il miglior fabbro

The shorthand criticism of last week's beatification of John McCain was that it culminated with a Wellstone Funeral. It was certainly a partisan event, although not by party. Rather, it was an event in which our betters celebrated their superiority. Writing for the Asian Times, David "Spengler" Goldman gets to the marrow:

Senator John McCain’s funeral was the most ostentatious that Washington has accorded except for a president, and much grander than the 2006 funeral of Gerald Ford, for example. The American Establishment took the opportunity to mourn a world that it imagined but never inhabited.

The eulogies for the Arizona senator, to be sure, were a convenient occasion for the Establishment to show its dudgeon at “the pointedly un-invited President Trump,” as the New Yorker noted, calling the event “the biggest resistance meeting yet.”

McCain’s daughter Meghan contrasted what she called her father’s “real greatness” with the “cheap rhetoric from men who will never come near the sacrifice,” a reference to Trump. Politics, though, were less important than the American elite’s collective exercise in self-consolation after the catastrophic failure of its policies and its repudiation by the voters in the 2016 election.

Do you remember the week-long series of events upon the death of George McGovern, who fought with great distinction in WWII, became a senator, ran for president and lost, then continued on in the Senate for many years thereafter? McGovern died in 2012. You don't remember the show? Heck you may not have even heard he died. But as you suspected, this really wasn't about John McCain, either. Back to Goldman:

By civility and bipartisanship, the Establishment refers to the policy consensus that squandered America’s dominant position in the world after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1990. America had no military competitors of importance when George W. Bush took office in 2001, and an edge in high technology that made the American economy seem insuperable.  Since then:

• China has taken America’s place as the leading exporter of high-tech equipment;
• America faces credible military competition from China;
• Real median household income hasn’t grown since 2000;
• The civilian labor force participation rate has fallen from 67% in 2000 to 63% today;
• Productivity growth has languished at 1% a year since the global financial crisis;
• US federal debt has between 2000 and 2018 has doubled as a share of GDP;
• The American economy became “cartelized, corrupt and anti-competitive,” dominated by a handful of tech monopolies who combined to crush competition.
• Bush, supported by Senator McCain and the Republican mainstream, spent $5.6 trillion chasing the phantom of democracy in the Middle East, not to mention more than 6,700 American dead, more than 50,000 wounded and millions of lives disrupted.

That is why American voters elected Donald Trump in 2016. The bipartisan Establishment had circled the wagons to protect itself from accountability for its blunders. The same pool of public officials managed a failed foreign policy, and the same revolving door of bankers and regulators bailed out the banks.

The establishment intends to take it all back in November. And they want you to know it's going to happen. Get your mind right.

There's a whole lot more at the link, including a meditation on the straight line from Woodrow Wilson to George W. Bush. You should read it all.