means nothing.
Am I missing something?
Why do you assume it’s a conflict to think he was a bad person, but it’s a tragedy when individual experience suffering and death? Most of us aren’t sitting here thinking, “He is a bad person, so he should be killed.”
Maybe that’s more of an attitude in the crowd you usually run with?
No, you’re just full of shit, that’s all.
Basic humanity?
I think this bit from fivethirtyeight.com summarizes the situation pretty well:
The Senate usually doesn’t do anything very quickly, so a couple of weeks (give or take) would probably make no difference.
@14 PZ
No straw man, please: I never said anything about wanting him to be killed, or about being glad that he suffered -and these are not my thoughts.
People die every day, for the millions: do you grieve for each one of them? Ok yes, in the general sense (#1 in my previous comment), but this is just an empty consideration, something like “oh, I wish noone ever died”. Ok, so what?
Should a very bad person die, someone who actually made awful things (again, correct me if this is not your opinion on McCain), my position would be: “I’m happy he’s not here to do evil anymore. I can understand and respect his family and relatives’grief, and I hope he didn’t suffer, but the world is a better place without him”.
Which is very different from being happy that he suffered, but also very different from being sorry that he’s dead.
That’s why I say that the generic position is meaningless.
I feel bad for what the Dubya campaign did in 2000 and Trump more recently. McCain wasn’t someone I agreed with or voted for in 2008, but I respect his daughter Meghan versus much of the intolerant gutterslime GOP and she is a far better legacy than enabling Palin.
Someone is going to have to tell me what I should think about this:
http://time.com/4944393/john-mccain-transgender-ban-bill/
hemidactylus @20,
Simple. McCain was always looking for more scenes cannon fodder.
Don’t know how that extra word crept in.
@18
Yeah, I guess I don’t have any humanity at all, because I’m happy when people like McCain die. People who harm others get no sympathy from me. When Scalia died I couldn’t stop smiling for weeks. Of course, that was partly that I assumed that Obama would get to choose his successor and that SCOTUS could actually change things for the better. McCain’s death won’t lead to any positive changes, in all likelihood, so my joy is muted, but at least his self-serving, sanctimonious, war-mongering ass will be rotting in the ground soon. Better than nothing.
What’s really fucked up is that McCain was probably one of the most honorable, principled Republican politicians of my lifetime.
I’m sorry he suffered the way he did, in Vietnam and during his cancer battle. My condolences to his family and loved ones, especially his mother, who at this point almost certainly never expected to have to see one of her children pass away.
Oh, and +1 for saying Trump can fuck off, he’s not invited to the funeral and instead asking Dubya and Obama to eulogize him. I understand W, but Obama? That’s just flat out a big a middle finger to the orange piece of shit.
That’s kinda like saying “one of the pointiest coconuts” though.
I’ll simply say a few things.
Since you all are God, pronouncing Final Judgment, go to hell.
At least, despite my rough edges, I’ve never done that before the body reached room temperature.
I never actually liked his character. For the record, he did admit to a character flaw in his divorce with his first wife.
I’d go with a handful, due to party life after being released as a POW, but understand.
But then, all present, save me and McCain’s ghost, is such things that are utterly impossible by the laws of physics could exist, are perfect and never fucked up.
I know for damned sure I fucked up, many, many times. At least, I give some slack for even repeated fuck ups, or many a career would’ve ended, both civilian and military!
He loathed the tea party, once he recognized what a horror it was, largely due to Palin.
He was the most left leaning in the current Congress, and to be truthful, the US left is quite right leaning, overall, so I honestly can’t tell the difference in far too many areas of common acceptance.
He did admit to a mistake, once he either recognized it or was shown unambiguous evidence on a number of issues I’ve investigated.
I could go on and on and still get argument, but for this, he did oppose tRump.
Repeatedly enough to get the Village Idiot in Thief to insult him upon his death, to his own political disadvantage. The GOP core is superstitious and dislikes insulting the dead, especially the recently dead.
He Disconnected from the tea party, entirely, post Palin, but didn’t commit career suicide and get replaced by worse during a Red Storm, by being open about it, but via subverting it.
Which did cost him politically, modestly.
Me was, in this caricature of politics today, a moderate.
And a badly needed buffer, as we have our own side’s “mixed blessings”, described in an understatement.
We’d agree on few things. Some things, warfare related we’d agree on, you in your inexperience, would disagree, but we can always discuss the matter and I can provide psychological framing for the adversary and our own government, to find common ground to discuss matters. He was wrong, with a capital R in some things, right in a capital Right in others.
Total mixed bag.
Frankly, I think he approached things based upon an incorrect premise.
He approached things from national supremacy, strength and growth.
I’ve approached things and still do under Article 1, Section 8, the welfare of populace. The government will do what any government does from day one, take care of itself first, the nation second, the populace last.
Personally, the slack I’ll give ends at the deaths of millions. And while he disdained the Tea Party, standard Republican politics was every bit as heinous, and he willingly indulged in that for years.
I can acknowledge his achievements, I can acknowledge the hardships he endured, but none of it excuses him or any other politician.
