Do you have special heroes who help you decide what to do in your life or whatever? John McCain sure does! And they tend to be fictional characters from ridiculous juvenile books and movies, generally about how romantic it is to get shot down or blown up for some pointless bullshit cause that was always a losing proposition that wasn’t even wanted by the people it would ostensibly benefit.
But it's this brief summation that makes it art: "In other words, McCain is a 70-year-old man who still reads Hemingway books." That is such a brilliant encapsulation of the man that it seems pointless to add anything to it. But there is more to him than just that. One interesting thing to note about John McCain is that he's never held a job outside of the government for very long. Between his army service and his congressional service he's been drawing a government paycheck for ages. His father was a powerful Naval officer. The sad thing isn't that McCain reads Hemingway books, but that he has so little life experience outside of the cocoon of the very powerful that he actually thinks that life is like that. And why shouldn't he? After all, he's got nothing with which to compare it. The worries of average folks are things that are to be looked down upon with contempt. It's all about honor and glory, which evidently comes to mean that middle class people should shut up about their mortgages and stuff, and just let the government give more money back to rich people.
