This reminds me of the old sheepdog and wolf cartoon, where they’re friendly while they’re clocking in, then immediately get to work on completely opposite agendas. They respect that the other has a job to do, even though they disagree with the end goal.
I don’t see what’s so sacred about these few days. I should want an honest obituary and true memories of my life recounted whether or not I was dead three days or three years or three hundred. I don’t think many people are attacking McCain by saying he was a bad man. But it’s legitimate to observe that much of his life’s work following leaving the military was in service to bad government.
I know you don’t.
I used “family man” as rhetorical device because that how he described Obama, when he was defending Obama against attacks by McCain’s supporters. (This happened several times not just the one clip that’s been shown over and over)
If you believe that any person that has an affair can’t be a good family men than no John McCain isn’t a good family man. That standard also eliminates 25% of the men in the country who confess to having affair. It seems me the number of celebrities, politicians, and other men of power who have affairs is closer to 1/2, since they are subject to more scrutiny, have more opportunity, and are more likely to be “alpha males” than the average person.
I actually think it useful differentiate between serial philanders, like Trump, Clinton, and JFK. And men who have an affairs like Gary Hart, John Edwards, Bob Livingston, Ted Kennedy, John McCain and probably FDR and Ike. I don’t believe the fidelity should be sole criteria for determining a good family men, you can be completely loyal, but ignore or abuse your spouse and your children.
At the end of the day, neither you nor I are in particularly great position to judge. I think if his first wife Carol says he is a good man, and his wife Cindy and his daughter gush about how wonderful he is. I’m going to accept their judgement. If you think you know better, well there isn’t anything I can say to change your opinion nor you to change mine.
Rowe33 confirmed replicant.
That sounds about right. 25% of men are scum. I can get behind that.
But important to note for another ongoing thread right now, NOT a Cylon!
Oskar Schindler Nazi party member
John Rabe: Nazi official
These men are better men than I, and dare say most of the forum.
There were hundreds of thousands of Nazi officers, NCO, and government officials who’s only crime was to do their job. I don’t believe that they are evil.
There were millions of the same type of folks who did evil acts and while following orders is not a complete excuse, it is a reasonable one, especially for folks who weren’t at the top.
In the robocall campaign he launched just over two weeks before the election, the one where he called Obama a terrorist — did that robocall say Obama was the family man kind of terrorist, or the other kind? Just asking.
But that doesn’t mean the Nazi organization wasn’t evil and populated by mostly evil men.
His position that a group can’t be evil is silly. The SS were evil, which is why I chose them over regular Nazis, who were also an evil organization, but not AS evil. People got into the SS for being extra evil.
If you are referring to me, I already defined that a group that declares itself actively supporting evil acts such as Nazi’s and the KKK are evil, by definition. I only made the nuanced distinction that even then people inside may not be evil. No organization is monolithic
If that is the case, then groups like the GOP are certainly not just one thing or another. They are a myriad of things, but I’ll also concede that doesn’t mean they get a free pass for any actions taken under their banner, those that justified taking children from parents as a valid policy, like Stephen Miller. Those that decried it, like a minority of the GOP
I don’t think that isn’t entirely true, there were other reason, like good strong Aryan features, and family connections that got you into the SS, but this isn’t te thread to discuss German army/Nazi characteristics.
The points that I’m making and I think @David2 is making is that not all goals of any (or almost any) organization are entirely evil. One of the main goals of the Nazi party was to restore Germany to greatness, I don’t think that is inherently evil nor is “making America great again.” The methods used to achieve the goal, e.g. achieving racial purity by killing non-Aryans, that is evil. But it is quite likely that many people who signed up for Nazi or Trump’s campaign supported the goal, but were ignorant of the methods to achieve the goal.
Even today, I suspect 99% of Trump supporters don’t believe one of Trump’s goals is to create an authoritarian, kleptocracy for himself, family and rich friends even though it’s obvious to many of us.
I got some people like @ArmandoPenblade believe that virtually everything the Republicans has done for the last 40 years is evil. He is wrong.
The more important point, is that simply belong to an organization, even one which is inherently evil doesn’t make you evil. The Trump Republican party is vastly different than the one that John McCain or I were members of. It is certainly the case that racist, xenophobic elements of the party were far more prevalent than we were willing to admit.
In the case of what happened to the Republican party, the existing member had four choices. Go along, quit like Timex, myself and many former members of John McCain staff have done, or fight it. Not surprisingly, John McCain chose to fight like hell to stop it, even from beyond the grave.