@23 psychomath
Well, this is what assholes like @14 and @16 are suggesting: that if you don’t actually feel sorry when a bad person die, then you lack humanity. And if you say the opposite you get accused of being happy that he suffered, or even of wanting to kill him…
I’m sorry that he suffered and died. I’m sorry that his family is suffering through this. But yes, I’m glad he’s no longer a senator.
Well, I should clarify. As others have said, he was better and more principled than a lot, and than his likely successor, but he personally can do nothing further.
@albz, psychomath,
No one’s telling you that you have to feel sorry that McCain dies; how you react to any given death is deeply personal. But if you can’t understand why PZ feels sorry, then yes, you’re lacking some basic humanity.
If saying that makes me an asshole, so be it.
@31 psycomath
PZ does not feel sorry. He says he does, in a post in which he makes jokes on that recently deceased man (saying that the comics making fun of his death are a proper eulogy and republishing them). And he wants us to believe that he “feels sorry”, because that is what -in his mind- a decent human being should feel.
Well, the situation is actually the opposite:
* PZ is actually happy that McCain died (his words: “I’m sorry he’s dead. Even sorrier that he was a senator” means “knowing he was a US senator was a greater pain than knowing he’s now dead”)
* It is possible that PZ meant a generic unhappiness in front of human death. This is fine, we all share this feeling, but it actually means nothing if you do not place it in a context. And, again, if your way to show you’re sorry is to mock the dead, you’ve got some pretty bad human behavior issue.
* PZ thinks (or wants you to think) that saying “I don’t feel sorry if McCain died” is equivalent to saying “I’m happy he suffered” or “I think he should have been killed”. Go and look, he wrote that.
* I don’t feel sorry for a bad person’s death, but I didn’t made jokes on it either. Also, I hope McCain didn’t suffer, understand and respect hid relatives’feelings, even if I do not agree with his general political strategy and with some specific actions of his.
I think that what could you look like an asshole would be going on with this confusion between laughing at someone’s death while pointlessly saying “I feel sorry” and saying “he was a bad person, hope he didn’t suffer”.
was @31 *Maroon*, not psycomath
I expected this reaction.
FFS.
I know he passed over the weekend, so everybody has to cover it today, but its been so slavish, one might think Reagan has had to cede his heavenly throne as the Republican saint. How the hell can the media exaggerate so little good at such length and so tediously? Seriously, every memorial montage is “Vietnam/Telling crazy lady Obama’s a citizen/Thumb down”
His ordeal in Vietnam is one thing, and something I respect, but that he bucked his party’s line a handful of times? A half dozen times or so he stood on a somewhat respectable principle, something we should expect from our elected officials EVERY EFFIN DAY.
You know your party, hell, your government is shit when this is the caliber of politician being canonized. He deserves every military honor available, but other than that, he’s just another Senator. I don’t remember this kind of sycophantic adulation of Ted Kennedy, a man of similarly many faults, but arguably more achievements for the people than McCain.
I’m going to be “that person” and speak ill of the dead: fuck the warmongering asshole and may he reincarnate dozens of times over and over in the Middle East, preferably in Yemen and/or Afghanistan, as a poor child who dies of disease or starvation or American/Saudi weaponry each time.
He was, yes, one of the most decent Republicans in recent memory. And that’s saying something like “well, to be fair, this particular Incan human-sacrifice ritual caused only about 15 minutes of hideous suffering compared to the one where they flay the victim alive for Xipe Toltec.”
@36 Marissa:
…and although I disagree with you, your comment is so much more honest than saying “I’m sorry he’s dead” when you are not.
neither sad nor glad he has died, he has died and from the sound of it struggled until the very end. How he came to do what he had done and came to believe he believed I know not it has not been my experience. I feel the same sadness at his death as I did for his life, he seemed like he tried to do the right thing and at the same time be loyal to who he thought of as his fellows that he was taken advantage of and endured it for what he saw as his duty.
he is dead who will be next in his seat is what concerns
uncle frogy
Consider my metaphorical bottle popped (The real bottle is saved for when Kissinger goes). You kinda lose normal human sympathy points from me when you go from firebombing rice farmers in the name of imperialism to becoming a politician trying his damnedest to ensure poor people die.
@37/albz
Disagree with me all you like, but the man has a queue of thousands and thousands of angry, impatient, vengeful ghosts waiting for him…
@40 Marissa
I disagree with you about wishing he could be brought back to suffer. What would be the point, and how would this make the world a better place?
Also, I don’t know anything about vengeful ghost, but if these are your beliefs and you want revenge then why don’t just let him there with them and be satisfied?
albz to Marissa van Eck:
One should only wish for things that make the world a better place, else there is no point to wishing.
I get you. ;)
Keyword is “Justice”. You know, fairness. Karma. Poetic justice.
Salient is that Marissa is explicitly wishing, knowing it will never be so. Actually, a sentiment is being conveyed, one about which you proclaim ignorance. Sure.
(I myself am not unacquainted with that sentiment)
@42 John Morales
1) you can wish whatever you want. However if you go around suggesting that a person who just died for brain cancer should come back to suffer much more, you are a bad person.
2) anyway, if you still want someone to suffer and you happen to believe in vengeful ghosts waiting by the thousands for him, then why the fuck do you need to hope for him to come back?
Bottom line: feel free to wish whatever you prefer, but if you express to others incoherent and stupid wishes then expect to be told so.