MYTHOLOGISING MCCAIN

John McCain: Helped to legitimise the far right within the Republican Party.

According to Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters the late Republican senator John McCain deserves all the tributes he has received. And according to former Prime Minister Helen Clark' he was a 'American hero'. But this 'American hero' supported all of America's bloody wars in countries such as Afghanistan and Iraq while defending corporate interests at home. And he helped to legitimise the far right elements in the Republican Party that eventually gave rise to Donald Trump.

THE NEW ZEALAND mainstream media, apparently incapable of thinking for itself, has largely swallowed the American corporate media narrative and also showered deceased Republican senator John McCain with undeserved praise.

That has included TV3's social media presenter Aziz Al-Sa'afin who on the AM Show declared that 'everyone around the world is praising John McCain'. He got no argument from host Duncan Garner whose only contribution was to claim that McCain had enjoyed  a 'close relationship' with New Zealand. There is no evidence of such a 'close relationship' other than the fact that McCain met the occasional New Zealand politician.

But the sycophancy on display in the media has only mirrored the sycophancy on display by New Zealand politicians, both past and present. They have all been intent on mythologising McCain as a great political statesman, regardless of the facts.

The Minister of Foreign Affairs Winston Peters dribbled his affection for McCain: "The tributes to his record of service have rarely been more deserved. His leadership qualities will be missed by the people of the United States." That, folks, is the official view of our 'progressive government' right there.

Former foreign affairs minister Gerry Brownlee has also joined in the cheerleading. He gushed that it was an "honour" to sit with McCain at a dinner in Canada in 2015: "He was a remarkable individual and his views on the restrained use of force in pursuit of peace mark him as a great international statesman."

But this supposed selfless, honourable statesman who wasn’t afraid to fight the establishment was, in truth, a strident supporter of America's imperialist adventures while, at home, he consistently came down on the side of corporate interests.

He was a defender of American 'exceptionalism' and automatically and arrogantly assumed that America had the legitimate right to employ its military muscle whenever it felt its interests were threatened. While Gerry Brownlee thinks that McCain just wanted to see "the restrained use of force in pursuit of peace" , McCain supported all of America's bloody wars in countries such as North Vietman, Afghanistan and Iraq. There was never a conflict that America was involved in that McCain didn't support.

McCain continued to support the Iraq invasion long after it had been wildly discredited as a huge mistake. In his memoirs, written shortly before the onset of illness, McCain finally conceded that invasion of Iraq "can’t be judged as anything other than a mistake, a very serious one, and I have to accept my share of the blame for it.” Over a million Iraqi civilians paid for that 'mistake' with their lives.

McCain once parodied the Beach Boys song 'Barbara Ann'' as “Bomb bomb bomb bomb Iran.” In 2000 he said that "he would hate the gooks as long as he lived' - a racist reference to the Vietnamese people. These were, of course, the same people he bombed on twenty three bombing missions during the Vietnam War - until his plane was shot down and he was captured. As journalist John Pilger points out, he bombed a country of mostly undefended civilians.

Winston Peters: John McCain has deserved all the tributes he has received.

Proving that Donald Trump isn't the only purveyor of fake history, former Prime Minister Helen Clark tweeted that McCain was 'a American hero' and that he was "so often a voice of moderation and reason in a polarised country"

Helen Clark doesn't just rewrite history she obliterates it.

 McCain's track record proves he was anything but "a voice of moderation and reason'. He was consistently a defender of corporate interests - and at the expense of ordinary Americans. He repeatedly voted against the Democrats attempts to raise the minimum wage while he voted for Donald Trump's massive tax cuts for the rich and the expense of working class Americans. The record  shows that McCain voted with Trump eighty percent of the time in Congress. So much for being 'a maverick'.

This 'maverick' was implicated in supporting a last minute addition to a defence bill that saw Apache-owned land given away to mining interests. He opposed making Martin Luther King's birthday a national holiday. In 2008 it was reported that one in six of his presidential campaign team were corporate lobbyists.

And Helen Clark's 'voice of moderation and reason' helped to legitimise the far right within the Republication Party when he chose Sarah Palin as his presidential running mate in 2008. It was she who came up with the term "lamestream media' which was reinvented as 'fake media' by Donald Trump. Allowing Sarah Palin to have a national platform only contributed to legitimising virulent far right views inside the Republican Party that eventually crystallised in the presidency of Donald Trump.