I know you're out there...well, your horde of earnest interns from Patrick Henry College or maybe Hillsdale, anyway. Happy Saturday, earnest interns! If you had chosen your path more wisely, you'd likely be doing something more fun on a Saturday night. And not to belabor the obvious, but if you had been born a few years earlier, you'd at least have some prospect of doing something interesting upon graduation, like being a Cabinet secretary or something. Timing's a bitch. But I digress.
Anyway, since your fascist employers told you to sift through this site to find evidence that we're stone cold Stalinists (or Nazis, or something...), I thought I would at least give you something to make your trip worthwhile. Come back after the jump, and maybe Hannity or whoever you work for will double your rations of lumpy gruel and devotional reading!
Someone really does hate America and mocks the sacrifice of our military! Holy mother of desert and tundra alike, it's John McCain! He's the candidate who chose as his running mate a demonstrated nincompoop whom even seasoned Republican commentators consider unprepared for the presidency, which is the only essential test of a vice-presidential nominee. He's the candidate whose absolute indifference to the economic concerns of 95% of Americans is ratified by...wait for it...the candidate himself! And let's not forget, before transitioning to our next topic, that McCain has said repeatedly, most recently a couple of days ago, that he only learned love of country while he was in Vietnamese captivity. That's a little late for anyone, especially someone who went through Annapolis, albeit poorly and thanks to a well-placed father.
Now then, about that military and the sacrifices of its members past and present. It's McCain who stood by and did nothing when John Kerry's military service was libeled by a mercenary group organized on behalf of McCain's candidate in 2004, George Bush--and this same McCain now makes his imprisonment and torture into something unique and uniquely deserving of the presidency as payback, even as he worked tirelessly (even this year, already a presidential candidate!) to reduce and deny benefits to other veterans who suffered more grievously and who don't enjoy the benefits of wealth and power that he enjoyed from the very moment of his return to freedom. McCain has ruthlessly trafficked in his military service and sacrifice, but he offers less than frankly anti-war, anti-military Democrats like Dennis Kucinich when it comes to effective support of our soldiers when their service ends. McCain long ago squandered whatever honor he took from his experience in Vietnam.
McCain's foolish, stupid, and venal positions on most issues of public importance, from the war in Iraq to energy to Russia to abortion, have been amply chronicled and I have no desire to repeat what so many others have said. Likewise about McCain's long-term love affair with political corruption--from Keating to Abramoff, a good quarter century of associations that hurt the public interest while furthering the private interests of his friends, and of himself. That would be Keating's investment partnerships with Cindy McCain, lest you blow a gasket wondering what I'm talking about. My purpose with this diary is to point out that McCain's honor-and-country narrative isn't something to be set against his grotesque record of self-serving and self-dealing politics as a Senator; rather, it's all one narrative, and it's all grotesque.
John McCain doesn't just deserve to lose in November. He deserves to be forgotten, except as a cautionary tale.