Dear Donald Trump: re John McCain

Dear Donald:
    You might want to button your lip regarding John McCain.
    Not merely because he's dead.  That would mute a normal person's comments on him, maybe make then milder or less personal; and a particularly kind person might forgive him, out of consideration for his family or because he can't fight back; but you've never been normal or particularly kind.  It's not your style.
    Not merely because he was a war hero while you were evading the draft.  He felt compelled to fight, he fought, he survived a P.O.W. camp, and when his father's eminence got John a free passage home from that camp, he refused to go unless his men were going to.  I thought the war was stupid and morally wrong.  But I can sure see guts and heroism.  You used your family's wealth and a convenient to stay out of the thing.  Not because you thought war was wrong.  You'd been to military school.  But war was a little scary -- or it was inconvenient for an important kid like you.
    Not even because you're wrong, and he was right, in his vote not to kill medical care for many U.S. citizens.  Well, I think so, anyway.  Even if I didn't, even if McCain had risen from his deathbed to give a last passionate speech about how we should kill Obamacare, I'd respect his passionate (though wrong-headed) belief.  And his strength of character, though I know character isn't your best side.
    It's bad optics.  It won't build you up the way you suppose it will, even among your so-called "base."  Many of them are decent people.  Many of the older ones didn't have the bucks to get them out of the Viet Nam War, or shared John McCain's idea of where their duty lay.  There's no evidence you thought your duty was to avoid the war.  You just wanted to, and could, so screw everyone.  Some of those everyones fought in that war or have fought in wars since, and might notice what's wrong with your picture this time.  Even your toady Mitch McConnell defended McCain, although he didn't dare include your name in his comments.
    I have military / law enforcement friends who believe in duty; and do it, even when it entails risks; and some of them might see a brother in Senator McCain.  For most of them, fighting for the U.S. was as dangerous as it was for McCain, and as personally inconvenient as it was for you. But guess what they did, a lot of them.
    I guess I'd also be irritated if I'd been at the event to highlight manufacturing in Ohio, when you ignored the ostensible subject to vent your resentment of the late Senator McCain.  For the fourth time in five days! Apparently you weren't even straying spontaneously from the subject, but read some of your insults from a teleprompter.
    I'd be particularly irritated if I were family.  His, not yours. I like his daughter Meghan's remark that John McCain would "think it was hilarious that our president was so jealous of him that he was dominating the news cycle even in death."
                                -30-