I volunteered for McCain when he went for the presidency in 2007 against BHO.  Though he was infinitely better than the massively arrogant narcissist who won and almost toppled our country into devastating penury, and demonstrated massive scorn for opinions other than his own Dem-minded and madrassa-schooled narrowness, McCain was a manqué in many ways, not least as he cruelly nixed reform of the costly boondoggle and catastrophe that is the Affordable Care Act.

McCain – though a fascinating study for many reasons, not least his reliable temper escalators and unsenatorial biting wit – was vituperative as well as brave.  He was notably irascible as well as courageous.

I went to Vietnam to see for myself the jail in which he and his cohort of brave airmen Americans had been incarcerated and tortured.  I made a special effort, since the Vietnamese at every point tried to discourage me from the visit, and nature herself colluded by producing a massive rain and flood that had me striding in waist-high water to get there.  The flood subsided swiftly, but it was novel to see people ferrying their ubiquitous bikes, buried up to the seats, as they went about their business.

The reason many Democrats like McCain so much is that he gave the finger so often to the Republicans in whose party he was re-elected six times as senator from Arizona.  I received many an urgent summons for re-election funding in several of those election campaigns.

My Dem friends are sanctimoniously blatant about mourning him to show how they are broad-minded.  They repeat that he is "the only Republican they like," but they are not open-minded at all.  They just pleasure themselves by virtue-signaling, thinking we are fooled by their affection for the man who poked us constantly in the eye and went along with party principles almost never. 

Nor can one forget how they lampooned and scathed him when it suited them, when he arrayed his talents and training against the faint suggestion of skill or experience in the junior senatorial underling, Barack H. Obama.

He also ran, we soon saw, a shoddy and scattered campaign and lost to the hologram of a man whose life we still do not know, as his secrets are all still vaulted away, lest we know he was, as all suspect, illegitimate – actually, factually, and politically.

Do not be gulled.  The encomia for McCain are a strong sign of disdain for the RNC and the current inhabitant of the White House, much more than they are honestly mourning this most mavericious of mavericks.

That said, I am sad he died and that he was afflicted with glioblastoma and had to tolerate so many months of harsh medical treatment.  I will forever be mindful and awed by his strength under the vicious Viet Cong, as well as the shockingly unfounded inked spears and arrows of the Fifth Estate.  He bloomed into a sudden "racist."  Was the father of sudden black offspring.  Was this.  Was that.  A whole unholy cornucopia of rancid charges as unkind as they were untrue.

Still...