I think to better understand my opinion of someone like John McCain, you should understand that I don’t find service to be inherently honorable. That’s not intended as an offense, since you’ve clearly identified your service. But I loathe war mongerers, I loathe militaristic action, and I loathe war. I also loathe the “chivalristic” aspect of war. The “honor” that is so falsely tied to it. The colors, the rituals, he routines, the badges. The whole gettup to attract patriotism and have young men and women serve greedy old people in the name of their country.
I DO find heroism in warriors. They are heroes. Some. They are good people. Some. They save lives. Both of their own and of innocent people around the world. Some are also responsible for unnecessary death. Some are not good people. Some are unnecessarily forced to kill in the name of their government. It’s not so black and white to say “thank you for your service.” In the same sense that we can’t hate all police or love all of them.
i agree 1000% with what you're saying here. it's absolutely crazy to me when people automatically think that the instant you put on a uniform you're some almighty infallible hero who deserves blind support no matter what. far and away the worst people i have ever had the displeasure to work with were in the military.
i once watched a corporal be given an order to test some satellite equipment by a female major. he acted like it was no big deal, and as soon as she left 10 seconds later he starts loudly proclaiming that he wasn't about to take orders from "some bitch", how cute it was that she thought she had power over a man (again, she was a major and he was a corporal), and that he would never do what she told him to do. he spent literally the entire day going up the chain of command trying to get the order countermanded and framed it as a bullshit technicality that she wasn't really in his chain of command (she was the 2IC of 1 squadron and we were in 2 squadron). he was completely unsuccessful and had to do it anyways, so he ended up dragging out a task that would have taken two hours into two days of sexist bullshit. more than a few of the guys (myself emphatically NOT included) quietly agreed with what he was doing and admired him for "taking a stand". absolutely nothing happened to him for directly disobeying an order from an officer who was nine ranks above.
on top of this, you have horrible racists who can say absolutely everything short of "gas the (whatevers)" while in uniform and absolutely nothing happens to them until they do something illegal and get in trouble with the civilian cops. you have unhinged people with obvious mental illnesses and violent tendencies being given live weapons - one time on the range i was legitimately so concerned that one guy who was a particular psycho was going to start shooting at the rest of us that i failed my weapons test 4 straight times, until he left the range and i could relax and focus. i met more than a few guys who i was convinced would have no hesitation whatsoever raping and killing an entire village full of civilians in a war zone if they thought they could get away with it, and they would deeply enjoy committing such an atrocity.
90% of my job was literally just sitting around waiting for someone to tell us what to do while these deplorable shits cracked racist and sexist "jokes", but i couldn't leave because i had to be available for a task when someone higher up came down looking for privates to do a job. i couldn't say anything because the likelihood of getting beaten the fuck up was real. it's probably the number one reason i got out of the military - i loved the technical stuff i was doing with communications, but the environment was so toxic i had to get out. 5% of the rest of my job was setting up and testing and counting radio gear, 3% was doing "soldier stuff" like weapons training and rucksack marching, and then the other 2% was actually doing the stuff i was trained for (i was on the disaster assistance response team, so my only deployment was to assist on flood relief in manitoba). so when anyone calls me a veteran or tries to thank me for my "service" i cringe hard inside.
so yea, i have a deep objection to people who see someone in military uniform as automatically virtuous. there are lots of amazing people in the canadian forces but there were a ton of bad apples that really poisoned the well. anybody who thinks all soldiers are heroes is a flat-out idiot.
So, about McCain, I don’t find his service to be honorable. I find his strength and fortitude as a POW to be honorable, and I find it to show how much he does love his country. I also find his personal life to suggest that he does love not just his own country, but the concept of “liberty.” He was a man of conviction.
edit: i misread what you were saying above (my bad) but i'll leave the below bit there as it explains my perspective anyways.
this is where i disagree strongly. even as a lowly radio operator, if i were ever captured, just the fact that i know what the crypto keys are means i would have insanely valuable information to any enemy - if the taliban (for example) ever got a hold of those crypto keys it would mean they could listen in on all NATO communications, which would let them know every convoy route and troop movement, get a warning of every airstrike, etc. we were instructed that in the event we were captured and tortured we would be expected to hold out for a minimum of 72 hours because that was how long it would take to change all the NATO crypto keys. there is no chance in hell that i would be able to survive five consecutive days of torture without saying anything. none whatsoever.
now think about how much more valuable information an officer who flies fighter/bomber missions would be privy to. my understanding is that john mccain held out in the most torturous conditions possible without revealing any useful information for six years. he could have at any point divulged things that he would have known, like target priorities, names of ships and military units attacks were being launched from, air doctrine, technical info of the aircraft, troop/airbase/ship positions, among tons of other strategically valuable bits he could have given up. but he didn't, and almost certainly directly and personally saved the lives of many of his fellow servicewomen and men. that is definitely "honourable".
this is why i say i respect his military service immensely.
I wouldn’t want him as my president and I agree he would be just another old man who lived to tell the tale, guiding young men and women to die in the name of “honor” as though a life is less important than geopolitics and waging war to assert power and dominance. Your life would be at risk. I can appreciate that.
What I see in Trumpism is a genuine path to the deconstruction of globalization we the western people have carefully constructed. And with that deconstruction, reopening of the doors that led to uncontrollable world chaos to settle with new harmony under some new set of tenants or rules.
i agree that trumpism is dangerous in many ways that have been discussed here before, but i don't see any way that globalization gets deconstructed any more than someone could "deconstruct" the industrial revolution. the entire course of history has bent towards the advances in communication, transportation, economics, etc that we would associate with "globalization". it's like people (not speaking about you here bae) freaking out about immigrants like we've never had to deal with mass human migration before, when literally all of history is the story of humans moving around the earth. we migrate. we connect with the people around us using the tools that are available to us. it's only fairly recently (relatively speaking) that we've had the tools that allow us to do so on a global scale. but short of massive nuclear war or some catastrophic natural disaster essentially wiping out humanity, it's not like we're going to stop using chinese smartphones, or buying mangoes from brazil, or going on vacations in france.
so let's not concern ourselves the fact that he most likely would have sent millions to their deaths (myself included since that was right at the time when i was in the military and we had a conservative government who would have signed on for that shit in a heartbeat) because he wasn't a big meanie like most other politicians today are? maybe i don't understand what you're trying to say.
Need to find a better quality version..
