For a traditional military funeral, there was nothing ordinary about John McCain’s final wishes, fitting for the final chapter of a man who lived many life’s. The Ex-Navy pilot, Prisoner of War, U.S Senator, Husband, Father, is laid to rest as the Voice of Reason.
“America is better than this,” Ex-President, George Bush said. Looking out to veterans, family members, republicans and democrats alike, claiming that he could hear McCain's voice whispering “America is better than this”.
Only he didn’t whisper anything. He shouted it. From inside his casket, McCain had one final bill to oppose. Donal Trump.
Following McCain's final wishes ex-presidents Barak Obama and George Bush gave readings, following the Eulogy of his daughter, whilst President Donal Trump, whom Mcain ‘Had no faith in’ was elsewhere. Mcain had built his own wall. On that is being called by the New Yorker,’ The biggest resistance meeting to date’; exactly how Mcain would have wanted it.
Mcain stook two fingers up beyond the grave and had the last word against the current occupiers of the oval office, through the voices of those who knew him best. The 44th president told the mourners that when John McCain immediately and firmly rebuked the woman who insisted that Obama was a foreigner, McCain was not standing up for him so much as for America. When George W. Bush said that we can hear John McCain whispering over our shoulders, “America is better than this,”
A notion that the senator lived by. In 2017, after declaring he had “no confidence” in the leadership of Secretary of Défense Donald Rumsfeld, and in his open criticism of the Trump administration, McCain, undergoing treatment for Brain Cancer, made a controversial decision to repeal the affordable care, following his speech which condemned the Senate Health Care Bill.
Three days later, he made another pivotal move when he broke from the majority of his party and voted against the bill that would have eliminated the Affordable Care Act. The vote—the last of his career—was roundly criticized by his party and the president.
Barack Obama tribute Mcain by reminding the public of his sincerity. “It has been mentioned today, and we have seen footage this week of John pushing back against supporters who challenged my patriotism during the 2008 campaign, I was grateful, but I was not surprised.”
“We never doubted the other man’s sincerity or the other man’s patriotism, or that when all was said and done, we were on the same team.” A team that didn’t comprise of Republican or Democrat, one that was not in a presidential race, but one whose life work was to the rights of the human race.
Whilst his beliefs surrounding same-sex marriage as well as immigration differed from President Bush during the early 2000’s, Mcain’s a man revered for his openness with the public and the press, pushed the reform of the campaign finance system, all whilst being treated for skin cancer lesions. McCain has spoken out against Trump’s travel ban and has apologized to foreign leaders for Trump’s diplomacy flubs.
His eulogy spoken by his daughter referred to ‘America does not need to be made great again, because it is already great.
Mcain stood for an America that was ‘better than this’. An America that was better than racial slurs and propaganda, an America that cared not about labels of individuals but of individuals themselves. Mcain’s America stood as a country that wished to cultivate human life, I say, McCain's America because as of now, it is.