There is a 4th choice which is what Lindsey Graham, said he has done which is ingratiate himself with President, in the hopes of influencing things and reducing the damage that he is caused. There is no doubt that Vichy government did save some Frenchman lives, but I think there were properly punished as collaberators.
What he said.
Strollen you explained that waaaaaay more clearly than I could.
Now post somewhere here explaining how partisan narratives, are not facts, and are used to manipulate people and shield sleazy behavior as a function, and not just a tool of a specific party… in your clear concise way…and I can retire from the political forums altogether! lol
Don’t know why you’re thanking Strollen - he is wrong and so are you. I don’t even understand what point you’re trying to peddle.
“The narrative from Democrats is that Republicans are bad and the narrative from Republicans is that Democrats are bad.” What?
Republican policies both local and federal inflict demonstrable, objective harm on a wide swath of voters. And “Democrats do the same thing!” is not a retort. When Democrats vote for bad legislation it’s a minority of party members voting along bi-partisan lines (like gutting Dodd-Frank or enabling predatory payday lenders.) Or unless you want to argue that raising taxes (which hasn’t even happened in the last two decades, and no letting temporary tax cuts expire isn’t 'raising taxes") is ‘harm.’
As for “not all Nazi’s are evil**,” seriously that assertion is just ignorant. Six million Jews were murdered and it was not just the Himmler’s of the world that made that happen. The German people knew, but they chose to do nothing. Their silence and inaction acted as tactic approval. It didn’t stop with Germany, either. The occupied countries knew what was happening yet they still handed over their Jewish citizens to the Nazis (Denmark is the only one that didn’t.) Croatia with the knowledge and consent of the Catholic Church ran their own death camps.Ukraine and the Baltics committed mass murder. Christ, the allies knew too.
After the war the popular perception from America was “that can’t happen here.” Well, guess what? Silence and tactic approval is the first step - this is the danger of hand waving away bigotry (“my relatives are trump voters but they’re not racist!”) Unless your (general you) position is “trump isn’t going to commit genocide so white nationalist policies are okay” it’s the moral duty of everyone regardless of their ideology to stop him and his party.
**Getting caught up in the semantics of “evil or not evil” is completely irrelevant. An objective definition of evil doesn’t even exist.
That’s exactly why it’s a silly way to present the argument! Use a less loaded term. The term I like is “decent”.
Decent people do not support Donald Trump. The Republican Party is driven by, and consists almost entirely of, people who are not decent. That’s something I’ve gone and forth on since Trump’s nomination, and I’m pretty solid on the “forth” side now. Are Republicans evil? I don’t know and frankly, I don’t care, since politics is rarely a theological issue. But I do know they aren’t decent.
-Tom
Now, this is something I’d completely agree with other than quibble with “almost entirely” and replace it with “largely”. But John McCain was a big exception to this statement, he was thoroughly decent.
At least according to many noteworthy Democrats, like a former Vice President, and almost all decent Republicans.
Oh, I have to add Joe Biden is also a thoroughly decent human been. It’s a real tragedy that glioblastoma not only rob the country, of John McCain but Joe’s son Beau. I suspect that if hadn’t happened Joe would have run and would have won.
I assume you’ll ignore this question yet again, but was McCain being thoroughly decent when he told the joke about Chelsea Clinton? Was he being thoroughly decent when he launched the robocalls calling Obama a terrorist two weeks before the election in 2008? Or was he quite possibly not thoroughly decent?
Sorry to derail again, but things “fell apart” when Obama got elected.
F’rex, Robert Draper’s book:
Hey Strollen, where are you reading Weekly Standard hitting Mccain? Most of what I have seen for them have been running pro-McCain stuff and solid memories of him. Weekly Standard is a pretty interventionist foreign policy so McCain and them aligned on a lot of those issues. The featured article is pretty laudatory towards him: https://www.weeklystandard.com/andrew-cline/john-mccain-party-of-one
Has he been buried yet? Would it be crass to take issue with this? Because I do. If he was decent, if he had principles instead of party loyalty, if he cared more about his country than his career, we would have been talking about him the same way we talk about Jeff Flake and John Kasich: as someone outspokenly and routinely critical of his own party because his party is flushing the country down the toilet. You know, actual mavericks.
In the end, that thumbs down moment will be a footnote. John McCain’s lasting contribution will be helping get us where we are today. That’s true of anyone carrying water for the GOP. People who are decent would know better. God, I would love to be wrong. I would love to meet and talk to someone who self-identifies as a Republican and discover that person isn’t poorly informed, a bigot, a coward, and/or a self-serving egoist. I really want that to happen, because I miss the times when it was true.
-Tom