Hero Or Songbird?

Most ex-military personnel that I have watched on TV, or spoken with are against the idea of  conducting foreign wars for the underlying benefit of material things, like oil, pipe-lines and other commodities.  By definition, these are certainly not existential wars, as far as the U.S. is concerned.  Therefore, I found it strange that a man, who was a prisoner of war (POW), who was supposedly tortured would always advocate for wars in various places around the world.

Today, I came across a video, thanks to Dr. John, about John McCain that can put things into perspective.  Please follow the links below.  Apparently, these recording of John McCain making a prisoner propaganda statement for North Vietnamese radio in 1969 became public due to being misfiled, and were released by accident.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tkBiFZBix0&feature=youtu.be
https://www.google.com/search?q=songbird+mccain+youtube&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-b-1

After I saw the video and listened to the voice recording of John McCain, kissing up to his captors in a big way; the text of which was surely dictated by his jailers.  One would have to consider two alternatives for why McCain gave this performance, 1) he was a Communist sympathizer or 2) there was a man scared to death, willing to do anything to stay alive, even perhaps sell out US positions, etc. The second option is the most likely reason for his compliance.  It is not a far stretch to imagine that a man in this situation and frame of mind was willing to give anything within his power to prevent torture and/or his death.  In any event, this is not the behavior of a hero, this is a behavior of a scared individual, who acted not unlike, perhaps, many of us would in the same situation.

I would venture to say that 99.73% (6 standard deviations under the famous Gaussian-Bell Curve) of us would listen to the message of the survival instinct and act accordingly.  Now, there are 0.27% of us who would not do as McCain did, they would simply not do it for any price, now these are the statistical mavericks, the outliers as Statisticians call them, and these would be the heroes we love to hear and read about.  One thing is for sure McCain was not among these, he was scared to dead, if not the first option mentioned above would apply, which I reject as not being a viable conclusion.

After much public pressure, was in 1991 a bill approved, known as the 'McCain Bill', which made a face-saving effort only; this bill did not provide for the unconditional release of heretofore classified material.  In fact, as is shown below it took a lackluster search for POW and MIA families, and with a fabricated percentage of only 26.8%, as shown below, they decided that families did not give consent for the release of this vital information.

http://lcweb2.loc.gov/frd/pow/pdf/McCain_bill.pdf (Dec. 1991)
This bill contains a lot of verbiage, but it does not address the key issue, namely full disclosure to the public.

"The McCain Bill does not specifically direct declassification. Its pro-release intent does, however, imply such action to make the information available to the public. Compliance with the PNOK's non-consent does limit the Government's ability to release publicly all information containing T-L-C data

that is declassified."

The record shows that 2266 consent request were mailed to families of POWs and MIAs, 366 replied with no consent,   243 did not reply, and  were therefore considered as no consent; that was easy.  Accordingly, the questionable combined percentage was only 26.8 % of the total requests mailed, and this small percentage was used as excuse for not coming clean and provide the information sought by family members and the public at large.  What a charade?

https://fas.org/irp/congress/1993_rpt/pow-exec.html -  Report of the Senate Select Committee.
"Our people, and especially our POW/MIA families, have a right to know all that it is possible to know about the fate of their fellow countrymen and loved ones. This Committee, with strong public support, has pressed both our government and foreign governments to add to that knowledge--through the declassification of documents, response to hard questions, access to archives and eyewitness accounts. A process has been established that will permit timely, in-country investigations of evidence that live Americans remain in captivity. The search for remains and other evidence that could bring certainty to families is ongoing. More people are now employed and working full time on the POW/MIA issue than at any time since the end of the war, almost 20 years ago. America is finally being allowed to do what it should have been able to do long ago."
 
Doing further research, I learned that the Senator and others had blocked the release of information those families of POWs so desperately screamed for, without success.  Yes, John McCain and others apparently blocked the declassification of information on POWs and MIAs for many many years, information that is still blocked today, information the release of which the  House and other Senators supported.  But apparently the relevant Select Committee voted against the release. The apparent reason given was to protect the privacy of the POWs; protect their privacy from their families?

The following links lead to must read article about McCain.
The article of the link below speaks to the character of McCain; according to sources, he was known for his violent outburst, and his demeaning manner towards others, at times to families of POW or MIA, the very people he should have had great empathy, which apparently he had not.  He seemed more concerned with maintaining his public image of a great patriot, which in his heart he must have known, he was not.  Psychology teaches us that such exaggerated behavior is the typical overcompensation of a weakness perceived by an individual, namely being a coward on the inside.  Other examples of this overcompensation exist, I remember the story of a well known politician, who was very outspoken against homosexuality, only to be discovered of being  a homosexual himself.

Alfred Adler, who coined the phrase 'compensation' said it best.
'If people feel inferior and weak in one area, they try to compensate for it somewhere else.'
In the case at hand, here McCain, apparently, knowing of his own lack of 'Patriotism', while a POW, constantly defends with vigor and aggressiveness against any perceived doubt by others.

The text quoted below speaks volumes, and confirms Adler's theory.
  
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/mccain-and-the-pow-cover-up/
https://www.vvof.org/mccain_hides.htm

"One such witness was Dolores Apodaca Alfond, chairwoman of the National Alliance of Families, an all-volunteer MIA organization. Her pilot brother, Capt. Victor J. Apodaca, out of the Air Force Academy, was shot down over Dong Hoi, North Vietnam, in the early evening of June 8, 1967." 
"Alfond’s testimony, at a hearing of the POW/MIA committee Nov. 11, 1992, was revealing"

"But McCain, having been advised of Alfond’s testimony, suddenly rushed into the room to confront her. His face angry and his voice very loud, he accused her of making "“allegations … that are patently and totally false and deceptive.”"  Making a fist, he shook his index finger at her and said she had insulted an emissary to Vietnam sent by President Bush. He said she had insulted other MIA families with her remarks.  And then he said, through clenched teeth: “And I am sick and tired of you insulting mine and other people’s [patriotism] who happen to have different views than yours.”

