The news today on NPR’s “All Things Considered” was that Senator John McCain, who recently underwent surgery for a blood clot behind his eye, has been diagnosed with an aggressive, incurable form of brain cancer. Immediately, the encomiums began to flow from the journalistic toadies; the word “hero” could not be invoked enough in the expectation that this great lion of the Senate might never return to entertain us with his “Maverick” (read inconsistently self-serving) legislative behavior. It was even said that reporters took time out to offer prayers for the “hero.” Awww, how sweet.
Given our gutless and obsequious media—and I now include PBS on that compliment—it is what I would have expected because somehow it was missed that that reason Mr. McCain’s medical leave received extra media attention was that he was unable to be present a the Capitol to register his vote to repeal the ACA. How ironic. McCain will no doubt receive the very best medical care that his Senate health insurance (which we pay for) and the millions he married into will afford him. How ironic that his illness will not allow him to register a vote to deprive millions of Americans decent health care.
And how ironic that McCain will likely not be present to cast his vote for Trump’s budget that cuts medical research, climate research, and among several other expenditures that are related to the health of Americans, even cancer research—so that a bloated DOD budget can be enhanced and more of the country’s wealth can be transferred to the rich. McCain never met a war or military expenditures he didn’t like and he will be one of the rich to profit from Trump’s budget. But what doth it profit a man . . .
And how ironic that Trump once referred to McCain not as a “hero,” but as a “loser” who got shot down, perhaps the only thing I ever found to agree with Trump, since I regard McCain not as a hero, but as a “professional POW”. Trump will no doubt find some way to deny that should he be asked about his concerns for the senator who dared not show up to cast his vote for Trump’s and the Republican’s promise to screw over the American public with a third-rate system of health care.
Well, I do not wish John McCain ill-health any more that I would some poor bastard in a shit-hole state who voted against his own best interests by voting for Trump. But I do have the dilemma that to wish this phony hero and consummate hypocrite a healthy recovery could mean his return to the Senate to cast his votes to repeal the ACA and pass the Trump budget.
I never liked John McCain and have made that quite clear many times in these pages, even though I found areas of agreement with him on torture, and immigration. But now I understand the dilemma of that North Vietnamese man who pulled McCain’s sorry ass from that Hanoi lake to keep him from drowning. Little did he know that by giving McCain a new lease kin life and sending him to six decades in Congress the revenge he was taking on America by giving us a fake hero.