David Leonhardt's Column on John McCain

John McCain was buried in a private ceremony at the Naval Academy yesterday. The week of goodbyes and vilification is over. Yes, there was plenty of vilification. If you read the mainstream media, or listen to CNN you didn't come across the rebukes, but if you're in the Trumpkin news stream, you heard over and over that John McCain cast the deciding vote that saved the hated Obama Care. You may also have heard that McCain started the fire on USS Forrestal that killed 138 men, and that his daddy, the fleet commander, covered it up. That last item was as much a provable lie as the first was demonstrably true. The genesis of the Forrestal fire was caught on the flight deck video camera, started by the accidental firing of a rocket from an aircraft type that McCain never flew. But let's not let facts get in the way of things we want to be true (millions who have gone through Navy fire fighting school have seen the video, and know that the Zuni rocket that started the fire came from an F-4 Phantom; McCain flew A-4s).

The Times' David Leonhardt wrote an excellent column this morning about the hypocrisy of the Republicans attending John McCain's funeral this week.

Lest you think I'm just some disgruntled Democrat, understand that I hold them in equal contempt for their similar shenanigans. They haven't had an opportunity like this since Senator Paul Wellstone's death, but they made the shameful most of it, turning his funeral into a circus. They have shown themselves to be at least as cynical as the Republicans. Their current protestations from the moral high ground stem from the fact that they are in a powerless minority.

John McCain's funeral is different. He understood that Donald Trump has stained the presidency, and he intentionally organized his funeral to, in Leonhardt's words, rebuke a president who needs rebuking.

They Sat in Hypocrisy

Congressional Republicans made a show of honoring John McCain, even as they continue to reject his principles

It was an act because they have not kept faith with the principles that McCain held dear — and that he himself organized his memorial service to celebrate, as a clear rebuke to Trump and Trumpism. McConnell, Ryan, Graham and the others have instead done the very opposite of keeping faith. They have made possible Trump’s hateful, petty, law-defying politics.

Despite running a branch of government that the Constitution makes equal to the presidency, they have meekly assented to Trump. Entrusted with power, they have chosen complicity.

They have refused to defend America’s national security in the face of Russian attacks. They have refused to defend the rule of law against Trump’s attacks. They have refused to defend the F.B.I., the Justice Department and the First Amendment. They have refused to defend the basic civil rights that Trump seeks to deny to dark-skinned American citizens, including the right to vote and the right to hold a passport.

When George W. Bush said the following words in his eulogy for McCain, what did the congressional Republicans in attendance think that Bush possibly could have meant:

“He was honorable, always recognizing that his opponents were still patriots and human beings. He loved freedom, with the passion of a man who knew its absence. He respected the dignity inherent in every life, a dignity that does not stop at borders and cannot be erased by dictators. Perhaps above all, John detested the abuse of power. He could not abide bigots and swaggering despots.”

When Barack Obama’s eulogy was organized around a recitation of McCain’s principles, what contrast could Obama have possibly been drawing:

“John cared about the institutions of self-government — our Constitution, our Bill of Rights, rule of law and separation of powers. … He understood that if we get in the habit of bending the truth to suit political expediency or party orthodoxy, our democracy will not work. … John understood, as J.F.K. understood, as Ronald Reagan understood, that part of what makes our country great is that our membership is based not on our bloodline; not on what we look like, what our last names are.”

And when Meghan McCain rose and did what her father advised for this occasion — she showed them how tough she was — surely the congressional Republicans knew exactly what she was referring to:

“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.”

The cathedral then broke into applause, not exactly a common occurrence during a eulogy.

Over the last few years, McCain sometimes struggled with how to respond to Trump. McCain first refused to endorse Trump, then caved, unfortunately, before ultimately revoking the endorsement. Once Trump took office, McCain went further in trying to restrain him than nearly any other Republican — but not as far as he could have. So McCain understood the political tensions facing the congressional Republicans he leaves behind: Trump remains extremely popular with Republican voters, and he can also help conservatives achieve their policy goals.

In the end, however, McCain saw the situation clearly. Political expediency and short-term policy goals are not worth undermining basic American values. It’s not even close.

In his final book, McCain described Trump’s behavior as “disturbing” and “appalling.” In one of McCain’s final public statements, he called out Trump’s “naïveté, egotism, false equivalence, and sympathy for autocrats.” And in McCain’s final public act, he turned his memorial service into a piercing alarm about a president of the United States damaging and threatening his own country.

The congressional Republicans inside the Washington National Cathedral on Saturday would surely say they came to honor John McCain. But they were there for show. Faced with a choice, they have rejected McCain’s America for Trump’s.

