You know you are in the presence of an emotional affect when there is not even the pretense of rationality to someone’s crazed outburst, not so much as a veneer or patina of sensibility.
But then John McCain has always been like that, hotheaded and short-fused.
Still, in his response to Trump’s executive order on refugees, McCain’s deep disturbance is plain for all to see. The Senator’s hometown newspaper headlined its account this way: “McCain calls ban good for ISIS propaganda.”
Here’s the lead:
US Senator John McCain on Sunday blasted President Donald Trump’s controversial temporary refugee ban… as ‘a confused process’ that will boost the terrorist Islamic State’s propaganda efforts.
Later on, we learn that McCain and his bombing buddy Lindsey Graham issued a statement saying that “this executive order may do more to help terrorist recruiting than improve our security.”
That’s funny. Nobody remembers McCain or Graham ever suggesting that bombing foreign people in their own countries would be “good for ISIS propaganda,” and that it just might “help terrorist recruiting.”
So to put the peculiar view into perspective: We can enter our neighbors’ homes and kill their family members without provoking them. But if we refuse to invite them into our home, they might react negatively.
McCain has distinguished himself for his bellicosity, constantly calling for US interventions around the globe. Among the countries that McCain has demanded the US invade, bomb, or destabilize are Syria, Iraq (repeatedly), Russia, North Korea, Afghanistan, Libya, Kosovo, Nigeria, Bosnia, Iran, Georgia, Sudan, Mali, and perhaps China. McCain is so identified with a happy trigger-finger that he has become an easy target for satire. The satirical newspaper The Daily Currant was spot on when it “reported on” McCain calling for the invasion and bombing of Belgium because of its defeat of the United States at the World Cup:
“Belgium is a rogue state whose outrageous behavior at the World Cup was a show of aggression toward the United States, for which President Obama must respond immediately with military force,” McCain told Fox News this morning. “In fact, I believe that anything less than a swift invasion and regime change in Belgium would show weakness to our enemies.”
We will all be better off when destructive psychological deficits and personal complexes, those of presidents, senators, news anchors and other public figures, can no longer play out on the world stage.
It’s a compelling reason to disempower the State.
Charles Goyette is New York Times Bestselling Author of The Dollar Meltdown and Red and Blue and Broke All Over: Restoring America’s Free Economy. Reprinted with permission from LewRockwell.com.