he wasn't that great okay
Oh hey has anyone mentioned Senator John McCain is dead?
I got into a mini debate with Laney about this after seeing BlacKkKlansman on Friday evening -- a somewhat ironic movie choice, given that context. Her perspective was basically that he deserves respect for his ability to respect differences of opinion and engage in civil debate -- something that cannot be said of most Republicans still in Congress now. My perspective is that an over-focus on such things criminally ignores what damage the guy actually did. To me, it's akin to stating that just because President Fuckwit is so much worse, suddenly George W. Bush seems better by comparison. NO NO NO NO -- Bush Jr. was a fucking war criminal every bit as deserving of impeachment as he ever was, and fuck that guy forever, just as much as President Fuckwit deserves to get fucked.
Laney posted on Facebook the very next day expressing similar sentiments as she had shared with me on Friday. While I can't bring myself to respect Senator McCain, I certainly respect Laney's perspective on the matter, which is certainly more generous than I can bring myself to have.
I finally decided to post my own take today, for which every word was carefully considered (and, to a degree at least, reseatched):
You know what? John McCain voting down the repeal of Obamacare at the end of his career when he had nothing to lose doesn't absolve him of being the #1 career-total NRA-supported member of Congress, voting against Martin Luther King Day (which he did not truly backtrack on until running against Obama so he would seem less racist), consistently opposing key civil rights laws (and getting a 22% rating in 2018 by the ACLU), or literally ushering in the present era of anti-intellectual political lunacy by choosing Sarah Palin as his 2008 running mate. Sure, fine, he was a war hero -- but the guy was not great. His being dead now doesn't minimize the amount of damage he actually did: he may have hated President Fuckwit but he actually helped create the landscape that made this president's election possible.
I really stand by all of that. And honestly, I don't think that last bit can be stressed enough. When I mentioned Sarah Palin on Friday, Laney immediately said, "That wasn't really his decision" -- and I would counter: uh, yes, ultimately it was. Sarah Palin was the biggest fucking moron ever brought to that level of a political stage in my lifetime, and if McCain had had more integrity, he would have rejected her. Instead, he bought into the idea that he would seem more progressive as a Republican with a woman as his VP pick as a counter to the prospect of Obama being the first black president. It was all transparently cynical, and frankly disgusting.
The conservatives of this country bought the idea of a genuine idiot being a single step away from the presidency, and then, eight years later -- now we have one actually "running" the country. I refuse to back down from my assertion that McCain himself is largely complicit in the Fuckwit Presidency. To a degree, perhaps, he saw how the choice of Sarah Palin was shooting himself in the foot, but that's kind of too little, too late, isn't it?
So, excuse me if I won't go lauding the man as a "hero" just because he died. Or just because he wasn't as jaw-droppingly terrible as others in his party. He attempted to run the country himself with someone just that terrible only a decade ago, after all.
What exciting things happened in my life since last posting a DLU yesterday, then? I can't say that anything did in particular, but that won't stop me from telling you more!
I biked home, as always. And then I went back to the bedroom to get right on finishing My Life as a Goddess by Guy Branum -- Shobhit obviously ready yesterday's post, because when he got home and saw me reading, he declined watching a movie and told me I should finish the book instead. That was hardly his sole motivation, though: there were some primary elections yesterday and whenever that happens, he wants to be keeping up on the news.
He mostly cooked dinner all on his own, though, only asking for assistance a couple of times, so that I could finish the book. And guess what? I really loved that book. I wrote the blurb I'll have on my year-end book log and gave it an A-. And then I actually went a step further this morning, after Guy Branum tweeted a request that readers post reviews of it on Amazon -- and I did. It was hardly difficult for me to do so, since I just wrote a small review of it yesterday anyway; I simply copied and pasted what I wrote. And then I tweeted Guy Branum back with a screenshot of it.
So! Back, finally, to I'll Be Gone in the Dark by Michelle McNamara, about the Golden State Killer -- which I got 70 pages into back in May and then had to return because it was far too overdue. I subsequently read two other books, and now I've had this book back again for about a week. So I have a little less than two weeks to finish it. I read about nine pages of it before going to sleep last night. I did a hell of a lot more reading of actual books at home last night than I usually do, that's for sure.
[posted 12:37 pm]