Let’s see … John McCain will be remembered primarily as a stupid and petty little man who repeatedly betrayed his party, his constituency, and, by opposing those who opposed those who would destroy the United States, his country. Those ARE his defining characteristics. One could also easily concur that on the personal side, he dumped his first wife who was tragically maimed in a car accident, for the very wealthy daughter of a “Budweiser” distributor family 18 years his junior. McCain was never the kind of person most people would ever look up to. Just too many ‘foibles’ for one thing, plus his lack of character.
He’s been a shady if not corrupt public servant since the 80’s.
The core allegation of the Keating Five affair is that Keating had made contributions of about $1.3 million to various U.S. Senators, and he called on those Senators to help him resist regulators. The regulators backed off, to later disastrous consequences. And the rest as they say, is history.
Jeffrey P. Hunt and his piece in American Thinker, ‘The Devil and John McCain’ …
What possessed John McCain, with all of the makings to be a modern Daniel Webster, to descend into the depths of unprincipled contradictions?
“You see, for a while, [he] was the biggest man in the country. He never got to be President, but he was the biggest man. There were thousands that trusted in him right next to God Almighty and they told stories about him that were like the stories of patriarchs and such. They said when he stood up to speak, stars and stripes came right out in the sky, and once he spoke against a river and made it sink into the ground.”
– The Devil and Daniel Webster, Stephen Vincent Benet, 1936
Those of us at a certain age recall our middle school days, when reading stories such as The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane and The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne was expected and commonplace. Rugged independence, moral dilemmas, and justice were interwoven into these American literature classics alongside patriotism and vivid religious sensibility.
One such story written in the early 20th century, combining these American ideals (now considered trappings of the obscene white bourgeoisie), was “The Devil and Daniel Webster” by Stephen Vincent Benet. You can read it here.
Benet borrowed the storyline from Washington Irving, about a late 18th- or early 19th-century American farmer who agreed to the usual Faustian bargain with the devil. The farmer unwittingly traded American ideals for a bountiful harvest and healthy animals. When called by Satan to discharge his debts, the farmer sought an advocate to save him. Thus, Daniel Webster, failed presidential aspirant, pre-eminent lawyer and statesman, constitutionalist, and abolitionist, took up the cause.
The remainder of Benet’s tale tells of Webster, fearless counsel, facing down Satan by arguing in front of a jury comprising madmen; frontier murderers; traitors; corrupt sheriffs; slave-traders; and all-purpose anarchists, arsons, and kidnappers. Webster’s appeal to American patriotic zeal, and its values of liberty and independence and God-fearing citizenry, transformed the jury from a band of ruthless barbarians into Norman Rockwell-style Temperance League Methodists, relieving the beleaguered farmer from his contract with the devil.
Read to completion right here…
Commenter with the handle ‘Schmutzli’ from the comments thread: “Juan McCain is a disgrace. Lots of people had horrible experiences in Vietnam. Few outside of Juan parlayed those experiences so blatantly into a career of power and money.”
“Keating 5. Gang of 8. Lies about the border wall. Lies about repealing ObamaCare. Leaving a loyal wife after she suffered a horrible accident for a rich heiress. Serial philandering while in the Navy, where he was a poor student in the Academy and poor officer when on active duty. His shabby treatment of Sarah Palin, who showed Juan nothing but class. Juan is a cad.”
“A megalomaniac publicity seeker always looking for adulation from Big Media, while being a bully in the Senate and a reprobate in his personal life.”
“Juan McCain cannot do anything gracefully. Or honourably. Or with dignity.”[end]
Couldn’t have expressed it any better myself.
Still – R.I.P., John McCain – If indeed you have the decency and capacity to seek forgiveness from your Maker prior to your eternal departure.
Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man. For God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil. ~ Ecclesiastes 12: 14
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See also Josh Kantrow: John McCain’s Exit stage left