Our nation recently mourned the passing of a true statesman and national hero: John McCain.
Like everything else in our present dark age of anger and hate, the funeral was greatly politicized; charged with anger and resentment. Understandably. Our current president had mocked John McCain, a man who put his life at risk in the service of his country. Who endured excruciating torture in a foreign prison and who chose to remain there in deference to honor and comradeship. Two concepts our president - a man who escaped military service for minor medical deferment (having more money in the bank than patriotism in his heart) - will never understand. How did our president acknowledge the service of John McCain? "He's a hero because he got captured? I like people that didn't get captured." (Or, who didn't weasel their way out of service?) He accused McCain of having failed the veterans. And, he declared that he loved war and torture. Never having experienced either, himself.
This is our dark age. Embodied in the death of a man who personified an age that has passed. The age of honor and dignity. Of courage and love of one's fellow man. On the campaign trail, McCain, unlike Trump, did not fuel the fire of hate when a supporter in his audience stood up and referred to his opponent Barak Obama as an "Arab." McCain, a gentleman of principle, among the last of a dying breed, referred to his political opponent as a "decent American with whom I happen to have profound political disagreement." That may have been the last time that phrase will be uttered in American politics. The look on McCain's face when he said it was one of dismay, like a man of a time past looking into the face of a dark future already festering.
Now, there is no moral foundation of national unity and respect to serve as the dam against the crashing waves of hate, of anger, resentment and bigotry. Those dark impulses catapulted Donald Trump into the White House. The ultimate triumph of style over substance. Of hate over love. Of self-aggrandizing cruelty over respectability and of tribalism over shared values. It is the age of insolence. Of disrespect. The age of the cyber bully. The age of self delusion. Of truth rejected and falsehood embraced. Represented by a president who hugs the flag with a false smile while splintering families and putting children in cages, in flagrant denial of what that flag represents. Who slanderously accuses both the free press and the agents of law enforcement when they oppose him.
The age of kindness, respectability and nobility, it seems, was buried with John McCain.
Our founding values gathered like angels in the church where a mourning nation said farewell to an age fondly remembered, when America was truly great. Our current national leader was conspicuously absent from that gathering. There will be little of kindness or nobility to remember when his time comes. His mourners will gather in anger, not prayer. In hate, not humility. There may be torchlight parades to take him to his final resting place. But, no gentle songs or kind memories. Only drumbeats promising more hatred to come.
What follows? A new age, I hope. As a new generation emerges...an angry and increasingly focused generation...we may remember with respect the nobility of an age now gone, but we must look to a new future. A future more diverse. More female. And yes, angry. On the march, and resistant. No longer silent. No longer passive. They will not go gentle into that dark night. Women may again have to fight for the right to control their own lives, LGBT people for the right to love and marry without shame, and kids in school just for the right to be safe. The new darkness must one day yield to a stronger, purer new light.
