When McCain was McNasty

Ever notice how most of the veneration of the military is by people who never served? Anybody who ever served ran into folks like McNasty -- mean, backstabbing little shits with a hair-trigger temper who would stomp on your mother's face if that got him ahead in the promotion order, but whose temper, poor judgement, and unwillingness to study their profession seriously was always going to be the big problem for them. Their peers, told that they should venerate such a person for "his service", would look at you as if you were nuts. "He's just McNasty", they would tell you, "just a mean bad-tempered little shit with authority problems."

But toss him out into the body politic and... well, lo and behold, he should be venerated by the general populace as a hero, regardless of whether he's a mean-tempered little shit or not, because, well, because. Which is not to deny that mean bad-tempered little shits can commit acts of heroism. They are, after all, human beings, and every human being with an above-room-temperature IQ has the potential for acts of heroism. But they're still mean bad-tempered little shits in the end.

One of my commenters has noted that, given this veneration of those who served by the vast majority who never served, further examination of McCain's military career is probably not productive from a political point of view. So I won't talk more about why a Navy fighter jock who runs into power lines is one who is violating Navy regs (there is only one place where Navy pilots practice low-level training over land, and there are no power lines to run into there -- it's desolate desert), about a pattern of putting a multi-million-dollar aircraft at risk by ignoring his training, etc. It just isn't productive, and there's far too many instances after McCain was McNasty that demonstrate poor judgement on his part. But McCain didn't get the McNasty nickname from his peers when he was in the Navy because he was a great guy. He got it as part of a general observation of his character by his peers, regardless of whether the sheeple believe that he must be venerated for his time in the Navy.

But, alas, in a land of lies, truth must be carefully hidden lest it inflame the sheeple. So I shall put it up on the cupboard for the duration of McNasty's run for President -- there's too many instances of him later being that same mean bad-tempered little shit with poor judgement to need to pull out the earliest instances of him being a mean bad-tempered little shit with poor judgement. So it goes.

-- Badtux the Realist Penguin