Biography autobiography book
Faith of My Fathers: A Family Memoir
August 26, 2018
Edit August 25, 2018 RIP
Edit July 20, 2017: Yesterday it was announced that John McCain had a cancerous brain tumor surgically removed. I am very sad. I had read his memoir a few months ago and I have the greatest admiration for Senator McCain because of his service and sacrifices for his country.
January 2017 review below:
United States Senator John McCain's autobiography, 'Faith of my Fathers', gives readers mostly a military service history of McCain's grandfather, father and himself. All three served while America was at war somewhere. Senator McCain also briefly sketches out the history of his family going back to their origins from Scotland, but it is not much more than an outline. Basically, the McCains have been in military service since the Great Rebellion of England ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish... ), which McCain doesn't bother to explain in depth, understandably so; and then a McCain fought for George Washington, and a McCain fought in the Civil War on the side of the South. McCains have been a military family for centuries.
The Senator does go into depth describing the military careers of his grandfather, father and his own military service. John McCain Senior, who was a naval aviator and who became a four-star admiral, was involved with many sea-based battles with the Germans in WWI and the Japanese in WWII. He directed operations of aircraft carriers and land-based aircraft. John McCain Junior was a WWII submariner, and later in his career he became a four-star Admiral during the Vietnam War.
John McCain III, a U.S. Senator currently and the author of this book, followed his father and grandfather into military service as a naval aviator. It was while flying a bombing mission over Hanoi he was shot down and became a North Vietnam prisoner of war. He remained a prisoner for seven years, suffering torture, solitary confinement in cells barely different from outdoor toilets, and he almost died from horrifying physical body damage from the original plane crash and from beatings and poor nutrition.
Almost all of the captured Americans fought back against their jailers continuously in many small and large ways, including escape attempts which clearly would fail, enduring severe punishments in return. I have to admit much of this behavior by the weak and injured prisoners as told by McCain is beyond my understanding. I do understand their resisting the Viet Cong's pressure to force them to make false confessions and statements against the United States. I understand how they needed to communicate and care for and support each other. However, as McCain described very brave individual and group pranks which served to provoke terrible body-breaking tortures, especially on certain men in particular, some because of their officer rank (McCain says that although he suffered torture, the Viet Cong seemed to hold back somewhat in torturing him), I cannot understand the military mind on this.
As McCain related the toughening warrior experiences of his grandfather, his father and his own during military school and while in uniform during wartime service, it is clear to me these guys live in a different universe from what I know. Perhaps military men all over the world share this worldview to constantly provoke and endure pain simply for personal tests to meet a masculine performance standard publicly acknowledged by their peers, whatever those standards of tough male behavior.
Sometimes the pain endurance test is for the sake of rigid personal or patriotic honor into which they have been taught to channel their need to demonstrate manliness, but hazing is also widely prevalent in all kinds of male institutions. At the same time while demonstrating personal resistance to agonies of the flesh, they must show strong emotional resentment and resistance to any authority except to that of their immediate dogpack leadership. McCain did not seem to see how much their pranks and attempts to humiliate and defy the Viet Cong jailers resembled the hazing he described in earlier chapters during military school.
I strongly feel an alien mentality in all of these memoirs by warrior men (it does seem to be mostly a feature of male thrill-seeker brains) I have read, which is very unfamiliar to the way my mind functions. Obviously, I must accept it despite not understanding it. There appears to be an intrinsic pattern in warrior mentality all over the world. Gentle reader, you may not think well of me for the following confession - after having read these memoirs for about five or so wars during my lifetime, seeing interviews with warrior types on video, and having talked with men who exhibit warrior mentality, I can no longer feel the sorrow I used to feel when they die in combat, or even in extreme sports for the matter, or in captivity as prisoners. I still grieve for the waste of their lives, sometimes, in their warrior deaths, though, especially in activities like gang-banging, fraternity hazing or drunken sports excesses to escape the pure boredom of a regulated safe life.
Not so alien to me, like many people who wanted to read this book, frankly, I had a voyeuristic fascination and curiosity about McCain's imprisonment and torture. Ok then. He gives most of those readers what they seek beginning at chapter 16. He does not go into ghastly explicit details, but he does give readers more than an outline of his sufferings. It was a genuine horrific awful time of torture and depraved confinement for the POWs held by the North Vietnamese. The North Vietnamese wanted to win this war against the Americans, and they had experienced great torture and depravity, too, from the time of the French occupation of their country. Shit rolled downhill. Not an excuse, but it is an explanation, and of course, it is human nature.
I have included a Wikipedia link below about the Viet Cong:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viet_...
