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 two 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: “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, politics, and ethnicity being the major way we meet and judge people. Maybe that’s still true but not now as much as it was in the old days.
We 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 other concerns about race, ethnicity, nationalism and all such.
Now we are talking about a man’s character and the trait of courage. Others will pay tribute to John McCain when it comes to describing his independence of spirit, his open-hearted willingness to work with members of both parties–even his cantankerous, maverick, and occasionally 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 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 in Vietnam with John McCain and can’t imagine the misery and brutality of those awful prison conditions, maybe we should keep quiet.
That includes you, Mr. President. We want to hear the story of John McCain and be given a chance to honor and remember him. I think most of us can see our way clear to saying: the way he endured his capture, injuries, 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 took its nourishment from the heroism of brave American soldiers.
He’s drawing inspiration from Washington’s freezing soldiers at Valley Forge: the nameless men who endured winter exposure, deadly disease, and stalking starvation because of their love for their new country.
They endured unimaginably harsh conditions because of their belief in the bedrock principles for which their new country stood: 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 same principles was rather HEROIC, too. No, Mr. President, you can’t always define “hero” the way your self-centered mind would mislead you, just because of you enmity for John and your bitter jealousy of a man you could not bully and who you could never begin to equal.
I’m here to say you can’t engage in slanderous gossip against a fallen American soldier because the American people won’t let you . . . . 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 either in Vietnam or at home. You don’t like him 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 his character by saying he wasn’t a hero. That’s about 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 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 rises above all other petty labels and disputes—if his conduct appears 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 your compulsion to denigrate others long enough to breathe, listen, and reflect . . . and say with us:
Here was a man who knew courage. He acted, as a hero always acts, in the bravest and most principled 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, if that’s who you are: a mean-spirited, combative, crafty, 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 is because you are unable to appreciate him. You don’t have the conscience, the moral scruples, or the wisdom to understand a man like John McCain.
You are missing out on the best human traits that the rest of us admire the most. We show respect for a man’s honor and loyalty. We treasure that special brand of patriotism that makes a man 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 appear to be missing a normal range of healthy emotions like love and kindness, gentleness and tenderness. You appear to lack the mercy and compassion that comes from deep within one’s own heart and soul.
You reach behind you into your emotional barrel and you find it empty. You discover too late you’re not a magician. You can’t reach in and pull out a true 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!
