Someone just asked me how I would feel if someone spoke of my dad the way I speak of McCain. If y'all want to get personal, let's go.
My dad served in Vietnam. I know enough to know he did some harm. He also tried to do good for the rest of his life, but if when he died last year, if someone he'd harmed over there heard about it somehow, and said "GOOD," I would not begrudge them that. How could I?
If such a person wound up in the states, walked up to me and said "your father shot at my fucking family. People died. I hate him." I would tell them I am so sorry and that he tried to be a good man in the world after that, for whatever it's worth.
I would not expect my pain to be their pain. I would not expect my sorrow to outrank theirs and the things they experienced. To demand empathy when you extend none is narcissism.
What I can say is that when I lost my dad, I was not confronted by hordes of people spewing hate bc he did not conspire to sell a lie that launched an era of endless war. Millions of people are not dead, displaced and miserable because of my dad. So yeah, it's different.
When my father passed, people I had never met or heard of reached out to me to tell me he saved their lives, jobs and their families. My father was a recovering alcoholic who DEVOTED HIMSELF to helping ppl help themselves out of the horror of addiction.
The things my dad did for people that he never told me about... I was amazed. There's actually a bench that was built in his honor outside a recovery house in Wisconsin, near where he lived. A young man he helped get clean built it with his own hands. I attended the dedication.
My dad didn't take credit for the good and decent things he did -- not publicly or to his own child. He was a good man who, like us all, did some shitty things in his life. But again, if someone he harmed still hates him, that's their business. I'm sorry for their pain.
