I’m not the type of person to either celebrate or mourn death.  There are as always exceptions but in general death is just something that happens. We live we die. I feel compelled to write about John McCain though on the day of his death.  I think that compulsion comes from not knowing if I should have a moment of silence over 2 step.

The good news for those who come to Vizionz for the kink is that in 45’s America I am less likely to talk politics. It’s not safe for me to talk politics.  I don’t mean because the person living @ 1600 Pennsylvania Ave is a racist racist who has the power to make me disappear – although that is true.  It is because the America he leads is an America that is unsafe for me in general.

John McCain matters to me in this moment though.

As a political creature I knew of McCain before he ran against Bush. I used to research Senators and committees and such.  I knew the basics on him up to and including that he was a Republican, my antagonist if not my enemy.

Many others outside the state of Arizona found him when shrub clobbered him in the primaries of 2000.

At this point, 2000 I was no longer a Republlican.  I got over the pain of being ‘other than’ as a Black woman and started living my truth.  I first registered to vote as a Republican because I was insistent that I be the opposite of all the people around me who for the prior 18 years rejected me.  I was going to listen to rock music. I was gonna be a Reublican.  I was going to reject everything that the people around me embraced since they never let me into the cool kids club.  I was gonna be a maverick.

I grew out of that, in no small part to finding people who could love me and accept me no matter what I presented.  I got to take time and find myself.  I got to figure out who I was not who I did not want to be.

I was also aided along the way by circumstance. Racial, sexual discrimination.  Harassment and consequence. I also got pregnant.

By the time the rest of you met ‘the maverick’ I’d been there, done that, got the shirt and burned it to the ground.  He was new and exciting to some but to me he was the same old role, covered with a fresh coat of paint but still old.

I didnt’ think him special or provocative.  He was simply just another old white man in a series of old white men who determined my uterus and my skin color were worth legislating.

We met McCain again in 2008.  It was ‘his turn’ in the nomination process. Republicans are – or should I say used to be – nothing if not predictable. What so few of us saw coming was Barack Obama.

In 2008 I wasn’t yet sold on the skinny guy with the big ears.  I wanted my woman President. I wanted my Hillary Clinton. I wanted my feminity represented at the highest level of government.  I wanted the change that estrogen delivers to leadership.  I wasn’t sold on a man I didn’t know and I wanted the woman who in many ways was an idol of mine.  I carried that all the way to November even in the voting booth.

Along the way though I for a brief moment considered voting for John McCain.

It was not something I would have ever considered if he was the maverick the media tells us he was and he selected Liberman as his running mate. It was the selection of Sarah Palin that for the shortest of moments made me think…..perhaps McCain ain’t all that bad.

Of course I got over that quickly once I realized that Palin is a crazy woman, an idiot and dangerous.

https://youtu.be/a5X7fjvoWrg

I danced with it for a moment though.

When President Obama won, I still watched John McCain.

The 2008 election was revealing to those of us who wanted to see.  It was the moment in time that the majority terrified of losing power began to come out of the shadows, out of hiding, and decided to fight their ‘enemies’.

There were glimpses of this maverick that people spoke about during the Presidential campaign.  His refusal at times to lean into the racist Tea Party rhetoric.  So I watched, and waited.

You can tell a lot about a politician when they have nothing left to ‘lose’. McCain had his shot at the White House, lost it.  He was never in  danger of losing his Senate set so this was the time when the real man could exist.

He did.

He is a man who would not renounce the Tea Party.  He would continue to tow the party line, and when his peers in the Senate told him to he fell in line to preserve the power.

With his political freedom McCain chose to continue the policies which could do me the most harm.  He chose to remain loyal to the supremacy and refused to stand for anything else.

Now maybe that is/was his belief structure.  Perhaps he was being true to himself. That’s fine if that is the case. Yes I judge that belief structure, but if that is his truth then he can stand in it.  I will still fight that truth, but it’s still his to bathe within.

I hoped for more from him though.

I hoped he was the man the media said he was, one of vizion of passion of disruption.  I wanted to see that version of McCain. I wanted to see a man with nothing to lose make the specific choice to fight for those who needed it.  Again, maybe he did.  Perhaps he thought Cis het wealth white men are in actual danger.

Regardless, he never chose me, or people like me.

In light of that, I may not 2 step, but I absolutely won’t take the time to mourn.

Aphrodite Brown