Amazing Grace

Amazing Grace, How sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me
I once was lost, but now am found
T'was blind but now I see

T'was Grace that taught my heart to fear
And Grace, my fears relieved
How precious did that grace appear
The hour I first believed

Through many dangers, toils and snares
We have already come.
T'was grace that brought us safe thus far
And grace will lead us home,~Traditional Christian Hymn, by John Newton

I watched John McCain's D.C. memorial service yesterday morning.

To be quite honest, I found the entire thing to be very emotionally draining. I was moved to tears more than one time, and I didn't vote for the guy. I was deeply impressed by Meghan McCain, powering through her pain for what had to have been an agonizing moment on the world stage, to deliver a stinging rebuke of Trump and Trumpism, which she did, to thunderous applause.

We gather to mourn the passing of American greatness, the real thing, not cheap rhetoric from men who will never come near the sacrifice, those that live lives of comfort and privilege while he suffered and served. He was a great fire who burned bright. In the past few days, my family and I have heard from so many of those Americans who stood in the warmth and light of his fire and found it illuminated what's best about them. We are grateful to them because they're grateful to him. A few have resented that fire for the light it cast upon them for the truth it revealed about their character, but my father never cared what they thought and even that small number still have the opportunity as long as they draw breath to live up to the example of John McCain.

The America of John McCain has no need to be made great again, because America was always great.

It was more than that, though. George W. Bush spoke eloquently, and reminded me all too much of what conservatism once was, and how much it has lost. Hell, even Henry Kissenger came off more as an amusing old man than as some kind of foreign policy titan, kind of like a Vietnam-era version of the old guy from "Up."

I find myself missing these old Republicans. All of them, even the ones I hated, or voted against.

Barack Obama of course, was Barack Obama and god damn but I miss that guy.

We need these people, all of them, even if we don't always or even really like them...because we need examples of class and decency and grace and people with the capability to say things that can uplift us all, because despite...or perhaps even because of...our very often anti-authoritarian, non-hierarchical nature as a people, it's better if the best of us, or at least people who can speak properly, who do not harbor endless insecure fears and who understand the world rise to the top. I don't give a damn if what I'm about to say sounds elitist or snobbish, but there are a lot of people out there...grown ass adults...who in their minds are like little children. They will follow the examples that they see. Fundamentally, these people often don't have much of an internal moral code or sense of right and wrong...they will do what they are permitted to do.

I started out as a conservative, and I quite honestly think that to a degree our society has become too permissive. Now I'm not talking about feminism, LGBT rights, or sexual liberation, or people of color or any of the traditional things conservatives bitch about.

I'm talking about the fact that any old stupid idea people get in their heads is at least given the benefit of the doubt, even if it's a very old idea like racism, that's never benefited anybody but rich people. It's that "Free exchange of ideas" that often makes social media such an abusive shit-hole for so many people. It's the kind of bullshit that leads somebody like Jack Dorsey to refuse to kick Alex Jones off his platform, or to drag his feet in eliminating outright Nazis from the discourse.

It's the fact that personal freedom, at least in a limited sense, has been being used as a club by the Right to beat on the collective freedoms of our society. The right wing basically says [as long as you meet certain implicit conditions i.e. you're a conservative white man] you can do whatever you want. It's kind of like how "State's Rights" is really code for "Hate" and "Laws against brown people." These idiots fundamentally can't concieve of the idea that government can or should be a force for good in the lives of people who make less than seven figures. Therefore, when they talk about their "rights" what they're really talking about is the unwritten conservative-American "right" to be an asshole.

Do you see yet, why these fucking people love Trump so much?

This was a reply to one of my comments on a post by Joe Walsh, as in former Tea Party Congressman Joe Walsh, who was very much the face of the movement for a time and who I really couldn't stand for like, years, but in the era of Trump he's...reasonable and sane, and I can respect him even if he still says something that's nuts now and again. I still often disagree with him, but I can see where he's coming from. Again, this guy was the face of These Fucking People for a few years, and now he damned well makes sense and has firm moral boundaries that have been exceeded by Trump. And this is the kind of stuff people post on his timeline because of it. If there is one thing that I think describes Trumpism over and above everything else, it's the profound lack of gratitude to anyone who's gone before...especially anyone with morals or some line that they were unable to cross somewhere along the way. People like me, for example.

Perhaps that's why I've reached the point where I can tolerate Joe. I remember when I was where he is now, I was that guy roughly about 2007 or so, and well into 2008 before the lines firmed up and I realized that I wasn't...that I couldn't be...on the side I'd spent all of my political life before that moment on. Fundamentally, people like Joe Walsh...or Bill Kristol, or Rick Wilson or even yes, John McCain...are and were fighting to try to save conservatism.

The problem with that, is you gotta want to be saved, and I no longer think these people do.

For one thing, if you've read the Bible, Jesus did not have a funeral, simple or otherwise.

An awful lot of what Christianity has turned into in the last 20 years has been simply a nihilistic veneration of the idea of the end of the world.

I think they want that apocalyptic destruction of American conservatism...of their own side, if not of America or the Earth itself. Why? Because they convinced themselves years ago that it was going to happen.

They've forgotten why. Old men like Chuck Woolery, like Donald Trump, like that old guy at work who talks about how great life was in 1973...they know they're old and they know they're going to die and they can't understand the world as it is...having made no real effort to understand it as it was either. So if they're going to die, why not everybody else, too? I mean, obviously not everybody else is 60+ years old...but when people look at life only through their own eyes and never try to understand anybody else or expand their own perception that's what we have to deal with.

John McCain never mattered to these fucking people. Hell, once he's out of power or has been overcome by dementia or died of old age, Donald Trump won't matter to most of them either, because all the majority of these fucking people care about is right now, and what makes them feel good about themselves, right now.

They don't like Trump for Trump, they like Trump because he's given them permission to act on their shitty impulses. They think...hope, perhaps...that because we have a president who was the public face of self-promoting rich assholes for 40 years...that maybe they'll get rich. If they don't, well then they'll be mad about that too.

They like Trump because people who know how things work worry about this guy causing the end of America, if not the end of the Earth itself.

This is why we need people with some form of higher values, with some sense of class, to be the public face of our country. Sure, the drunk racist uncle types will bitch about that, but they bitch about everything else too...and since roughly 70% of Americans don't like their overstuffed gilded orange god, well they don't like 70% of their fellow Americans.

That's always who these fucking people have really had a problem with, Americans who weren't like themselves...and the things they really, deep down have shown that they believed in are often the very opposite of what many of their own leaders stood for.

We need higher values because the alternative is apparently robocalls with jungle noises making fun of Black candidates.

I think, as much as John McCain himself often failed to live up to the ideals enunciated by those who eulogized him, in this message he left us, in these last words of this American hero, in the class, dignity, grace and merciless subtle condemnation of those currently in power that he obviously had a hand in assiduously planning...I think we have the key for how to deal with this crap.

At the end of the day, I think it mostly comes down to two words. Two words...that people like Donald Trump will never understand.

Be. Real.

Be real, and vote for something better, because this ain't working.