During this time, I myself was a teenage anti-Vietnam war protestor, but I did not think that the Western celebrities and others who went to North Vietnam to support the Viet Cong was a good thing. Protestors of Western participation in the Vietnam war should not have shown ANY support for the Viet Cong, in my opinion. I wanted the USA military out of Vietnam because I believed these brave Western fighters were sacrificing themselves in a badly planned, thus unwinnable war, and I wanted the Vietnamese to be in charge of their own country. However, I was no friend of Communists and I still am not.
I thought and still think Communism sucks as a form of government. Communism seems to require a dictatorship, and dictatorships appear to always need institutionalized torture and social repression and purposeful scapegoating to rule its citizens living under it. Communism is not much different in practice from religious theocracies, except apparently it is the worst form of government in terms of longevity. History has shown Communist governments appear to fail from a strangled economy after about 60 years unless they introduce policies encouraging private enterprise and individual property ownership, which effectively is the end of their pure Communism economy, if not of the dictatorship and the underlying kleptocracy which always seems to accompany dictatorships.
Of course, nobody knew that Communist governments self-destruct during the Vietnam War. Simply, it had become clear then to young adults after awhile, like the Iraq Wars, it wasn't any longer obvious it was about the danger of an antagonistic power running things in Vietnam working "to destroy the American way of life" (if such a danger existed, it had passed on), and the war had for certain deteriorated and it had become degenerate and deranged. Continuing the Vietnam war was destroying what America was trying to save - American values.
We still have not recovered morally from this long ago war, in my opinion. We are messed up. We got our fingers burned fighting for what we believed would be right and good for everyone in the world - our form of democracy (and Christianity, imho), alongside our faith in American exceptionalism; so we have lost interest in some wars recently or we have ended wars in draws because these countries hate us instead of love us. This has made us even more uncertain about our faith in democracy and we are deserting our moral beliefs in our Constitution here at home. Instead, we fight wars now using more shallow principles - to be policemen keeping order for American business interests and our business friends. For any other causes that come up we now lose interest after responding habitually as if to an ex's booty call.
By the way, I think peaceful mass street protests we baby boomers used to do back then in the 1970's is a perfect vehicle to convince democratic politicians to understand what their constituents want from them. I suggest we, as 'the people', should be doing this today, as well. It was very effective in the 1970's and it has been very effective all over the world since. Just saying.
Edit July 20, 2017: Yesterday it was announced that John McCain had a cancerous brain tumor surgically removed. I am very sad. I had read his memoir a few months ago and I have the greatest admiration for Senator McCain because of his service and sacrifices for his country.
January 2017 review below:
United States Senator John McCain's autobiography, 'Faith of my Fathers', gives readers mostly a military service history of McCain's grandfather, father and himself. All three served while America was at war somewhere. Senator McCain also briefly sketches out the history of his family going back to their origins from Scotland, but it is not much more than an outline. Basically, the McCains have been in military service since the Great Rebellion of England ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish... ), which McCain doesn't bother to explain in depth, understandably so; and then a McCain fought for George Washington, and a McCain fought in the Civil War on the side of the South. McCains have been a military family for centuries.
The Senator does go into depth describing the military careers of his grandfather, father and his own military service. John McCain Senior, who was a naval aviator and who became a four-star admiral, was involved with many sea-based battles with the Germans in WWI and the Japanese in WWII. He directed operations of aircraft carriers and land-based aircraft. John McCain Junior was a WWII submariner, and later in his career he became a four-star Admiral during the Vietnam War.
John McCain III, a U.S. Senator currently and the author of this book, followed his father and grandfather into military service as a naval aviator. It was while flying a bombing mission over Hanoi he was shot down and became a North Vietnam prisoner of war. He remained a prisoner for seven years, suffering torture, solitary confinement in cells barely different from outdoor toilets, and he almost died from horrifying physical body damage from the original plane crash and from beatings and poor nutrition.
Almost all of the captured Americans fought back against their jailers continuously in many small and large ways, including escape attempts which clearly would fail, enduring severe punishments in return. I have to admit much of this behavior by the weak and injured prisoners as told by McCain is beyond my understanding. I do understand their resisting the Viet Cong's pressure to force them to make false confessions and statements against the United States. I understand how they needed to communicate and care for and support each other. However, as McCain described very brave individual and group pranks which served to provoke terrible body-breaking tortures, especially on certain men in particular, some because of their officer rank (McCain says that although he suffered torture, the Viet Cong seemed to hold back somewhat in torturing him), I cannot understand the military mind on this.
