Thoughts on John McCain’s funeral

Last updated on June 2, 2022

I watched parts of John McCain’s funeral yesterday (Sept. 1, 2018) and was pretty moved by his daughter Meghan’s eulogy. If you haven’t seen it, it’s well worth the 17 minutes that she speaks.

Her dad was tough, smart, opinionated and a statesman. I especially love the line that got applause (at a funeral, no less) –

“The America of John McCain has no need to be made great again because America was always great…”

Donald Trump did not attend McCain’s funeral. He was playing golf at the time. Vice President Mike Pence did attend. So did most of Washington’s elite, from both parties. The Clintons, the Obamas and the Bushes attended as well. But no Donald Trump, who has had problems and an ongoing feud with McCain for years, with his most famous insult of the former senator being

“He’s not a war hero…He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.”

Trump said that just a couple of years ago, but here he is in 1999 downplaying McCain’s heroism –

McCain often made veiled jabs at Trump, such as this –

“One aspect of the [Vietnam] conflict by the way that I will never ever countenance is that we drafted the lowest income level of America and the highest income level found a doctor that would say that they had a bone spur…That is wrong. That is wrong. If we are going to ask every American to serve, every American should serve.”

But getting back to Meghan McCain. I love that line so much (“The America of John McCain has no need to be made great again because America was always great…”) because it gets to the gist of what is happening right now in America – is America great? Has it had problems (of course) and do we try to deal with those problems (I think eventually we do try) but the current resident of the White House apparently doesn’t think we are ‘great’. He tweeted today, in a believed response to McCain’s skewering of his mantra –

So, does Trump think that we’re NOT great? What constitutes greatness in his eyes? Are we only great if we do what he thinks is great? What does he think is great, anyway? The Cleveland Plains Dealer compiled a list of things he thinks are ‘great’, among them –

• Himself as a leader
• Himself as a person
• His company
• His hotel in Honolulu
• His fortune
• His poll numbers
• His security cameras

If you don’t agree with the great narcissist Donald Trump, does that make you part of not making America great?

Addendum: After finishing this I went back to the original article that the Twitter screenshot above came from and noticed something else. One of the comments from the article showed a retweet from someone that I do not know –

Jesus wept.