During the time in my life that I have known of John McCain, my thoughts about him have not always been good ones and I attribute this to my understanding of the real effect some of what he did had on the country and on real people in the United States and elsewhere. I cannot forget my feelings about him or the policies he supported or the things he said that were very much out of line with what I understood to be good and right. I know of a good many people who had similar feelings watch him go about his business, doing what he did, saying what he said. I think it highly disrespectful to begin praising another person because that person is dying or dead. I respected John McCain and tried to understand him as possibly a good man even though his thoughts and actions seemed less than good to me. I thought him sincere and mostly thoughtful but, in a good many situations, on a good many issues, wrong. The end of my respect for John McCain came when he allowed Sarah Palin to become his running mate.
What he did to the country in showing so much respect for her as to offer her up as a legitimate candidate for that office served to prove in a powerful way that idiots were welcomed by those with reputations of being sane to serve in high office, this an affront to whatever respect i still had for the American government after the reign of George W. Bush whose obnoxious and idiotic policies–policies inspired by the sick and criminal minds of Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld — supported far too often by the man always advertised to be among the best, John McCain.
I do respect John McCain as a human being because he was a human being and I understand the sorrow his family and friends feel upon his passing. I, myself, in no way celebrate the end of his life but I will also not celebrate a life that did at least as much harm as good to the country he probably thought he loved.
