While there’s not a lot I loved about John McCain’s politics, he was the type of man I could respectfully disagree with. He was a man.
(If I were to be at once less charitable, cynical, and truthful, I’d opine that the only thing McCain loved more than politics was himself.)
Nevertheless, in a cultural climate that seems to debase itself by the day, McCain seems like a relic of sorts, not just politically, but in an almost literary sense: a man of multitudes, contradictions, impossible to dismiss as a one-note opportunist, which the GOP is overstuffed with, and he certainly makes the insular, incurious, unworldly simpletons who until today operated in his considerable shadow seem like a bunch of bloodless insects.
It’s used as a shameful throwaway line, easily uttered by blue-blooded fakes who couldn’t even read about a field of fire without soiling themselves, but John McCain loved his country; he fought for it, honored it, served it. We won’t see many like him in public office anymore, and we’re poorer for it. RIP.
