You Either Die A Hero, Or You Live Long Enough To See Yourself Become The Villain.

The title of our article here is from another fictional politician.  In this case, City Attorney General Harvey Dent of Gotham City.  Or for fans of the Batman, Two-Face.  He's rather a rather tragic character.  A man of noble intent fallen to depravity and madness.  A hero turned villain.

John McCain is not a hero.  He is a survivor of war, and let's be clear, I can appreciate that sacrifice.  I would not have stood up under the torture he has endured most likely.  But I feel he has nullified his worth as a human being, and expunged any meaningful sacrifice he's contributed on behalf of his countrymen with this week's traitorous, cowardly and hypocritical act of passive violence.

In effect, he has become a failed mass murderer.

This week, in the latest of misguided attempts to repeal the healthcare of literally tens of millions of his fellow citizens, John McCain took time out from his treatment to go back to Washington DC.  This was treatment for Brain Cancer, mind you.  I mean we knew he was acting erratically over the last month or so.  And when he was diagnosed with cancer on his brain, many came out in support of the war survivor.  My very first reaction was horror.  I've known someone who developed brain cancer.  It was an ignoble and undignified end that was the unkindest sort of death I can imagine.  There were outpourings of sympathy for Mr. McCain in recognition of his service to our country.  Clearly, these must have offended his literally diseased brain.  What leads me to that conclusion, you might ask?

"I've been a bad senator..."

Well, in the face of a life threatening illness, whereupon a normal human creature might be expected to experience a moment of clarity, or even solidarity with his similarly afflicted or suffering humans, John McCain did not in fact decide that the millions of Americans paying for his brain cancer treatment might get a little bit of quid pro quo.  He did not support our people as they were expected to support our troops or the criminal in the white house whom I will not call our President.  He instead found more sympathy with our current corrupt and broken government.  I suppose that can be understood.  A diseased brain might find sympathy with the cancerous growth in our oval office instead of the people he purportedly represents.

So interrupting his publicly funded brain cancer treatment...  one that I might add runs into the hundreds of thousands of dollars... he took his time out from that to fly across the country with stitches in his head and return to congress so that he might vote in favor of a repeal of legislation that protects the healthcare of more than one-hundred million people.

And make no mistake, the fellow knew that doing so would likely give the for-profit insurance industry leave to strip a quarter of those hundred million Americans of their access to medical care.  Virtually ensuring that a significant portion of them will die of preventable, diagnosable diseases and conditions.  Even if only 1% of that number actually die as a result, that still effectively kills two-hundred and fifty thousand people. 

For methods of illustration, the current population of Phoenix, Arizona is one million six-hundred thousand souls.  So to take the murderer comparison a little further, what Mr. Braincase just voted for (if indeed 1% of the population will surely die as a result of their insurance being taken away) is roughly equivalent to his being entirely okay with taking a stroll around his own state's capitol and stabbing every 6th person he meets in the guts. 

Now that doesn't make him Adolph Hitler.  Heavens no.  That particular mass murderer killed something on the order of 14 million people in the end.  But the portion of that number the nazis killed that were just people with disabilities in institutions was...  drum roll please... two-hundred and fifty thousand people.  So really... where is the point at which Senator Braincase stops being a War Hero and starts being a Mass Murderer?

They're both entirely fine with killing their own people.  McCain voted yes with the intention of the bill passing and those people becoming dead.  If you want to argue that two-hundred and fifty thousand people isn't as bad as 14 million, where's the cutoff?  How many dead people does it take?  Does that number go down significantly if it's people you love and care for being left to die?  Or is it only okay if his victims are people you don't know?  What if it was only one person, but it was your kid?  Or your spouse?  Or your mom?  Would that be better?  How many dead people is too many?  Where is your line in the sand, dear reader? 

So...  Voting to kill only a quarter million people doesn't make him a Nazi...

But goddammit, he's trying.

Let's be clear and say it again for the people in the cheap seats.  With foreknowledge that his fellow Americans would die if McConnell's repeal bill went to the creature in the oval office, he voted yes that it proceed.  And this doesn't make him unique.  It puts him, 49 of his Republican accomplices and the fundamentalist waste of flesh calling itself our Vice President in solidarity.  They know exactly what this bill will do.  And they cannot pretend they don't know how many their bill will kill.  The figures and estimates have been shouted, emailed, phoned and protested at them for the weeks and years it's been since the GOP started their repeal efforts while Mr. Obama was still in office.  At least when you can find them.  Many have stopped attending town halls and public meetings for what they say is their own safety.  Wow... really?  One might think your constituents are displeased with attempts on their lives.  I know we certainly can't get hold of Tillis (R) and Burr (R) here in NC.

So let's drop any pretense here.  Every attempt to repeal the law that safeguards the healthcare of Americans from being savaged by the insurance industry has been an attempt on human lives.  The insurance industry is paying them unheard of amounts of money to make it happen.  The personal culpability of these creatures masquerading in human skin is not negligible.  If repealed, then these monsters and their insurance industry paymasters are responsible for every untreated illness, disease and cancer that kills someone that could have been saved otherwise.  Maybe he sees himself as an agent of God.  The second horseman of the apocalypse, Pestilence.  Only instead of going out and literally striking people down with plague, he's just taking away their healthcare and racking up victims by attrition.

There's a kid with brain cancer whose picture is being bandied about on Facebook this week.  (And that'll teach me not to snag stuff like that when I see it.  2 days later and it's GONE.  My search-fu is not strong this morning.)  They've got him side by side with John McCain's picture.  The caption lets us know the only difference between him and John McCain is that McCain has health insurance.  In my head, there's no difference between taking away the kid's insurance and John McCain walking into the kid's hospital room and blowing his brains out with a .50 caliber Desert Eagle.  In both instances, the kid is just as assuredly dead.  And it makes John McCain a murderer of men, women and children.  As well as Mike Pence, Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan and every representative and senator that raised their hands and went on record that some Americans just don't deserve to live as much as others.

Yeah, fellas.  I agree.  And if we could switch your places with your intended victims, I'll count the rest of the country has having got a bargain.  

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UPDATE:  The repeal measure failed in the senate.  45 other would-be murderers also voted for it.