More on McCain

More on McCain, who seems never to have encountered a conflict that to his mind should not have been resolved better by the sustained application of American military force. Whether it's Iran or the Ukraine, war is his answer. I dimly recall that he somewhere expressed some measure of regret for his 23 bombing sorties over Hanoi, and the civilian casualties incurred, but even if so this did nothing to modify his passion for military might.

By all accounts, he was a fuck-up at the Naval Academy, graduating near the bottom of his class and perhaps only because he was the son of Admiral McCain. I've heard the same from someone who served with him, and thought him the wildest womanizer he'd ever known.

Wild and crazy John McCain. 

But McCain picked up something along the line, something that has motivated him to step up to Trump as other senior republicans won't. McConnell, Ryan, Cruz, Christie — fearful, opportunistic toadies to the end. They'll let Trump tear up the best things about the United States if it let's them forward their careers and/or conservative agendas as he does so.

I don't look for perfection from politicians.

Senator William Fulbright is my model in this regard. He opposed all the legislation LBJ put forward to address the legacy of racism. No question, Fulbright, Senator from Arkansas, was racist. But the hearings he called to look into and judge the war in Vietnam may have done more to galvanize opposition to it than all the wild and crazy protests I attended.

Of course, those wild and crazy protests were necessary.

My mother listened to the Fulbright hearings. They got her attention because I was part of these wild and crazy protests. She needed someone like Fulbright to make sure that what I was doing, if not the way I was doing it, made sense.