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The Mayor of Syria

Syria, Virginia is a small, unincorporated village resting in a valley on the edge of Shenandoah National Park. Though it has no elected officials, there was an unpaid mayor. He sat in front of the Syria Mercantile Company, greeting all who entered his town. Anyone willing to stop and have intercourse with him would enjoy a more intimate interaction.

            The Mayor’s name was Mr. Friendly. Mr. Friendly was a large white and brown tom cat. Mr. Friendly would approach humans who passed the Mercantile, and any automobile that stopped there, cock his head, meow, and invite attention. If you got close enough, he would rub up against you. If you petted him, he was in heaven. If you tried to walk away, he would try to keep you by him with an extended paw and a well placed claw, and with that cocked head.

            Mr. Friendly was simply very, very… friendly. One day my wife and I scooped Mr. Friendly up, took him to the vet, and got him ‘fixed’. He was still friendly, but there was no longer quite so much Tom in his cat.

            We almost lost Mr. Friendly one day. He tried to make friends on a flat bed trailer, without realizing that it was pulling away. Fortunately for the local Syrian population, one of the Graves brothers dashed after the departing trailer, snatching Mr. Friendly just before his accidental escape became a done deal.

            It was clear that Mr. Friendly’s amazing personality deserved a real home. Although he had a great time during the day greeting Syrians and visitors alike, at night he had to hunker down in the local barn with the rest of the feral colony. He was more like a home body. Soon he had found a home, at the Chateau Debris, a nice house by the Robinson River, where he has his own real, full time family, and can watch television with them like a real kitty.

            Syria hasn’t had a mayor like him since.

Miss Laurie

The kittens could not survive without the kittie Mom who nurtures them to adulthood, and feels the sadness when they fail to thrive. Her work is as difficult as any mother's.

Miss Laurie

Miss Laurie is a song within my head.

Her beauty masks a sadness in her soul,

Her gardens flow with color,

And her voice runs like

A gentle breeze.

She cradles kittens in her hands,

And feeds them like a Mom,

She gives them life,

And gives them lives,

They give her love,

And break her heart.

I’ll like her from

The bottom of my heart.

When a Kitten Dies

We are involved in kitten rescue. It involves taking kittens from feral colonies, raising them to an adoptable age while socializing them so that they are adoptable. Unfortunately many kittens die a natural death early on due to a variety of causes. As a result, raising kittens can be a heartbreaking enterprise, though also one with great rewards.

Recently we lost three kittens in a night. When I came to the kitten room the next day and our kitten lady told me I didn't really know what to say. It wasn't the first time, but I certain wished it would be the last. I wrote this:

When a kitten passes on,

It leaves a space transparent,

Where only those who nurtured it,

Can see the smile it left behind.

Under The Stars

I originally published this last August. I am reposting it.

I had been invited for a night of stargazing. To my left and right, a half dozen amateur astronomers, each armed with a bucket list of nebulae, double stars, and globular clusters pointed their telescopes at the sky. I sat back in the old Catskill style chair, looking straight up at the dome of stars with my naked eye, and occasionally with my Leitz binoculars. An occasional car rumbled by on Ridge Road, hidden by the big stand of pines behind the house. Other than that, there were only muffled voices discussing the next celestial object in someone’s crosshairs.

A voice rang out from the dark. “Anyone want to see M-9 in the big telescope?” M-9 was a globular cluster in the constellation Ophiuchus. You need a small telescope to see it at all. I climbed five steps up a ladder to reach the eyepiece of this thirty inch scope, and put my eye gently to the glass. M-9, normally a cottony blob of light through smaller instruments, became a riot of individual stars held together in a cluster by its own gravity.

I had come to be in this back yard courtesy of the Culpeper Astronomy Club. The club meets once a month at the library, but maintains a relationship with a gentleman who has a superb observatory in his backyard. The observatory’s thirty inch dobsonian telescope is likely the largest telescope in private hands in Virginia. It was just a little longer than my 1989 Volvo.

Looking through that telescope at M-9, twenty-six thousand light years distant, took me back in time. The light carrying M-9’s image to my eye began its journey when the earth was at the height of the last ice age, twenty-six thousand years ago.

I felt sadly nostalgic for a past I could never recapture. This sky would never be as clear and as striking as the sky had been when I was at sea. Back then the stars would twinkle against a pitch dark sky, untouched by city lights. On a few calm nights, when the wind had died to nothing, the sea would sit flat like glass. The stars would twinkle off the water as if it were a mirror, just as they were twinkling in the sky.

As the ship slipped through the water with a gentle hiss, the stars on the water would surround it in a magic display as if it were gliding through space. Those few special nights made memories that only sailors can have. They are memories that sailors have had and held for thousands of years - as long as we have gone to sea. No one who hasn’t gone to sea can have that experience. It’s something we can store away, remembering that excitement at sea wasn’t limited to hurricanes, and emergencies. Some of them are just moments of peaceful beauty.