A funeral for a world that never was

[mountaineer]

A funeral for a world that never was
Senator John McCain’s grand funeral was also a chance for the Establishment to take one step closer to its grave
By Spengler September 3, 2018 12:03 PM (UTC+8)

Funeral services are not for the benefit of the defunct, who is beyond our praise or condemnation, but for the living, who know before long that they will follow the honored dead into a cold grave.

Senator John McCain’s funeral was the most ostentatious that Washington has accorded except for a president, and much grander than the 2006 funeral of Gerald Ford, for example. The American Establishment took the opportunity to mourn a world that it imagined but never inhabited.

The eulogies for the Arizona senator, to be sure, were a convenient occasion for the Establishment to show its dudgeon at “the pointedly un-invited President Trump,” as the New Yorker noted, calling the event “the biggest resistance meeting yet.”

McCain’s daughter Meghan contrasted what she called her father’s “real greatness” with the “cheap rhetoric from men who will never come near the sacrifice,” a reference to Trump. Politics, though, were less important than the American elite’s collective exercise in self-consolation after the catastrophic failure of its policies and its repudiation by the voters in the 2016 election.

Senator McCain served his country and suffered on its behalf as a prisoner of war, and deserves respect on the occasion of his passing. But the unctuous sea of self-congratulatory declarations of virtue embedded in his obsequies were enough to make the portraits in the Capitol rotunda puke.   ...

... The bright line in American policy divides the utopians who believe that America’s mission is to bring free markets and liberal democracies to the benighted, backward nations of the world, and realists like Trump.

Senator McCain threw his support to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt in the expectation that it would become a vehicle for Muslim democracy; Donald Trump proposed to insulate America from the problems of the Muslim world.   ...

More at Asia Times

[Sanguine]

He makes some good points.

[endicom]

Spengler is David P. Goldman.

[truth_seeker]

"Senator McCain threw his support to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt in the expectation that it would become a vehicle for Muslim democracy; Donald Trump proposed to insulate America from the problems of the Muslim world."

There is the difference between feel good and survive.

Common sense.

I suppose one could call "survival" the ultimate "foundational principle," if one were a common sense type thinker.

[Sanguine]

Spengler is David P. Goldman.

I don't think I know him.

[Cyber Liberty]

He makes some good points.

He sure does.

[Free Vulcan]

This guy cuts to the chase. Like it.

[endicom]

I don't think I know him.

He's on PJ Media under his real name.

[To-Whose-Benefit?]

By civility and bipartisanship, the Establishment refers to the policy consensus that squandered America’s dominant position in the world after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1990. America had no military competitors of importance when George W. Bush took office in 2001, and an edge in high technology that made the American economy seem insuperable.  Since then:

    China has taken America’s place as the leading exporter of high-tech equipment;
    America faces credible military competition from China;
    Real median household income hasn’t grown since 2000;
    The civilian labor force participation rate has fallen from 67% in 2000 to 63% today;
    Productivity growth has languished at 1% a year since the global financial crisis;
    US federal debt has between 2000 and 2018 has doubled as a share of GDP;
    The American economy became “cartelized, corrupt and anti-competitive,” dominated by a handful of tech monopolies who combined to crush competition.


But taking action to lead us out of this suicidal morass is somehow a violation of 'Foundational Principles'.