In the final analysis, McCain's father, John S. McCain Jr. was an Admiral and, apparently, history could not stomach the idea that here was an Apple that fell too far from the trunk, therefore history rewrote itself.

When we elevate the wrong people to the position of Hero, we do a disservice to society, and in particular give the wrong impression to our impressionable young generation, which often wants to emulate heroes.  Heroes cannot be linked to human cruelty, deceit, cowardice behavior or acts, etc.  

Media At War - Acts Confrontational and Disrespectful

More and more we see evidence that the media, in general, is taking Trump's calculated anti-media comments far too seriously, even personal, to the point that all personnel working with or for the President are fair game and can be treated with disrespect.  They often fail to treat each such a person according to their stature as an individual.  They are not necessarily joined at the hip with Trump and deserve to be treated with courtesy in a non aggressive manner.  Who are these inconsiderate reporters?  Who are these individuals who shout their aggressive questions from afar for a human being after all.  Their mannerism can be likened to a shouting dog owner, who is very unhappy with his pet, for whatever reason.

I selected Kellyanne Conway, to make my point, being the spokesperson for the president, and it seems to me, she is punished by the media for doing her job; the same applies to our press-secretary.  Reporters ask her a question, and then when they don't like where the reply is going, they rudely interrupt and become abusive.  They no longer wait for the person to finish answering but interject themselves in a brute manner.  Like an attorney, she is paid to protect the president and the office of the president of the United States.  What is so difficult in understanding this clear mandate any of the people have working in the administration.  There are polite ways to conduct an interview, why not use them?  Please see one video example below.

Here are a few video examples to make my point.

https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2018/08/12/kellyanne-conway-abc-top-black-aide-white-house-west-wing-omarosa-ekr-orig-vstan.cnn/video/playlists/kellyanne-conway/

https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2018/06/19/kellyanne-conway-immigrant-families-separated-at-border-cuomo-sot-cpt.cnn/video/playlists/kellyanne-conway/

https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2018/08/05/kellyanne-conway-face-nation-journalists-not-enemy-sot-vpx.cnn/video/playlists/kellyanne-conway/

https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2018/04/22/kellyanne-conway-dana-bash-spar-husbands-tweets-sotu-long.cnn/video/playlists/kellyanne-conway/

An example of a more civil video interview.
https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2018/06/06/kellyanne-conway-newday-intv-sot.cnn/video/playlists/kellyanne-conway/

When somebody asks a question to which the questioner already knows the answer, what is the purpose?  You are right, it is often to publicly embarrass the person questioned.  What does this say about the questioner? The questioner (a reporter, in this case, whose job it is to elicit information) is not trying to gain newsworthy information, but is trying to make a negative point.

I found an article which deals with an interview of Walter Cronkite in the '60s, an Icon in the world of reporting.  Ref.  https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/newswar/interviews/cronkite.html
The following is quoted from the article referenced above.

Back in the '60s Walter Cronkite wrote, "The Nixon administration related to the press was based on a simple formula.  If you could bring down the press's credibility, it might improve his credibility."
.
The interviewer then asked, " What was that like ... when you heard the attack from the Nixon administration?" Cronkite answered as follows.

"Oh, I don't know.  I don't think that it sent any of us crying out of the room exactly.  We expected it.  Very shortly after he began to attack the press, we understood that that was a certain attitude that the man had towards the press,  The fact that he would occasionally make us the target, make me the target was not bothersome.  That's the way he is going to react to almost anything we do.  We're not going to satisfy him, and that wasn't our job to satisfy him.
  
That's one of the things that must be kept in mind, that we have no obligation to our subjects, particularly political subjects, who are going to use whatever they can get hold of to further their own cause of getting re-elected.  No matter what their job, whether you as a president being re-elected or a congressman or a city councilman, they all work on the same principle.  The principle is that if they feel they're in any way being offended by the press and embarrassed by the press, they're going to retort, come back at you.  That's their defense mode.  So we live that way.  Yeah, that's the business."

The article goes on making reference to a confrontation between Nixon and Dan Rather, during which Nixon asked Rather, "Are you running for office?" Cronkite jumped right in.

"Yeah, sure.  And Rather answers back: "No.  Are you?"  Yeah.  That is a little bit sharper than most television journalists would play a politician, an officeholder.  I think that that was a little disrespectful.  He's the president of the United States. ... That hit me the wrong way at that moment. ... I felt that Rather was lowering himself in doing that, in trying to bandy around with the president of the United States.  It seemed a little out of step."

Unfortunately, today the president of the United States is fair game to be publicly embarrassed and insulted by just about anyone, be it a biased or rude reporter, commentator, or a celebrity of some kind.  What these individuals, doing so, do not realize that if we at home do not respect the office of the president of the United States, how can other nations do any different?  In fairness, our current president invites this kind of behavior by using the Twitter platform and political rallies to make unpresidential comments about others.  However, two wrongs do not make a right.  When somebody rolls in the mud, it does not mean one has to join in; whoever does so only lowers himself/herself.

It is very sad that civility in the public arena appears to be dead, at least in our country; it's return is very doubtful.