the lionization of mccain post-death reminds me a lot of how people treat the murderous Israeli apartheid state, where cowardice from global onlookers is so seductive and everyone's tempted to say "ohh well both sides i dont know..." because that's kind of an accepted wisdom that we can all come together and agree upon, look at me, I'm being neutral and fair and conveniently and completely by accident I'm not sticking my neck out for anyone and I'm upsetting no one. inconveniently the colonization of Palestine continues unabated but of course I want uh peace!
Likewise it's tempting to be like "oh I'm a liberal but that mccain, he was a war hero you know... an honorable man," just this sort of desire to please and be pleasant and to not make waves when on examination it's like look, this guy fought in an evil war, did evil things, came back and made it his life's mission to continue awful policies and wage new wars. If we can actually say that and fight the impulse to quibble over the definition of "war criminal" we're all better off.