As the mainstream media scrambles to portray Senator John McCain as a superhero, across Arizona, countless constituents are breathing a sigh of relief. Since the announcement last year that the Senator was terminally ill with an aggressive form of brain cancer, we Arizonans have held our tongues and collective breath.
Relief came in the form of knowledge: the knowledge that we didn’t have to pretend any more that we had representation in the Senate.
Constituents have been denied real representation in the Senate since before McCain’s cancer announcement. Sen. Jeff Flake, who has paid little attention to the people of Arizona since taking his seat in the Senate, all but checked out as soon as President Donald Trump checked into the White House. McCain at least gave the appearance that he was interested in some of the people in Arizona. Sure, he was only interested in the political class and members of the defense industry, but that was better than nothing.
When constituents watched McCain struggle during a hearing in the Senate, they knew something was just not right. Sen. McCain chalked up his confused performance to lack of sleep, and the media asked no questions. So when he finally admitted that he was ill, at least the public was able to take comfort in knowing the truth.
The public could not take comfort for too long, however, because the Senator refused to relinquish his seat. Despite the fact that rumors and pictures emanated from his Cornville compound that confirmed he was not able to perform his duties, mum was the word.
Anyone who dared question the decency of leaving the people of Arizona without representation was swiftly swatted down. So silence settled over the land.
In the meantime, countless Arizonans continued to struggle with inflated insurance premiums protected by McCain’s infamous “thumbs down” vote on the failing Obamacare marketplace. The National Defense Authorization Act, named after the Senator this year, left the people of Tucson–and the troops on the ground–at risk because whoever was running his office (and Twitter account) failed to protect the A-10. Constituent services, which were never a hallmark of McCain’s tenure, disappeared altogether.
McCain denied us, his constituents, the opportunity to choose his replacement through our democratic process. Our leaders either allowed our opportunity to choose a replacement to slip through their fingers, lacked the courage to demand it and McCain’s resignation, or colluded with his camp to deny us our right.
The McCain family expected us to believe–no, they demanded that we buy–the notion that an 81-year-old man suffering from an aggressive form of brain cancer would be back to work any day. The mainstream media played along, and the rest of us suffered from the nagging notion that they thought we were crazy for ourselves thinking it was crazy that an 81-year-old man suffering from an aggressive form of brain cancer would be back to work any day.
Of course, the truth was that he was never going to return to the Senate. The truth was that no one in a right mind believed he would return to the Senate. The truth was that few people would want to face the certain backlash that would have resulted from speaking the truth.
McCain was as uncivil as any human being could be. He and his clan ran the dirtiest campaigns in Arizona history over, and over, and over again.
Just this weekend, Dr. Kelli Ward supporter, Jonathan Williams, got his first glimpse of the tactics used by what has become known in Arizona as the “McCain Machine.” A simple and short conversation on Facebook between Williams and Ward was blown out of proportion by the mainstream media. The attack on the duo is something Arizonans have grown somewhat accustomed to should they step out of lime or otherwise get in the way of the “McCain Machine”
Let’s face it; if correcting some woman about President Obama’s background is the new measure of civility or decency, we are screwed. If giving a thumbs down to a failing healthcare system while enjoying an exemption from it is heroic, we are doomed.
The Senator endured things that none of us can even imagine. He served his country to the best of his ability and sacrificed much. For that he should be admired and we should be grateful.
Under no circumstances should he be hailed as some super hero, who cared deeply about the masses. He did not care about the masses. You need no other proof as to the accuracy of that statement than the fact that the masses are still without representation.
The masses aren’t mourning McCain’s loss; they are sorting through the propaganda. They are trying to make sense of the media’s myth-making and the real man, who dismissed them as unwashed hobbits.