Ironies Surrounding Media Coverage of McCain

John McCain has died and has (most likely) gone to hell. But as is so often the case the world doesn't see it that way and they pay tribute to one that served the Beast they all clamour to worship.

Is it not ironic that the so-called 'Liberal' media not only lavishes praise on McCain and calls him a 'war hero' but all seem to forget his record of endless warmongering and militarism? Über-nationalism and militarism are suddenly values of the 'Left'? I guess it could be if you live in the degenerate fantasy world of Dinesh D'Souza but for those who are interested in actual thought, political or otherwise this seems problematic.

Or is it that the American 'Left' doesn't actually disagree with McCain's posturing? The so-called 'Leftist' media has in fact long been a champion of American militarism. On many points it's not 'Left' at all. It is thoroughly Right-wing when it comes to Wall Street and the Pentagon, even while it clamours to support sodomy, feminism and a host of other evils. In so many ways America is an evil empire and in that sense they are right to celebrate the legacy of John McCain.

If there was any opposition to war coming from the mainstream media it died with the Vietnam era. PBS even ran a Frontline episode earlier this year which was all but a paean to McCain and painted him as the sober and responsible leader, so needed in this age of Trump.

Not only was McCain dangerous, he was reckless. I will for the moment leave aside his history as an aerial butcher who in my opinion engenders no sympathy. The fool pushed for war and militarism at almost every opportunity. I'm convinced he thought of himself as some kind modern Churchill which to many would be admirable thing but they too suffer from historical blindness, the weavings of mythology and the false binaries of most modern political thought. There has also been a real danger in misappropriating the so-called lessons of Munich in painting every compromise as 'appeasement' and every foe as 'Hitler'. McCain was deeply guilty of this tendency.

McCain was corrupt. Everyone seems to have forgotten the financial scandals of the 1980's, an epoch laden with massive fraud and conspiracy, the tip of a Deep State iceberg to be sure. McCain (one of the Keating Five) so deeply wed to the military establishment escaped relatively unscathed. His exoneration by the Senate is itself instructive regarding the good-old-boy system and how (when it comes to systemic issues) the political-party factionalism suddenly blurs and becomes meaningless. The Democratically controlled Ethics Committee whitewashed his deeds. He most certainly was not innocent. While McCain grumbled about congressional 'pork' his own record of rather dubious special treatment for donors is as bad as anyone.

McCain also gave us the witch, Sarah Palin, a figure reviled by the mainstream social order and certainly the media. Why isn't there more umbrage at this? Why do I call her a witch? She became akin to a prophetess, a heroine to many Christians even while she abandoned (rebelled against) not only Christian motherhood but even what historical understandings of motherhood were. She spun endless lies and manipulations and (along with her apologists) made a mockery of Christianity. Her understanding of the faith resorts to what can only be called a type of magic. She was a fool and destructive to all parties that she came into contact with. Let's hope she never re-enters the public arena.

But we can thank John McCain for giving her almost a decade of public influence. This was his astute judgment at work. Right? No, the episode demonstrated that he was an unprincipled man, an opportunist. His so-called Maverick or Rogue ideology was little more than letting tactics govern strategy, the very thing he always harped about.

The media is not Left-wing. As I and many other continually point out, it's part of the Establishment. Their praise of McCain exemplifies this. As with many figures his star waxed and waned over the years. On campaign finance, he was (again ironically given his past) going against the grain. These relatively weak calls for reform along with his stand against torture are perhaps the only areas I think him worthy of some accolade. And yet overall McCain fit in pretty well with the Center and as the nation has become more polarised the media appreciated him all the more. An ultra-nationalist opposing Trump, his voice carried particular weight and the media raised his profile.

His 2008 campaign was a disaster by all accounts. He deserves a great deal of the blame but also he was running on the GOP ticket at an impossible time. Already I feel like many have forgotten the real public animus directed toward the Bush administration in the final years of his second term. McCain tried to distance himself from the administration but it didn't work.

Of course the even greater irony is that Obama ended up supporting the same Neo-Conservative militarist agenda. His style was different and McCain and others made much hay over this but in reality they were always on the same team. The goals were and are the same. The battles are over style and what mechanisms to use. It's an intramural battle that pretends to be existential and most of the most of the public falls for it.

If McCain had repented of his participation in the atrocity that was Vietnam I would have respected him. On the contrary he made it his career and an essential part of his identity. He used it as a launch-pad to power which I have always found reprehensible. The more one examines America's involvement in Indochina the more disgusted one becomes. It was all lies, manipulation and mass murder. It was a shameful episode and the vast majority of Americans have not even begun to understand what happened there, what their country did and how their 'heroes' behaved. The same is true in Korea and yet these eras have already faded from memory and the myths and legends have been spun. McCain built a life on this and did rather well for himself. I hope he enjoyed it because it's the only reward he will ever receive and though the world honours him, he is now the citizen of a country in which none are honoured or praised.

As bad as Obama turned out to be I am humanly speaking 'glad' that McCain never got a chance to be the commander in chief of the US Empire. Obama is dripping in blood and yet I think things would have taken a much worse turn under someone like McCain. And then of course Sarah Palin (as vice-president) would have established a greater credibility and it's likely she would still be on the scene.

Perhaps the greatest irony of all is that in bringing Palin to the national stage, McCain unwittingly set off a social and cultural bomb leading to the Tea Party movement and the rise of Donald Trump. These final years must have been bitter for John McCain. He had always opposed the Christian and libertarian elements on the Republican fringe and yet he unwittingly helped to unleash and empower them, creating our contemporary toxic brew. To be fair, he cannot be blamed for all of it but the Palin episode demonstrates a lack of understanding and certainly poor judgment. All men are flawed in their judgment and every public figure is subject to what are often large and glaring mistakes and yet McCain is almost unique in that he lived to see the fruit of his errors.