Did I say “prominent Democrat”? I said Democrat echo chamber forums were all foaming at the mouth about him not being a hero and plotting to jingle keys at him so that he would have a PTSD reaction. Want links? There are quite a few.
Here is just one thread in a Democrat echo chamber. There were dozens.
Um, the thread originally is about whether McCain is “objectively” a war hero. So, technically, it is not about what Trump said or what Democrats in lefty forums said. But then, threads evolve don’t they?
Democratic Underground is the best you can do?
The disruptive jangling of keys stunt was originally suggested here and (in reading) has nothing to do with wanting to trigger a fit due to PTSD issues or a similar affliction it was to remind people of his wealth re how many houses he owned. Some loons batting this idea around on message boards after this nonsense was suggested thought this would possibly drive him nuts if he was on the edge mentally but to say this obnoxious stunt originated to trigger his potential PTSD is not correct.
Democrat loons, you mean. On the Democrat forum.
So to my question: “in the past was there mockery of McCain’s POW past on the left (jingling keys anyone)” the answer is “yes”.
How about this screed on another Democrat echo chamber? Or this one?
People who suffer PTSD are not suffering from weakness.
I’d have to say that it’s quite improbable that in the intervening years since McCain was released from captivity he hasn’t heard keys jingling. Besides showing themselves to be jackasses towards McCain, those idiots are also showing an incredible lack of understanding of what PTSD is and is not.
[QUOTE=Trump]
I like people that weren’t captured, OK? I hate to tell you. He is a war hero because he was captured.
[/QUOTE]
What an asshole. It’s not like we’re talking about Bowe Bergdahl here - if you’ve got two broken arms and a broken leg as a result of being shot by the enemy, getting captured or not pretty much comes down to who finds you first.
As astro pointed out, the whole ‘keys’ thing was about how many houses McCain had.
IIRC, what really made it a ‘thing’ was that McCain said he didn’t even know how many houses he owned, which illustrated how out-of-touch he was with the lives of ordinary Americans. All of us can imagine that if the Powerball dropped a quarter-billion on us, we’d have houses of our own in all the places we liked to spend time in. But the idea that we’d have so many houses we couldn’t even say how many we had was, for most of us, beyond even our imaginings.
That’s what the keys were all about.
Let’s see:
-
Anyone can post a diary on Daily Kos. Just like here at the Dope, where anyone who’s signed up can post and start threads.
-
The diaries were not written by Daily Kos front-pagers, so they can’t be regarded as representative of the site.
-
I read the diaries. There’s no mention of jangling keys. There’s no mockery of his POW past. They consist of fairly well-reasoned arguments that his POW experience doesn’t constitute heroism - IOW, something that would would fit in well, right in this very thread.
-
They’re only ‘screeds’ if your definition of ‘screed’ is ‘an argument I disagree with.’
-
So you’re left with DU, which is one small corner of the left that the left in general largely ignores. I’ve been hanging around the lefty blogosphere since late 2003, and I can’t recall a time when anyone said, “here’s an interesting threat over at Democratic Underground about that.” To call it a “Democrat echo chamber forum” is a wild exaggeration; it’s got nothing to do with the Democratic Party other than the word ‘Democratic.’
Birthers had far more influence in the GOP than DU has on the left. Hell, white supremacists are still probably a bigger thing on the right than DU is on the left.
In DU, you have indeed found an echo chamber on the left. But here’s the deal about echo chambers: they only matter to the extent that they make a difference. If you’ve got a few thousand people somewhere who only talk with and listen to each other, and nobody listens to them, the only way they matter is to give people like you someone on the other side to point at.
- So the correctness of your point turns on semantics. As you say, your question is “in the past was there mockery of McCain’s POW past on the left.” Was there such mockery on the left to any significant degree? No, there wasn’t. Was there some minuscule corner of the left where such mockery happened? Well, of course, because people are people.
But if your claim is the latter, then its correctness is really kinda trivial. Just don’t conflate it with the former.
Yes. He may not be a war hero on the scale of Audie Murphy, but if we hold out of Audie Murphy, we aren’t going to see very many heroes. And we should welcome more of our soldiers back as heroes, not less.
Which answers the second part of my question: "in the past were there vehement arguments in Democrat echo chambers that he is no “war hero” - with a “yes”.
That’s hilarious.
“We are always looking for friendly, liberal people who appreciate good discussions and who understand the importance of electing more Democrats to office.” Nah, nothing to do with the Democrats, is it?
And as for “tiny” - they claim to be “the most active liberal discussion board on the Internet”. I am not aware of any more active ones. Are you?
So Donald Trump, a man literally born with a silver spoon, who didn’t have to fight because he was able to defer his way out of it, is saying a man who was captured by the enemy is not a war hero. It’s like an arrogant blowhard saying that a soldier who was shot early in a fight isn’t a hero because he got taken out early.
Well, maybe that’s sorta true, but Trump never faced the enemy fire at all. It’s not like McCain chose to get shot down.
I don’t think his ordeal needs to be compared anyone else’s. He was captured, tortured, and acted honorably in those circumstances. Combine that with the medals he won for valor and heroism. Seriously, to anyone other than a nitwit like Trump, is this really a question?
I realize you’re trying to make a comparison relative to the “heroics of incarceration.” But we needn’t split those hairs, since McCain demonstrated heroism under fire as well. There’s really nothing to debate, IMO, and it’s especially distasteful from some self-serving idiot like Trump who received several deferrals that allowed him to avoid service. To be clear, I don’t begrudge anyone who received a deferral. But I do think it’s crass when such a person pisses all over the record of someone who actually served, with honor and distinction.
There’s very little about Johnny Mac that I like, but this is a bizarre insult. Enduring torture and imprisonment on behalf of your country kind of fits the description of “heroic” to me.
In contrast, I don’t know what Trump has done that would count as “heroic”. He’s certainly a bold man. A nervy man. But not “heroic”.
Well here is a “research” piece by “Breaking News and Views for the Progressive Community” that claims that there was never any torture:
and the “NewsOne for Black America” piece arguing that McCain is not a hero:
I see an interview with some dude who says that McCain wasn’t tortured (which I don’t find plausible), but I don’t see a “research piece” that makes this claim.
During Bush’s War, I saw a female soldier being interviewed. She said something along the lines of ‘The heroes… well, we’re all heroes…’ It’s my impression that the term ‘hero’ has been diluted to the point where anyone who has served in the armed forces is now a ‘hero’, even if they fill the most menial position and never leave the States.
As for McCain, he resisted the North Vietnamese when he was captured, and endured torture and still didn’t give in. His actions, based on the quote in the OP, eventually improved conditions for the POWs. Sounds fairly heroic to me. (But I’ll still never vote for him.)
It’s not “research” to go to Vietnam, interview McCain’s two “prison directors” and publish it?
‘Hey, we were the ones who would have done the torturing! And we say we didn’t do it!’