Was Melania considering what might be said about her at her own funeral? Was she anticipating what might be said about her husband during the garishly tacky gangster's funeral that will serve as his final sendoff from this world? Perhaps. (I certainly was.) As I'm writing this post, I assume Melania is on an Air Force plane, winging her way home and soon to be face-to-face with her husband. After a day spent surrounded by museum-quality authenticity, dignity, grace, service to country and overwhelming demonstrations of genuine love from family, friends and former political opponents, can you imagine what it would feel like to be going home to Donald Trump? I certainly can't. (Read the entire post here.)
I'm having similar thoughts tonight, as tributes to Senator John McCain, who died today, are filling the airwaves and my Twitter feed. Are members of the Trump family pondering what the reaction will be when their patriarch leaves this earth? Is Donald himself? It won't be like this, of that I'm sure. Tonight people from across the political spectrum, friends and political foes alike, are speaking out with enormous affection, admiration, respect and love for John McCain, telling old stories about how honorable, heroic and inspiring he was. For example, there's this:
In
October of ’67 McCain was himself still a Young Voter and flying his 23rd
Vietnam combat mission and his A-4 Skyhawk plane got shot down over Hanoi and
he had to eject, which basically means setting off an explosive charge that
blows your seat out of the plane, which ejection broke both McCain’s arms and
one leg and gave him a concussion and he started falling out of the skies right
over Hanoi. Try to imagine for a second how much this would hurt and how scared
you’d be, three limbs broken and falling toward the enemy capital you just
tried to bomb. His chute opened late and he landed hard in a little lake in a
park right in the middle of downtown Hanoi, Imagine treading water with broken
arms and trying to pull the life vest’s toggle with your teeth as a crowd of
Vietnamese men swim out toward you (there’s film of this, somebody had a home –
movie camera, and the N.V. government released it, though it’s grainy and
McCain’s face is hard to see). The crowd pulled him out and then just about
killed him.
U.S. bomber pilots were especially hated, for obvious reasons. McCain got bayoneted in the groin; a soldier broke his shoulder apart with a rifle butt. Plus by this time his right knee was bent 90-degrees to the side with the bone sticking out. Try to imagine this. He finally got tossed on a jeep and taken five blocks to the infamous Hoa Lo prison – a.k.a. the “Hanoi Hilton,” of much movie fame – where they made him beg a week for a doctor and finally set a couple of the fractures without anesthetic and let two other fractures and the groin wound (imagine: groin wound) stay like they were. Then they threw him in a cell. Try for a moment to feel this. All the media profiles talk about how McCain still can’t lift his arms over his head to comb his hair, which is true. But try to imagine it at the time, yourself in his place, because it’s important. Think about how diametrically opposed to your own self-interest getting knifed in the balls and having fractures set without painkiller would be, and then about getting thrown in a cell to just lie there and hurt, which is what happened. He was delirious with pain for weeks, and his weight dropped to 100 pounds, and the other POWs were sure he would die; and then after a few months like that after his bones mostly knitted and he could sort of stand up they brought him in to the prison commandant’s office and offered to let him go. This is true.
They said he could just leave. They had found out that McCain’s father was one of the top-ranking naval officers in the U.S. Armed Forces (which is true – both his father and grandfather were admirals), and the North Vietnamese wanted the PR coup of mercifully releasing his son, the baby-killer. McCain, 100 pounds and barely able to stand, refused, The U.S. military’s Code of Conduct for Prisoners of War apparently said that POWs had to be released in the order they were captured, and there were others who’d been in Hoa Lo a long time, and McCain refused to violate the Code. The commandant, not pleased, right there in the office had guards break his ribs, rebreak his arm, knock his teeth out. McCain still refused to leave without the other POWs. And so then he spent four more years in Hoa Lo like this, much of the time in solitary, in the dark, in a closet-sized box called a “punishment cell.”
Maybe you’ve heard all this before; it’s been in umpteen different media profiles of McCain. But try to imagine that moment between getting offered early release and turning it down. Try to imagine it was you. Imagine how loudly your most basic, primal self-interest would have cried out to you in that moment, and all the ways you could rationalize accepting the offer. Can you hear it? It so, would you have refused to go? You simply can’t know for sure. None of us can. It’s hard even to imagine the pain and fear in that moment, much less know how you’d react. (From a David Foster Wallace article in Rolling Stone, written during McCain's first presidential run and published in RS's April 13, 2000 issue. Read it here.)
In his narcissistic, solipsistic self-absorption, Donald Trump may not even be fully aware tonight of the stark contrast being painted between himself and the man he held in such disdain, but trust me, the rest of us are.
And one more thing, Donald. You're still not invited to the funeral.
U.S. bomber pilots were especially hated, for obvious reasons. McCain got bayoneted in the groin; a soldier broke his shoulder apart with a rifle butt. Plus by this time his right knee was bent 90-degrees to the side with the bone sticking out. Try to imagine this. He finally got tossed on a jeep and taken five blocks to the infamous Hoa Lo prison – a.k.a. the “Hanoi Hilton,” of much movie fame – where they made him beg a week for a doctor and finally set a couple of the fractures without anesthetic and let two other fractures and the groin wound (imagine: groin wound) stay like they were. Then they threw him in a cell. Try for a moment to feel this. All the media profiles talk about how McCain still can’t lift his arms over his head to comb his hair, which is true. But try to imagine it at the time, yourself in his place, because it’s important. Think about how diametrically opposed to your own self-interest getting knifed in the balls and having fractures set without painkiller would be, and then about getting thrown in a cell to just lie there and hurt, which is what happened. He was delirious with pain for weeks, and his weight dropped to 100 pounds, and the other POWs were sure he would die; and then after a few months like that after his bones mostly knitted and he could sort of stand up they brought him in to the prison commandant’s office and offered to let him go. This is true.
They said he could just leave. They had found out that McCain’s father was one of the top-ranking naval officers in the U.S. Armed Forces (which is true – both his father and grandfather were admirals), and the North Vietnamese wanted the PR coup of mercifully releasing his son, the baby-killer. McCain, 100 pounds and barely able to stand, refused, The U.S. military’s Code of Conduct for Prisoners of War apparently said that POWs had to be released in the order they were captured, and there were others who’d been in Hoa Lo a long time, and McCain refused to violate the Code. The commandant, not pleased, right there in the office had guards break his ribs, rebreak his arm, knock his teeth out. McCain still refused to leave without the other POWs. And so then he spent four more years in Hoa Lo like this, much of the time in solitary, in the dark, in a closet-sized box called a “punishment cell.”
Maybe you’ve heard all this before; it’s been in umpteen different media profiles of McCain. But try to imagine that moment between getting offered early release and turning it down. Try to imagine it was you. Imagine how loudly your most basic, primal self-interest would have cried out to you in that moment, and all the ways you could rationalize accepting the offer. Can you hear it? It so, would you have refused to go? You simply can’t know for sure. None of us can. It’s hard even to imagine the pain and fear in that moment, much less know how you’d react. (From a David Foster Wallace article in Rolling Stone, written during McCain's first presidential run and published in RS's April 13, 2000 issue. Read it here.)
I expect the opposite to happen on that day in the future when Donald dies. Seriously. Can you think of one, just one, story about Donald Trump where he's honorable, heroic or inspiring? I can't either and neither can anyone else, because there aren't any.
In his narcissistic, solipsistic self-absorption, Donald Trump may not even be fully aware tonight of the stark contrast being painted between himself and the man he held in such disdain, but trust me, the rest of us are.
And one more thing, Donald. You're still not invited to the funeral.
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