McCain's Warcock: Unfaithful to Country, Justice and Wife

McCain was 31 when he began to love America.  Yet even then, his "love for America" was prompted by absolutely absurd reasons.  So much for trying to disparage Michelle Obama.  Get this, conservative sandbaggers.  Only after McCain spent five years as a POW in Vietnam did he decide he loved America:

I really didn't love America until I was deprived of her company. -McCain

Here's a video documenting McCain's insistence that he has not always loved America.  And there's much, much more below the fold.  To further hint at what's to come, Dan Abrams claims, in the embedded video, that "Noone should pass judgment on his time as a heroic POW."  I'll do just that, and in the process, I'll try to show why I think his comment is utterly nonsensical.

Let's put McCain's remark, made at the age of 31, in some context. We begin with McCain's massive warcock leading him to explicitly request combat duty, during which he flew bombing mission after bombing mission in an unjust war. Who knows how many lives he wrecked in the campaign of destruction he sincerely wanted to wage. On his 23rd such mission, the people he was bombing the hell out of finally got hold of him (an anti-aircraft missile took him down). And, of course, they did horrible things to him.

Yet it was only when McCain was being tortured by moral perverts who were (probably) illegitimately exacting disproportional punishment on a moral pervert who bombed and bombed and bombed (and bombed and bombed and bombed...) Vietnamese people for no good reason (since the war was ex hypothesi unjust) that he decided he loved America. He didn't love America, apparently, and by his own admission, when he was flying bombing missions over Vietnam. He didn't love America when he was mutiliating, dismembering, torturing and murdering Vietnamese in the service of America's then commander-in-chief.  Rather, he came to love America when certain members of the nation members of which he was mutilating, dismembering, torturing and murdering decided to torture him in return, in part to force him to sign a confession that he was an "air pirate", namely, to sign a confession stating the facts, i.e., that he was an air pirate, which he was.  (Sure, if you want to charitably interpret him as saying he came to love America more as a result of this experience, that's fine.  Everything I have to say will tell against the reasonability of that claim as well.)

Quite frankly, this rings fairly hollow.  It's hard for me, personally, to muster up a lot of pity for someone who runs off to murder people for no good reason, even if they are treated worse than they deserve.  But that's not the problem I have with McCain's idiotic statement.  My problem is just this.  McCain was in the business of mutilating, dismembering, torturing and murdering people for no good reason (and of course, he still is in that business).  Presumably he was doing this, as far has he believed, somehow "in the service of America" or "in the service of American ideals", whatever that means.  And he only came to love America after people fed him his own medicine.  And in particular, after the people he was waging an illegitimate campaign of destruction against fed him his own medicine. So why, exactly, is it that McCain did come to love America (or love America more)?

I think there are three explanations worth mentioning.  The first is that McCain thinks Americans don't mutilitate, dismember, torture or murder people quite as badly as the Vietnamese.  That is, he might have come to love America because in wartime, Americans aren't quite as vicious as the Vietnamese were. But this claim, I think, is manifestly false.  And, of course, we know that McCain is himself still pro-torture, for he has voted in favor of waterboarding.  And, of course, we know that McCain still loves to wage unjust wars.  So enough of this explanation.  Anyways, if McCain tried to mount it, it'd be too easy to shoot him down.  (Knocking McCain down has always been easy.  The planes he flew crashed several times.  Apparently he even flew into power lines once?  Furthermore, he has never been very brilliant.  He graduated from Annapolis fifth from the bottom - 894/899 - of his class.  McCain's dad barely managed to make it out of the bottom 5% at Annapolis.  Idiot runs in the family.)

A better explanation, I take it, is that McCain (i) felt he would have been safer in America than he was while he was being tortured, and/or (ii) thinks he is currently safer in America than he would be anywhere else.  Of course, (i) is obviously true.  Being a tortured POW isn't all that fun or safe.  But, you know, that's what you risk when you try to mutiliate, dismember, torture and murder other people.  You risk them getting hold of you and making your life hell.  And when you have no good reason for trying to murder them, you risk it even more.  So it's hard to see why being tortured in Vietnam made McCain love America so much.  To say that you miss safety when you're a POW who is being tortured for mutilating and murdering people is not a reason for loving the country who sent you to torture people who didn't deserve to be tortured in the first place, no matter how safe you'd be if you were in that country.  Voluntarily choosing to bomb the hell out of non-Americans, and suffering at their hands for it, simply doesn't provide one with a reason for loving America.  That's part of why McCain's claim rings hollow.

But then there's (ii) to consider.  It may be that McCain is making a general claim about how safe he feels in America.  And the incredible "lack of personal safety" he experienced in Vietnam, while being tortured, may make that experience much more vivid for him.  Now McCain, being a rich white male, may be safer in America than in most places.  (If McCain was black, of course, he wouldn't be nearly so safe, given that 1/15 adult black males are in prison.)  And if McCain was mutilating and dismembering people, he wouldn't be safe either.  Since that's what he was doing in Vietnam, he should really be comparing how safe he felt as a serial wartime decapitator in Vietnam with how safe an arbitrary serial wartime decapitator of Americans would feel if captured on American soil.  And to even the score, we ought to let our arbitrary decapitator be waging an unjust war.  Better yet, suppose the that millions of Americans are dying while the Whomevers are firebombing cities up and down the coast.  Now if our arbitrary decapitator is captured in the act of firebombing, I submit he wouldn't feel very safe, especially given the pro-torture policies good citizens like McCain have upheld in much less severe cases.

But this thought experiment is no good.  First, it's too difficult for McCain to carry out.  I think it's the right one, but I don't think it's what McCain is thinking.  Rather, the real explanation is that McCain loves America as much as he does because rich, white Americans like him remain fairly safe no matter what horrible things they do.  He has a license to kill.  He briefly experienced the absence of that license to kill while he was being held prisoner in Hanoi, and it galled him.  That's why McCain said he didn't love his country until he was deprived of her company (or, more charitably, he felt more love for his country after being deprived of her company).  But that's a completely asinine reason to love one's country.  In fact, if anything, it's a reason to despise one's country.

McCain is an anti-choice Christian fundamentalist who thinks Roe v. Wade was a horrible decision which needs to be overturned.  It's likely, then, that he's motivated by Scripture.  So here's some more Scripture he ought to consider:

Wherefore if thy hand or thy foot offend thee, cut them off, and cast them from thee: it is better for thee to enter into life halt or maimed, rather than having two hands or two feet to be cast into everlasting fire.  And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: it is better for thee to enter into life with one eye, rather than having two eyes to be cast into hell fire. -Matthew 18:8-9

I submit that McCain ought to consider cutting off his warcock.  And castrating himself might do triple duty.  Removing his offending member might be one way of guarding against more of his past infidelity.  And it'd also be just the form of birth control he needs, since in McCain's ideal world, he'd get to cheat on his wife and then force the women he had an affair with to have her baby.