Going Too Far Continued

Weird just keeps getting weirder, and degradation more degraded.  First there was the spectacle of a story about who would speak at Senator John McCain's funeral, while Senator McCain is still alive.  One person--the antipresident-- reportedly would not be invited, and that led to two more bizarre events and stories.

The first was another Republican Senator instructing the McCains on who they should invite, namelythe antipresident.  He later apologized for this obvious act of presumption.

The latest was the reported comment of a White House staffer, on Senator McCain's announced opposition to confirming the current candidate to be CIA Director, who ran a torture program that the antipresident would love to reinstate.  It doesn't matter, the staffer reportedly said, adding Senator McCain is "dying anyway."

The reaction was swift and strong from media and Democrats but not Republicans. Given multiple opportunities, the White House has not denied the statement nor apologized.  The staffer was not fired, and there is no evidence she was even reprimanded.

Though many today focused on Senator McCain as a war hero, this disrespect towards him as a former candidate of the party for the presidency, a long-serving Senator, or just a terminally ill person worthy of respect, is itself scandalous.

But there's more.  I haven't heard anyone say it (but I haven't heard everyone) but it seems a direct reaction to the antipresident purportedly not being invited to the funeral of a man who is still alive.  That's the world we're in now.

John McCain is on Homegrown Hitler's very long Enemies List.  Because of that, not just a White House staffer feels free to disrespect him. The politics of resentment that unites HH and the far right knows no degrees and has no decency: it's scorched Earth all the time.  So there's a far right story making the rounds that while captive and tortured multiple times in Vietnam, McCain provided information to the enemy damaging to the US.  That's the gleeful ugliness in store for anyone on the Enemies List.

I would feel better about some of the outrage today if it had been voiced when Senator John Kerry's heroism in Vietnam was being lied about for political gain in 2004--but then some of the Bush people rightly defending McCain were among the perpetrators and enablers of that scandal, now with its own political verb of swiftboating.

Once again Homegrown Hitler has degraded almost everyone and the entire political culture and tradition along with himself, and once again the latest outrage has been greeted with searing contempt, and the declaration that, this time he's crossed a line, this time he's gone too far.

How many more times will that happen, I wonder.