J. McCain, Bringer of Darkness

Humble though they are, light bulbs are essential to life, like air and water. The sun is a wonderful thing, but it has the unavoidable but necessary habit of absenting itself for half of each day while bringing its blessed light to others in turn, on the other side of the globe.

So have you heard what J. McCain was doing when a missile hit his aircraft over Hanoi and he was obliged to part company with his ride -- not the first, or the second, or the third time that an expensive naval airplane met disaster under his jinxed and incompetent behind? From what I've read, he was busy bombing a light bulb factory.

Does his campaign list that among his major achievements, connected to the thing that made him a "hero." If not, then what exactly did make him a "war hero?" It would almost be interesting to hear some conservative logic contortionist explain how that mission was defending the U.S. and how carrying it out was brave and heroic.

To my understanding such acts don't come under the heading of heroism. and neither does saving one's own skin, though actually McCain didn't do that either. After he landed on the ground with a broken limb or two and was basically out of it, he was only saved from being shot by a lone dissenter (hero?) in the band of locals that noticed his arrival... Yet he, an ungrateful sort, speaks of how he will always hate the Vietnamese with a passion, when he was the one attacking them from the comparative safety and the definite anonymity of the skies and not the reverse.

. Instead heroes are defined as people who, at considerable risk to themselves, do things for others, like falling on grenades or charging machine-gun nests alone or saving somebody from drowning or a fire. Bombing a light bulb factory doesn't rate.. Bombing a yo-yo factory, maybe, but not a light bulb factory. And in addition there's no telling how many innocent light bulb assemblers and factory floor sweepers he killed, man, woman, or child, while he was at it That would make J. McCain a sanctioned murderer instead, as is the case with all who drop bombs on people from the air, regardless of how a badly outmoded and mistaken tradition and their own side might otherwise see them.

I wouldn't be surprised if McCain's assigned target that day was indeed the yo-yo factory. By that time his record after he climbed into planes was so bad, what with all the wrecked machines, four at that point, with a fifth about to come, and a sixth later, his superiors hoped to save himself and the taxpayers some grief by giving him that insignificant target, but he, being the admiral's son and a true hotdog and hothead, took it on himself to try to withhold the gift of light from numerous people who had done nothing to bring harm to him or to those with the unbelievably poor judgment and taste to claim him, in the places that had produced him.

The big irony of this is that by keeping him imprisoned for the next five years the North Vietnamese actually did the U.S. Navy and McCain himself a huge favor, by keeping him safely out of the cockpits of other high-powered planes for that long. But as to how much of a favor they did the American people in the years to come, that falls more and more into doubt with each passing day.

If his jailers could've anticipated that, it would have made the rigors of putting up with his constantly prickly, bell hornet being for so long almost worth it.