"I like people that weren't captured." -Donald Trump

[DemocratSinceBirth]

You probably already know what happened. 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? If 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.

But, see, we do know how this man reacted. That he chose to spend four more years there, in a dark box, alone, tapping code on the walls to the others, rather than violate a Code. Maybe he was nuts. But the point is that with McCain it feels like we know, for a proven fact, that he’s capable of devotion to something other, more, than his own self-interest. So that when he says the line in speeches in early February you can feel like maybe it isn’t just more candidate bullshit, that with this guy it’s maybe the truth. Or maybe both the truth and bullshit: the guy does—did—want your vote, after all.

https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/john-mccain-honor-and-self-reflection

The fact Trump became POTUS after this shows the moral rot of those who voted for him.

[SCantiGOP]

1. Why has no one asked him

“What would you have done differently if your plane was shot out of the sky?”

His only honest answer would be that he made sure he wasn’t anywhere near the shooting. He’s a fucking coward and a bully.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

2. Damn. I like how Chris Matthews puts it.

It's not as if John McCain just mosied on over to the enemy camp.

I like this excerpt:

But even if you never would have voted for him—and I didn’t and wouldn’t—McCain cannot fail to leave a deep impression. His efforts, with John Kerry, to revive diplomatic relations with Vietnam; his leadership on campaign-finance reform; his moral opposition to torture; his vote against the first real effort to repeal Obamacare—these were stands that were, in large measure, reviled in his party and among many of his constituents in Arizona.

During the 08 campaign and its aftermath I made some posts about McCain I'm really not proud of. I would never have voted for him but he's a genuine hero.

...

Remnick is a great writer and lucky guy, He got to be a confidante to Barack Obama and Muhammad Ali.

[SCantiGOP]

3. I agree with you

It’s not a popular opinion here, but the man has integrity and is basically a good person.
Of course I wouldn’t agree with most of his voting record, but compared to Trump he is a statesman. We would have been much better off had he won the GOP nomination instead of Bush in 2000.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

4. We are all products of our environment as is he.

Some reject the environment that produced them but not many.

[SHRED]

17. Our media sucks at asking the right questions of TPTB

For instance...

Link to tweet

[Uncle Joe]

5. Here are a few other Americans that Trump doesn't like

Thanks for the thread DemocratSinceBirth

[japple]

13. Well damn, you just made me bawl. This is a great video. As an army brat,

I always choke up at the family reconnection clips, esp. those where Dad was gone for a long time. Fortunately, Dad wasn't taken prisoner or gone forever. Thank you for posting this.

[Uncle Joe]

15. Thanks for sharing japple

and I'm happy your dad wasn't taken prisoner

[RandomAccess]

19. That's magnificent

Thanks so much.

[SummerSnow]

6. John McCain should have said, " I like people who aren't cowards"

[DemocratSinceBirth]

7. McCain said he was more offended by Trump's attack on Khizr Khan.

[Marcuse]

8. If he doesn't like POWs, what does he really think of KIAs?

Reference his treatment of Sgt. LaDavid Johnson and his widow.

[SummerSnow]

9. Sgt. Johnson was black so he didn't like him anyway, he treated his

widow with such disrespect.

[Marcuse]

10. True, but I could not bring myself to control for his racism.

[ashredux]

11. Paragraphs are your friend

[DemocratSinceBirth]

12. Clicking on the link is "your friend."

SMFH, I copied it verbatim:




https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/john-mccain-honor-and-self-reflection

[TheBlackAdder]

21. I ws thinking the same, then I recalled research sources where a single paragraph spanned two pages.

[keithbvadu2]

14. Dotard Trump bragged that avoiding STDs was his personal VN.

Dotard Trump bragged that avoiding STDs was his personal VN.

Cadet Bone Spur finally made it to VN.

[Bozvotros]

16. Tell it to the families of these vets, Trump

Link to tweet

[world wide wally]

18. M.oral rot is precisely correct

[RandomAccess]

20. That's a level of patriotism, honor, sevice.

fidelity, courage and valor I would never be capable of. I hate some of his political notions and votes, but he really is a true American hero and I honor that from the bottom of my heart.

[ProudLib72]

22. Personally

I like people who are not vile abortions of humanity rescued and brought to full term by moral corruption and suckled on the teat of racism.

But that's just me.