I agree with you about the awfulness of the Bushes, especially the second one, and I also agree that McCain wasn’t the sole source of the problem, but I do think he was a very prominent cheerleader behind the Iraq War and behind the general overreach of our nation-building, democracy-promoting war machine that destabilized so much of the Middle East and beyond. This is the same reason I was so completely opposed to the militaristic Hillary Clinton, who, to me, was the same as these guys, with the added disaster of a patina of identity politics she used to cover up what she really stood for and con gullible liberals and minorities into supporting her corporatist, neoliberal/neocon agenda.

But, yes, moves like celebrating McCain’s impending demise only result in alienating significant segments of the country still further and making people feel like the vanguard on the left despises America and isn’t even willing to abide by basic standards of human decency. In an age when name-calling, insults and cries of “sexist,” “racist,” “fascist" and the like have thoroughly usurped the role properly occupied by reasoned disagreement, we don’t need more hatred and anger being thrown into the mix.