John McCain in an interview shortly after his release from a POW camp (1973) Credit: US News & World Report.

McCain stands up against Trump, also still says Palin was worth it.

John McCain, self-proclaimed maverick that he is, is the leading Republican in the Senate to take a reasonable stance on many of the batshit things done by the Trump administration.

Though a questionable tidbit from a profile of McCain in this week's New York: the existence of something called "Troll Team Six," an army of Twitter accounts that McCain claims has "neutered many of the campaigns" against him; he also defends his choice of Sarah Palin.

Worth revisiting: David Foster Wallace's dispatch from McCain's 2000 Republican primary campaign, aboard Bullshit 1.

Who wouldn’t cheer, hearing stuff like this, especially from a guy we know chose to sit in a dark box for four years instead of violate a Code? Even in AD 2000, who among us is so cynical that he doesn’t have some good old corny American hope way down deep in his heart, lying dormant like a spinster’s ardor, not dead but just waiting for the right guy to give it to? That John S. McCain III opposed making Martin Luther King’s birthday a holiday in Arizona, or that he thinks clear-cut logging is good for America, or that he feels our present gun laws are not clinically insane—this stuff counts for nothing with these Town Hall crowds, all on their feet, cheering their own ability to finally really fucking cheer.

Feb 20, 2017

If you’re going to wait around for a march or a protest in which you’re going to agree with every single message that’s on display, you’re never going to participate. You just never will.

If you ignore his fervent anti-abortion and anti-LGBTQ policies, Evan McMullin seems like a perfectly reasonable person to be president, frankly.
↩︎ The New Yorker
Feb 20, 2017
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