Traveling overseas is one way to escape what might aptly be called "Trump fatigue" but one never truly escapes the toxicity emanating from the Trump?pence regime. The Internet has truly made it impossible. Thus, it was with some relish that I followed Megan McCain'e eulogy for her father which hopefully will be remembered for its explicit rebuke of the Trump-era Republicans who engage in cheap rhetoric, deep a callousness toward others that is the antithesis of the Christian values the pretend to honor, and a betrayal of country for sake of partisan power. Making it all the sweeter was that Trump's daughter sat in the audience, not that the self-absorbed Ivanka and her hapless husband realized the message. The full text of the eulogy can be found here and is worth a read. Here are some excerpts:
We gather here to mourn the passing of America greatness. The real thing, not cheap rhetoric from men who will never come near the sacrifice he gave so willingly. Nor the opportunistic appropriation of those who live lives of comfort and privilege while he suffered and served.My father, the true son of his father and grandfather, was born into an enduring sense of the hard-won character of American greatness and was convinced of the need to defend it with ferocity and faith. John McCain was born in a distant and now vanquished outpost of American power and he understood America as a sacred trust.
He understood our republic demands responsibilities even before it defends its rights. He knew navigating the line between good and evil was often difficult, but always simple. He grasped that our purpose and our meaning was rooted in a missionary’s responsibility stretching back centuries.
Just as the first Americans looked upon a new world full of potential for a grand experiment in freedom and self-government, so their descendants have a responsibility to defend the old world from its worst self.
The America of John McCain is generous and welcoming and bold. She is resourceful and confident and secure. She meets her responsibilities, she speaks quietly because she is strong. America does not boast because she has no need to.
The America of John McCain has no need to be made great again because America was always great.
That fervent faith. That proven devotion. That abiding love. That is what drove my father from the fiery skies above the red river delta to the brink of the presidency itself.
It is good to remember that we are Americans. We don't put our heroes on pedestals just to remember them. We raise them up because we want to emulate their virtues. This is how we honor them and this is how we will honor you.
But as Ms. McCain shared one of her father’s dying directives — “Show them how tough you are” — her voice stopped wavering. The warrior’s daughter steeled herself, drew her eyes up and stepped into battle.
“The America of John McCain has no need to be made great again,” Ms. McCain said in a broadside against President Trump, “because America was always great.”
This passage from Ms. McCain’s eulogy, delivered as Mr. Trump’s own daughter Ivanka sat among the mourners, will be remembered for its explicit rebuke of the Trump-era Republican politics that Mr. McCain had condemned as too partisan, too tribal and, as Ms. McCain put it, defined by “cheap rhetoric.”
Her emotional call to arms was also proof — as if any was needed — that Ms. McCain is her father’s daughter, a paradoxical Republican figure willing to pay the price of being politically direct.
In the hours since Ms. McCain — the eldest and by far the most publicly visible child of Mr. McCain and his widow, Cindy — delivered her eulogy, conservatives have debated whether it was appropriate for her to have used the funeral to make a political statement, with one prominent Republican coming to her defense.
This surely would have delighted her father. Even with a deeply felt and loving eulogy, Ms. McCain, 33, did as Mr. McCain had done so often: provoked and divided his own political party in dramatic fashion.
Ms. McCain, who built her career as a blogger and writer and is now a co-host of “The View” on ABC, shares her father’s ability to pivot between righteous anger and effusive love in the span of a breath or two. Like him, she has honed a sense of timing: She understands how to toggle between each for maximum effect.
A disciple of her father’s straight-talk approach, Ms. McCain has long confounded Republicans who say they cannot easily suss out her beliefs, and she has frustrated Democrats who want to believe that she is secretly one of them — a sentiment that only grew on Saturday. She has said that abortion is tantamount to murder, but has been a proponent of sex education and birth control. She supports same-sex marriage. She also supports gun rights, but has said she favors some restrictions. She is not a politician. At least, not yet. So far, Ms. McCain has shied away from questions about running for office, in part because she has been vocally critical of the obstacles women in politics still face. But some conservatives have viewed her as destructive to their causes. A decade ago, when blogging about Mr. McCain’s run for the presidency, she found herself in open warfare with conservatives like Ann Coulter. Ms. McCain was banished from the campaign weeks before it ended. In the years since the 2008 election, the Republican Party has yielded to conservatives like Ms. Coulter, a onetime provocateur whose views now feel decidedly more mainstream, and paved the way for a president whose supporters tend to celebrate his divisiveness. [T]his past weekend, Ms. McCain was back at war with the president and some of his supporters, a point made crudely clear as a doctored image with a gun pointed at a grieving Ms. McCain circulated online. On Saturday, after a funeral where he was uninvited and unwelcome, Mr. Trump — whose animosity to Mr. McCain even led him to once mock the senator’s time as a prisoner of war — issued his own pointed tweet: “MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”
In the political world, Ms. McCain had at least one notable defender. Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a longtime ally and friend of Mr. McCain’s — and another surrogate uncle — said Ms. McCain’s eulogy had been a reflection of how her father raised her.
“If you say something bad about her dad, you will know it, whether you’re the janitor or the president of the United States,” Mr. Graham said on CNN. “She is grieving for the father she adored. I think most Americans understand that.” . . . . “She was direct,” Mr. Graham said. “The way John was.”
I respect her directness and refusal to throw out all morality and decency like far too many Republicans - indeed, I would almost all of them - have done as they have embraced the racism and rank immorality that define the Trump/Pence regime. Kudos, Megan.
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