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This guy is just a jerk which, whatever, it's Twitter, it reduces all but the most self-possessed among us to gabble-gabble-fav-retweet-selfvalidating monsters. But there's a bigger point to make about McCain, who frequently frustrated me. https://twitter.com/kenklippenstein/status/1322986941621690368
McCain was a proudly flawed MAN. A human being, with beliefs and virtues and also failings. And he lived through something very few of us ever could have. I will always respect him and his memory for that alone. You can't? Go try out the tiger cage, boyo.
McCain frequently joked re how he was one of the worst grads out of Annapolis. He was young, frivolous, perhaps not too serious about his family's expectations. Then he got shot down, imprisoned, and tortured. The Viet Cong practically BEGGED him to allow them to let him go. No.
First in, first out. That's the rule. They broke him, they broke him in ways that he lived with for the rest of his life. He'd spiel them some bullshit to get them to stop dislocating his joints, but no, never early release. He had a stubbornness I truly identify with. American.
I'm a weakling. I know it. I have no idea how I would ever hold up under the sort of torture they subjected McCain (and many other Vietnam POWs) to. But John McCain knew there was one rule only: you don't break trust w/your fellow servicemen. They ripped him apart and he didn't.
Did that same streak of "f*** you" contrarianism embolden him to be contrarian later in his political life? Almost certainly! But dear God how is that not something to be celebrated rather than condemned? That's who I would want to be. You don't get to tell me what to think. Ever
So that's why I'll always respect John McCain. There's a certain type of person (particularly Extremely Online ppl) who denigrate and outright loathe people who exemplify physical, moral, and patriotic courage. I can never live up to that standard myself, but I'm not one of them.
N.B.: go read up on Admiral James Stockdale, who was turned into a punchline back in 1992 as Ross Perot's VP candidate because of that debate but who was a true thinker, a great exponent of Stoicism, which is the one philosophy I find perfectly consonant w/my Christianity.
