My feelings on John McCain are complicated. I wasn’t going to tweet on his passing. If you can’t say something nice, etc. I was wrong.
John McCain was a patriot, speaking out and acting against the racism and authoritarianism that had taken over his party till the end. (Thread)
John McCain was a patriot, speaking out and acting against the racism and authoritarianism that had taken over his party till the end. (Thread)
I should have known better. I haven’t agreed with John Mccain on policy for a long time, but he was my first real vote. I’ve talked before about my shame of G. W. Bush being my vote in 2000, but before that, I voted for McCain in the GOP primary...
..McCain was a “maverick” with sincerely held beliefs, who promised to shake polarizing ideology and reach across the isle to work with the other side. He was not afraid of speaking out on issues he thought his party wrong about, a virtue we’ve seen again in recent days.
Recognizing McCain as a patriot doesn’t mean we agree with him on many issues. He was wrong on gay rights, and open service in the military. His speech before the Senate when DADT was repealed infuriated me, and his pandering to the anti-immigration hardliners in 2008 was awful.
In areas that have taken on greater significance these past couple of years, John McCain was the model of an honorable man. He served his country in wartime. Even after paying such a high price, held captive and tortured by his enemies, he chose continued service upon freedom.
In 2008, as his party fell into the fever swamp of conspiracy theory and racism at the prospect of our nations first black President, he chose the harder route of affirming Obama as a good, honorable American unworthy of the slurs pelted at him.
I can’t highlight this enough. At a time when his party had decided to pander to the worst bigotry to energize their base, McCain refused the easy path. He stood up for the humanity of the “other,” even at his own political cost. That’s patriotism.
I was frustrated, and tweeted cruelly about McCain when he voted for cloture on the ACA repeal. He proved me foolish, and I decided not to delete this tweet, so I could point out how wrong I was upon his passing. This was mean, and I got him wrong.
John McCain cast the deciding vote against ACA repeal. He knew repeal without a plan to replace would be a disaster for his constituents, even if many of them did not. He was dying, and he chose action that was noble, and also vilified him to his own party.
I can’t bring myself to praise John McCain without reservation, but he proved his patriotism ever more in his last days. He spoke out against his party’s actions, and acted in his authority to protect the Mueller investigation.
McCain’s condemnation of Trump’s performance at the Helsinki summit speaks for itself.
McCain spoke out unequivocally on the GOP admin’s policy of family separation, echoing the best of us by condemning it as antithetical to the spirit of what it it to be American.
We talk about forming a broad coalition to protect American democracy, setting aside the disagreements of the past to fight the perils of the present. John McCain embodied that mission. He was an American hero, and a patriot till the end. We are diminished without him.
