What better way to show tribute to former Senator John McCain than to take a play right out of his handbook? Take offense and never let it go. Yes, hold that grudge close and use it to beat your adversary over the head. All the better if you can find others to do your bidding. There were so very many people this weekend willing to pick up McCain’s mantle of offense, bitterness, and resentment, and wield it as a sword against another. And not just any other, but the president of the United States.
Why just leave this world with a backdrop of friends espousing your noble and honorable attributes, when you can use all that free air-time to insult, disrespect, and take swipes at the man in the Oval Office?
The Ugly Truth
You’d have to crawl into a hole in Kandahar to avoid the unsightly display of politicians and the chattering class taking aim at President Trump as the Senator from Arizona was laid to rest with all the pomp and circumstance of a slain hero. The news media was in overdrive with all manner of jabs and put-downs, as well as playing nasty video clips about the man who became McCain’s last in a series of arch-enemies. Then there was the coup de grâce – the spectacle to really bring it all together at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C.
The many and varied insults of POTUS would have made John McCain proud. It was a convenient – if not unusual – technique that gave the deceased the last word. Also, it would allow him in death what he did so well in life: Keep holding onto an oversized chip on his shoulder and maintain that ever-present passive-aggressive behavior that served him so well for so long.
Even better – the Senator’s friends and family could issue their insults in front of several Trump family members. How gallant and magnanimous. Swamp Rule #1: If you are going to stick the knife in, make sure to twist it in public. Why keep to yourself all that self-satisfied vitriol when you have a chance to vaunt it into the history books for time immemorial?
While honoring Senator McCain, swamp-dwellers made it their mission to send a message from his grave: Take on one of the old guards, and you will pay, Mr. President. You think you can dish it out? Well, let’s just see if you can take it.
The point here is not to speak ill of the dead. But to recognize that even in death the, the Arizona senator got one final parting shot at his political nemesis, Donald J. Trump. That so many were willing to stand and do his bidding proudly should come as no surprise to even the most casual of political observers and certainly not to anyone who abides in the Swamp.
A few of those paying homage to McCain dared to name the object of their disdain, but others didn’t feel the need to identify the president. In this way, they could make use of this magic moment to virtue signal but to do it while wearing the white glove of elegant prose. It was grandiloquence at its finest.
Here are a few, brief examples, replete with some not so thinly veiled shots at the president, for your viewing pleasure:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLzUtMF9Ucc&feature=youtu.be
Thus, what should have been a solemn and bittersweet goodbye to a Vietnam veteran and prisoner of war became a golden opportunity to disrespect the president. Naturally, the leftist elite media was thrilled to comply. One might even give grace to a grieving daughter who seemed to fluctuate between seething and sorrow – but for Megyn Kelly, George W. Bush or Barack Obama and many others, one must ask: Was that kind of rhetoric really necessary?
The Set Up
Knowing it was only a matter of time before his death, Senator McCain planned every aspect of his memorial service. He made it clear that President Trump was not to be invited. This type of behavior might seem petty-minded and mean-spirited to some, but not John McCain. That someone would carry to their grave such inconsolable malice toward another seems a deplorable condition of the soul.
Granted, candidate Trump’s remark regarding McCain – that he preferred people who weren’t captured to ones that were – was not a generous or gracious statement. But those comments were made in the heat of a political battle. This hurling of insults, innuendo, and invectives at one’s funeral appears to be calculated and encouraged by the deceased before his own demise.
How much bitterness does the heart carry to the grave in order to draft, plan and scheme such a duplicitous posthumous remembrance? ‘Tis a sad tale that John McCain nurtured his resentment and antipathy toward the president to the very end. It would have been a much more noble act had he publicly forgiven President Trump in both word and deed.
As it is, the dénouement of Senator John S. McCain’s life is reflected in the way he planned his memorial service so as to permit – perhaps even foster – total disrespect for the president of the United States. Unfortunately, this only serves to demonstrate that his character was built more on petty, vindictive, and spiteful behavior than that of a man of greatness.