As McCain related the toughening warrior experiences of his grandfather, his father and his own during military school and while in uniform during wartime service, it is clear to me these guys live in a different universe from what I know. Perhaps military men all over the world share this worldview to constantly provoke and endure pain simply for personal tests to meet a masculine performance standard publicly acknowledged by their peers, whatever those standards of tough male behavior.
Sometimes the pain endurance test is for the sake of rigid personal or patriotic honor into which they have been taught to channel their need to demonstrate manliness, but hazing is also widely prevalent in all kinds of male institutions. At the same time while demonstrating personal resistance to agonies of the flesh, they must show strong emotional resentment and resistance to any authority except to that of their immediate dogpack leadership. McCain did not seem to see how much their pranks and attempts to humiliate and defy the Viet Cong jailers resembled the hazing he described in earlier chapters during military school.
I strongly feel an alien mentality in all of these memoirs by warrior men (it does seem to be mostly a feature of male thrill-seeker brains) I have read, which is very unfamiliar to the way my mind functions. Obviously, I must accept it despite not understanding it. There appears to be an intrinsic pattern in warrior mentality all over the world. Gentle reader, you may not think well of me for the following confession - after having read these memoirs for about five or so wars during my lifetime, seeing interviews with warrior types on video, and having talked with men who exhibit warrior mentality, I can no longer feel the sorrow I used to feel when they die in combat, or even in extreme sports for the matter, or in captivity as prisoners. I still grieve for the waste of their lives, sometimes, in their warrior deaths, though, especially in activities like gang-banging, fraternity hazing or drunken sports excesses to escape the pure boredom of a regulated safe life.
Not so alien to me, like many people who wanted to read this book, frankly, I had a voyeuristic fascination and curiosity about McCain's imprisonment and torture. Ok then. He gives most of those readers what they seek beginning at chapter 16. He does not go into ghastly explicit details, but he does give readers more than an outline of his sufferings. It was a genuine horrific awful time of torture and depraved confinement for the POWs held by the North Vietnamese. The North Vietnamese wanted to win this war against the Americans, and they had experienced great torture and depravity, too, from the time of the French occupation of their country. Shit rolled downhill. Not an excuse, but it is an explanation, and of course, it is human nature.
I have included a Wikipedia link below about the Viet Cong:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viet_...
During this time, I myself was a teenage anti-Vietnam war protestor, but I did not think that the Western celebrities and others who went to North Vietnam to support the Viet Cong was a good thing. Protestors of Western participation in the Vietnam war should not have shown ANY support for the Viet Cong, in my opinion. I wanted the USA military out of Vietnam because I believed these brave Western fighters were sacrificing themselves in a badly planned, thus unwinnable war, and I wanted the Vietnamese to be in charge of their own country. However, I was no friend of Communists and I still am not.
I thought and still think Communism sucks as a form of government. Communism seems to require a dictatorship, and dictatorships appear to always need institutionalized torture and social repression and purposeful scapegoating to rule its citizens living under it. Communism is not much different in practice from religious theocracies, except apparently it is the worst form of government in terms of longevity. History has shown Communist governments appear to fail from a strangled economy after about 60 years unless they introduce policies encouraging private enterprise and individual property ownership, which effectively is the end of their pure Communism economy, if not of the dictatorship and the underlying kleptocracy which always seems to accompany dictatorships.
Of course, nobody knew that Communist governments self-destruct during the Vietnam War. Simply, it had become clear then to young adults after awhile, like the Iraq Wars, it wasn't any longer obvious it was about the danger of an antagonistic power running things in Vietnam working "to destroy the American way of life" (if such a danger existed, it had passed on), and the war had for certain deteriorated and it had become degenerate and deranged. Continuing the Vietnam war was destroying what America was trying to save - American values.
We still have not recovered morally from this long ago war, in my opinion. We are messed up. We got our fingers burned fighting for what we believed would be right and good for everyone in the world - our form of democracy (and Christianity, imho), alongside our faith in American exceptionalism; so we have lost interest in some wars recently or we have ended wars in draws because these countries hate us instead of love us. This has made us even more uncertain about our faith in democracy and we are deserting our moral beliefs in our Constitution here at home. Instead, we fight wars now using more shallow principles - to be policemen keeping order for American business interests and our business friends. For any other causes that come up we now lose interest after responding habitually as if to an ex's booty call.
By the way, I think peaceful mass street protests we baby boomers used to do back then in the 1970's is a perfect vehicle to convince democratic politicians to understand what their constituents want from them. I suggest we, as 'the people', should be doing this today, as well. It was very effective in the 1970's and it has been very effective all over the world since. Just saying.