Public Service

[howeird]

On someone else's journal a couple of nitwits are arguing with me about McCain's record of public service, countering with the laughable claims that (a) military service isn't public service and (b) Obama left a lucrative career for one in public service. One of them whines about having given many months and dollars to get Obama elected, and asked what I did, as if I supported either candidate, which I did not. For the record, though, I supported Chris Dodd for as long as he stayed in the race.

I am appalled that anyone would say enlisting in the military and risking death to defend one's country is not public service. Obviously these are people who have never put their lives on the line for anything. I've been there, most of the men of my generation have been there. I'm not a fan of the military, or of war or violence. I don't "support our troops" when they don't refuse to fight an illegal war or perform illegal acts. But whether you think John McCain is a hero or a poser, the fact is he enlisted voluntarily, he flew combat missions which put his life on the line, and was shot down and served 6 years in a Viet Cong prison camp as a result. Regardless of how shamefully you may think he was treated there, that's 6 years of his life he is never getting back, and 6 years more than you wimps will ever sacrifice as a result of serving your country.

Obama left a job on Wall Street which may or may not have been lucrative. Junior brokers are a dime a dozen, and turnover is high in that high-pressure environment. In his first book he says he felt uncomfortable as a colored person in a white world, but he was there during the height of Affirmative Action and a general opening up of the finance community to people of color, so I don't really buy that story. Regardless, I would not compare his minor financial sacrifice of working as a small-time, not particularly successful, community development worker with disinterested church groups to McCain's volunteering to get into a uniform and dodge bullets for a living. Or working in the US Congress for 27 years.

Both men have their good and bad. What I hate most about the cretins is they want to paint their hero as all good and his opponent as all bad. Both men have done heroic and despicable things during their lives, and we owe it to them and ourselves to laud the good while acknowledging the bad.

Comments

[lemmozine.livejournal.com]

I LIKE John McCain, as a person. I tend to disagree with him politically, and his rather poor choice of VP undoubtedly cost him any chance he had of winning the election, but yes, he did serve our country, I do honor that service, and he would have been a far better president than the previous occupant. And yeah, I supported Obama and voted for him in spite of (and in full awareness of) his numerous weaknesses, chiefest of which (for me) is being a namby-pamby about universal health care.

[melchar.livejournal.com]

I liked McCain personally, but not his political stance [since he began to suck up to the extremists ... since about 2000]. Obama also seemed like a nice guy - but I paid attention to his stance on issues and didn't seem much difference in it from the gods-awful status quo.

I -voted- for Bob Barr. It might have been a wasted vote, but at least I could respect the man and the majority of his political platform.

[howeird]

IMHO no vote is wasted except the one not cast.

[bovil.livejournal.com]

Debating McCain's service record is like debating Kerry's service record. Well, except for the difference between a bunch of uncoordinated amateurs and a well-funded political machine.

[smallship1.livejournal.com]

I think you are mistaken on a number of points, of which characterising my friends as "nitwits" and "cretins" is one of the less significant.

Analogy. A man is crawling around on some scaffolding five hundred feet off the ground, with a crowd anxiously watching below. Is he a hero? According to your thinking, the answer is automatically yes, because he's putting his life on the line. There are a number of possible causative factors which might affect that judgment, though:

* he's up there because there's a baby in a basket balanced on a pole and the wind is getting up

* he's up there because his boss left a priceless Ming vase up there and the wind's getting up

* he's up there because that's where he left the proceeds of the bank job he did yesterday

* he's up there because his boss told him there was a terrorist bomb up there

* he's up there planting a terrorist bomb

* he's up there because his boss told him it was a legal requirement for new employees and he's too dumb to spot the prank

* he's up there because he wants his girlfriend to think he's a hero

* he's up there because he's drunk and thinks he's Superman

I'm sure you can think of other possibilities.

I have never undergone military service, but one thing I think I can say with certainty is that nobody knows what it's going to be like till they've done it; consequently, without knowing their reasons for going in, all you can say with any certainty is that they're up there on the scaffolding.

Certainly military service can overlap with public service--indeed, the military have saved the entire world from disaster at least once, which is arguably even better--but it can also be a pointless waste of lives and resources fuelled by paranoia or greed on the part of the government, which is of no benefit whatsoever to the public and may even increase the threat to them. Soldiers don't get to choose, unfortunately, which kind of war they're going to be in, so in the end the only reasons for their being there that matter...are their own. Which may be any of the above.

I would never minimise John McCain's sufferings, nor would I be willing to undergo even the smallest fraction of them given the choice...but one of my commenters has more direct and personal knowledge of the man than you or I do, and I tend to trust her judgment, as I would yours on things of which you have direct and personal knowledge. I'm sure your own reasons for undergoing military service were of the highest and best...but they are not the only reasons.

[howeird]

It isn't your friends I was talking about, it was people posting to of one of my local friends' pages. We have some rabid McCain haters and Obama worshipers here in the San Francisco area who seem to truly believe that everyone is either a saint or Satan.

For the record, I was not in the military. My public service involved helping rural SE Asia agriculture projects in a place and time when China-funded bandits were rewarded for shooting at government vehicles and kidnapping Americans.

As for your analogy, yes, exactly. The missing piece of my posting which I didn't think I had to write is John McCain is the son and grandson of US Navy admirals. He grew up in the military, his father and grandfather saw extensive combat service, he graduated from the US Naval Academy, and he knew exactly what he was volunteering for: Laying his life on the line in a career of service to his country. When he was no longer able to continue military service, he chose to serve his country in Congress.

I don't think he's some selfless saint, and I expect he loves the prestige and power which comes with the job, but despite what your commenter neighbor of his says, his other neighbors continue to re-elect him, and voted for him in the 2008 Presidential election. McCain has five residences, and spends most of his time in Washington, DC, so I wouldn't put too much stock in anyone who claims to be a neighbor in Arizona knowing him any better than I do.