Establishment Democrats remind me of infants before they’ve hit the object permanence stage of development. Whatever their story has been for the last few months is what’s been happening forever — George W Bush is a great guy, Russia has always been America’s number one enemy, and John McCain is a caring, compassionate ally who is always looking out for the little guy.

McCain, who during his 2008 presidential campaign was asked how many houses he owned and wasn’t sure of the answer (it was eight), has announced that after careful consideration he has decided to back the Trump administration’s tax cuts, which overwhelmingly benefit the very rich at the expense of everyone else. This same plan which phases out taxes on the inheritance of the very wealthiest Americans’ estates would be very profitable for the heirs of the Arizona senator, who happens to be dying of brain cancer.

If you want a quick laugh at someone else’s expense (and who doesn’t?), scroll through the comments on this McCain tweet and look at all the fanatical anti-Trumpists who are absolutely devastated that the warmongering psychopath they’ve come to adore is playing along with Trump’s wealth grab.

They just can’t believe it. They cannot believe that this demented neocon they fell in love with ten minutes ago is suddenly acting like the thing that he has always been. The fact that John McCain opposes Trump due to his insufficient hawkishness toward Russia and Syria has caused victims of Trump Derangement Syndrome to conclude that he must therefore be their friend, and must therefore have always been their friend.

The completely irrational sense of betrayal is crashing down as the man who has advocated and advanced every possible act of US military aggression at every opportunity throughout his entire career, who has spent his entire life bolstering the predatory neoliberal economy that is choking Americans to death, betrays all the trust they had stupidly placed in him.

This is the same John McCain who self-proclaimed “Resistance” leader Keith Olbermann recently said was his “favorite person in American politics in the 21st century”, and that he owed him an apology for having criticized him. These same McResistance corporate liberal cheerleaders have been making superstars out of vestigial warmongers from the Bush administration like McCain, Bill Kristol, Max Boot and David Frum all because they call themselves Republicans and happen to oppose Trump.

But these neocons don’t oppose Trump because he’s a depraved inhuman tyrant, they oppose him because he’s not depraved, inhuman and tyrannical enough. The fact that Trump is still putting some inertia on their cold war escalations with Russia and allowing Syria to rebuild itself is all it has taken for the Republican neocons to pivot to his Democratic opposition, where they have been enthusiastically embraced because getting a bunch of Democratic neocons and Republican neocons together still gets you the magical label of “bipartisan” in today’s political paradigm.

Bloodthirsty psychopaths like John McCain are not your friend, liberals. Pundits of the Democratic establishment have been selling you alliances with people like him because they don’t want you listening to progressives and leftists who actually promote the agendas you value and sincerely resist the problems you want resisted. Oligarchic sycophants will keep you celebrating neocons instead of moving to the left for as long as they possibly can, and as long as you keep listening to them it will probably work.

Here’s a clue: the ones who do everything they can to get bombs dropped on countries that have never done anything to you are not the good guys. The ones trying to escalate tensions between two nuclear superpowers are not the good guys. The millionaires who do everything they can to give their class an economic edge in a system where money equals political power are not the good guys.

John McCain has never been a good guy. I don’t care what happened to him in Vietnam or how his “bipartisan” schtick makes you feel like you’re grounded in ultimate truth: John McCain is a monster. He has helped facilitate the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of human beings throughout his far-too-long lifetime, and that same lack of morality will guide his policy decisions that affect you personally. He is a monster. Learn your lesson here and stop treating people like him him as your friends.

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