Nobody has had more policy disagreements with John McCain than Donald Trump me. Nobody! Still, I was sad to see this news:
Senator John McCain of Arizona, who has been battling brain cancer for more than a year, will no longer be treated for his condition, his family announced on Friday, a sign that the Republican war hero is most likely entering his final days.
“Last summer, Senator John McCain shared with Americans the news our family already knew: He had been diagnosed with an aggressive glioblastoma, and the prognosis was serious. In the year since, John has surpassed expectations for his survival. But the progress of disease and the inexorable advance of age render their verdict,” the family said in a statement. “With his usual strength of will, he has now chosen to discontinue medical treatment.”
Matt Welch wrote a book about McCain, and he has a thread on Twitter that is worth your time.
I have written many critical things over the years about @SenJohnMcCain; you can easily find them. But not in this thread. Instead, I wanted to share a few observations of possible interest that I’ve accumulated over the years following this fascinating American character. 1/
— Matt Welch (@MattWelch) August 25, 2018
In that thread, he embeds this video, which he says “feels like from another planet”:
I liked this observation in particular:
Every politician lies & BS’es, and John McCain is a politician. But even if the straight talk was overhyped, the fact that he remained haunted by his own shortcomings, even wallowing in them confessionally, is much preferable comportmentally IMO to gleeful liars who just DGAF.
— Matt Welch (@MattWelch) August 25, 2018
I know, I know: Trump won and McCain lost. That is, I believe, more a function of Trump running against Hillary Clinton (the most unattractive candidate of our lifetime) than it is a function of one needing to be a flaming asshole in order to win an election. But many have internalized the equation “asshole behavior = victory” and we’ll be fighting that misconception for a long time.
McCain pissed me off many, many times. But he’s a far better human being than Donald Trump (I’m sorry for the absurdly faint praise, Senator) and he is owed some respect at this point in time for the good aspects of his character. Best of luck to him and his family in facing the tough times just on the horizon.
P.S. I am asking you to be civil in this thread. And I mean very civil. If you can’t be civil in this thread, that’s a good indication that you need to be tossed off this Web site for good. I have an itchy ban finger. Do you feel lucky, punk?