IN THESE TIMES
The death of an American statesman adds a new volume to the body of tradition which so vigorously demands that we exculpate and rewrite the history of the dead. In the case of John McCain, the machine of reinvention began to creak and whirr before a single clod of earth was thrown. The mourners who stood behind the lectern to mark the passage of McCain were themselves notorious characters plucked from the extensive chapters of U.S. empire—from Barack Obama to Henry Kissinger to George W. Bush. The casting aside of bipartisan divisions in defense of “American greatness” was both an affirmation of Washington’s political class, and a legitimization of their immense power. There, sheltered inside a house of god, a flock of grieving monsters intoning hymns and calling for unity laid bare the cruelty of the American psyche, which remains unmoved by death abroad.
What draws the most feverish pomp and circumstance in the United States is the death of the politician, no matter their crimes. The obsessive coverage of John McCain’s meticulously planned, five-day mourning period is only the latest installment. The late senator’s procession was one of grandeur, with Democrats and Republicans filling the pews, each taking possession of history in order to sanctify John McCain and extol the fabricated virtues of the country he once served. Among them was none other than George W. Bush, who stood before a throng of bereaved colleagues and spoke of how McCain “respected the dignity inherent in every life.” George W. Bush would know a thing or two about human dignity, as he violently stripped so many of it himself. Only a few years have crawled by since the Senate Intelligence Committee’s investigation into the CIA’s detention and enhanced interrogation program—which culminated in a report that was more than 500 pages long.
For the Americans who now obsess over the charade of civility, the graphic details have had little impact on their attitude towards George W. Bush, who survived his two terms immune from prosecution. A distillation of the American fixation with respectability and keeping up political appearances comes from The New Yorker’s Susan B. Glasser, who wrote on September 1 that John McCain’s funeral “was a meeting of the Resistance.” Architects of war and human suffering thumbing their nose at the divisiveness of political theater convinced Glasser that a cavalcade of influential mourners constitutes a meaningful opposition. The columnist’s description of McCain’s wake was mawkish, bordering on absurd. Glasser writes, “For a moment, at least, [Democrats and Republicans] still lived in the America where Obama and Bush and Bill Clinton and Dick Cheney could all sit in the same pew, in the same church, and sing the same words to the patriotic hymns that made them all teary-eyed at the same time.”
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George W Bush, despite being a ‘no-Trumper’ is going to campaign on behalf of Republican candidates in the next election cycle, despite the fact that any establishment Republicans are leaving Congress, and only the Trumpists (if they are elected or re-elected will remain)
Bush’s choice is about the establishment’s desire to ride out Trump and keep their priorities intact, to save the party status quo, not to confront a threat head on.
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