Lest We Forget



Call me anything, but not late for a party.

We note today the news from multiple sources that, after a long and brave struggle, the brain cancer in his head will finally succeed in removing from office the man the torpid and disgraceful voters of Arizona would not for over three decades in office, Sen. John Sidney McCain III. We salute the brain cancer in this long, valiant, and hard-won effort, and thank it for belatedly doing what mere voting should have done for AZ and the nation at least two decades prior.

We would be remiss in failing to note that at a time when most of his generation shirked, shrunk, and sabotaged their nation, McCain stood up. Whether from lack of imagination, the press of family duty to two prior generations of family service as four-star admirals, or, one can but hope, from some later-suppressed spring of actual patriotism and unmitigated love of country that has long-since run dry, John McCain did the Lord's own work in serving in the military at a time when such service was literally spat upon, and delivered to America's enemies, actual red-flag waving godless murdering communist bastards, exactly what they deserve: 500 pound bundles of flaming jagged steel shrapnel and TNT, exploding right on top of their asses. Anyone doing that deserves recognition and full military honors for the facts, without exception.

Unhappily for him, on exactly one such mission, his jet was blown out of the sky, he was injured and wounded, and he became a guest at one of the most notorious prison torture camps known to living men, the infamous "Hanoi Hilton", where he suffered unspeakable and endless cruelties at the hands of his captors for six years until being repatriated at war's end.

While there may be some varying accounts, and his own admission of finally breaking under the ceaseless torture, there is no doubt that he suffered and bore upon himself such pain and agony of body and soul as killed lesser men at the same place and time. From that day to the present, he's been unable to lift his arms above his shoulders due to the abuse he suffered at the hands of such reprehensible captors. And for this exemplary service and more, the nation owes him and countless others, living, dead, or missing in perpetual limbo, an unspeakably large debt of gratitude. That much is beyond discussion.

Were we there when his casket passed us by, we'd render the hand salute, crisply and with military precision, to honor the flag on his coffin, that sacrifice he gave, and the sort of man who could and did undertake such service to his then-ungrateful and indifferent country.

But we did not undertake this to praise him, but to bury him. (We beseech the fates, please, soon.) So one fine day, his well-filled caisson shall pass, and he'd be laid to rest, and should we have the opportunity, we doubt we'd forego the chance to leave something on his grave site afterwards. A deposit that would not pass for flowers, nor from our heart, but rather from somewhere a foot or two lower down, to betoken what he spent the last 32 years on this earth doing: undercutting and backstabbing his constituents, and crapping on the state of Arizona, his party, his military record, the fallen shipmates who never made it home, his multiple oaths of office, and his country itself, in becoming one of the most petty, vindictive, backstabbing and cruel little pricks ever to befoul the halls of the United States Senate. Which, given the competition, is really saying something.

Everyone will remember with clarity the spiteful remarks, the gratuitously antagonistic and pugnacious demeanor, the outright duplicity, the barely concealed rage, the disloyalty to people who served him and were discard like used Charmin - the former governor of Alaska comes to mind - once he could get nothing more from them. The dictionary entry for "misanthrope" should bear his photographic likeness, and were he to pick up a cat in the dark, we have no doubt he'd pet it the wrong way out of sheer force of habit. We doubt even dogs liked him. Humans, however, will remember too the half-hearted, half-assed, and half-witted bumble for the presidency, inflicting by force of his own lacking humanity and manifest unfitness for the office, the last disastrous regime upon America, such that it could not be dislodged until the 22nd Amendment came to the rescue, just in the nick of time.

And most of all, they will remember the snarl of undisguised contempt he wore perpetually, and the demeanor and personality that gave it to him, and preventing even the most kind-hearted person from ever regarding him with well-deserved pity, rather than the justly earned disgust he's finally enjoyed. That he is the sort of man who would drag himself to cast the deciding vote to thwart the will of the vast majority of Americans in ending the disastrous experiment in full socialism that was ObamaCare, contrary to his party, president, and simple mathematics, amidst the ravages of brain cancer, really tells you more about the man than anything that two thousand days of beating and torture at the hands of inhuman communist bastards ever could. He'll probably enter eternity still more proud of that petty, vindictive, and traitorous act than he will of any day he ever spent in uniform.

And any obituary, come the happy day, cannot but note that the latter more than dwarfs the former.

We will not speak ill of the dead right after the funeral, if only to let the unfortunate family (unfortunate because they are family, and not due to the actual temporal circumstance) grieve in peace for a respectful interval. That's but humanity, and simple common courtesy.

We are not of the tradition that believes in penance and purgatory, yet we cannot but hope that when his earthly days finish, he is accorded an interval in the afterlife replicating to the last maggot-infested ricebowl and last tendon-snapping morning re-education session the days and years he spent in Hòa Lò to repay him for his conduct after his release. How long that would be is not for earthly minds to say, were it to happen, but we are within the realm of reasonableness to say that happen it should.

If some backstory inevitably surfaces days or years hence, trying to pin most of his later years on PTSD, we understand, and even sympathize, but that argues for getting the hell out of the Senate, and seeking treatment, rather than punishing the entire nation for one's own inner demons. Otherwise one is no better than children who murder their parents, and then beg for mercy because they are orphans.

Most people die never knowing how folks really feel about them, because they're not at their memorial service, just the husk. As Hognose's father (Hogfather?) observed at his memorial service last summer, being dead is like being stupid: your friends and family all know about it, but you don't. I would not wish such agnosticism on the subject of today's epistle. So in anticipation of the hastening happy date when the world is finally freed from the actions of Senator McCain (aka Sen. McCrazy) we note for the record that while we cannot hope to attend his impending funeral, rest assured we shall, with the utmost gratitude, heartily approve of it.

Whatever you think of the soon-to-be-departed senator, please learn a lesson from him, and try to live your life so that your passing makes your contemporaries weep and angels sing, and not the other way around.