America's Long Psychotic Episode

     The day after Senator John McCain died, CNN commentator Ana Navarro tweeted:

     "You know guys, the idea of Aretha Franklin and John McCain hanging out together in the Freshman section of heaven, kinda makes me smile."

     Replying to Navarro, Shari Gable wrote:

     "Hey Ana do u think she will ask him why he voted against MLK Day several times?  That would make me smile."

     McCain voted against Martin Luther King Day several times because he was a political opportunist.  He had no integrity.  In 2000, when George W. Bush's campaign manager Karl Rove devised a tactic involving robocalls in the South Carolina Primary that claimed McCain had fathered an illegitimate Black child, McCain lost that Primary, his chances at becoming president not realizable again until 2008.  He probably hated Rove and Bush, yet, in 2004 he campaigned for Bush--because he was a political opportunist with no integrity.
     He imposed Governor Sarah Palin on the American people, introducing into political discourse the most irrational politician until Donald Trump.  McCain, like Trump, was a master self-promoter.  He wrote (or had written for him) books about being a maverick, about living fearlessly in an age of terror and uncertainty.  He made frequent appearances on popular TV shows like Saturday Night Live, demonstrating his sense of humor, making him lovable to audiences (Mike Huckabee did the same).  The Daily Show With Jon Stewart was a favorite talk show destination for McCain.  The show's young audience ate him up.  For a while he seemed like the perfect politician, appealing to a wide variety of people, Republican and Democrat.
     In 2008 he beat out Mitt Romney for the Republican Nomination.  When in full battle mode with the presidency at stake, he revealed himself to be the opportunistic asshole he always was in actuality.  He no longer appeared on Jon Stewart's show after the comedian criticized one of his policies.  His sense of humor about himself began to look thin.  He cancelled an appearance on David Letterman's show in October 2008 to supposedly return to Washington to deal with the newly unfolding worldwide financial crisis.  Letterman, on air, discovered that McCain was in the same building on a different floor doing an interview with someone else.  Was McCain afraid to talk with David Letterman?  Granted, Letterman on occasion would ask a politician a difficult question, but politicians that can't take that heat should just stay home and never get known in the public eye.
     Now, the alleged maverick is dead.  A maverick is a person of independent mind.  When it came to making war on other countries that never attacked the United States, John McCain's mind matched the psychopathic collective brain of both Houses of Congress.  He was always in favor of making war, of helping out the military industrial complex.  Lockheed Martin, a war profiteering arms manufacturer making a bundle off of Middle East turmoil caused by the United States, released a sugary thank you to the memory of Senator McCain, who always had Lockheed Martin's interests at heart.
     Since McCain's murderous viewpoints are equal to those of the mainstream media, to the Washington establishment, his practice of voting in favor of killing strangers in other countries isn't regarded as abnormal or part of a psychopathic syndrome of the powerful people running this nation.
     Earlier this year, McCain voted against ending support for Saudi Arabia's genocidal war against the Yemeni people.  He was a political opportunist.  Saudi Arabia is America's "valuable" ally.  We can't leave them in the lurch by stopping support for their horrific atrocities committed daily for the sake of gaining control of Yemen's natural resources.
     On his deathbed, did McCain find out about the school bus filled with forty children in northern Yemen?  How it was blasted to smithereens by a 1,000 pound Lockheed Martin bomb fired by Saudis?  If McCain heard this, was he disturbed by the news?  I doubt it.  If he had what normal people would regard as the least speck of humanity he wouldn't have voted to support Saudi Arabia's depredations against Yemen.
     Still, his body lies in state under the Capitol dome.  His daughter Meghan McCain (co-host of The View) was caught on camera weeping heavily before the coffin containing the Vietnam War torture victim who became a maniac for war and every other Republican Party value that strips the poor and middle class of their basic necessities.  News personnel, pundits, politicians tweeted over the top praise, including the one I started this essay with, imagining McCain hanging out with Aretha Franklin, a woman of great artistry who spoke out for civil rights and women's rights.  I doubt that McCain hangs out in the "Freshman section of heaven" with anyone--I suspect he's in Hell.
     Actually, I don't believe that either, but if he did make it to Heaven, he may have already encountered the dead children who were on the bus blown up by a missile made by a corporation McCain supported.
     Adios, motherfucker.

                                                                               Vic Neptune