OPINION:
Sen. John McCain took to national television for round 50 or so of what’s become his favorite game of late: Bashing President Donald Trump, this time, over transgenders in the military. Oh, and Dreamers, too.
Don’t forget the Dreamers.
The conversation on “Face the Nation” on CBS went this way: John, tell us about the bill you just backed that bans Trump from banning transgenders from the military.
McCain, courtesy of Breitbart: “Well, first of all, I think that transgender people are in the military. And to somehow tell them, along with the Dreamers, that they have to leave the military, which is short of qualified personnel, I believe that a study — I know that a study is going on right now conducted by General Mattis as to the whole issue. One, we wait until that is completed.”
OK — but why conflate transgenders in the military with illegal immigrants? Banning one is not tantamount to banning another.
McCain went on: “And finally, what do we tell those young men and women who are transgender that are serving? That — that they’re out? Same thing with the Dreamers. There’s 900 Dreamers in Iraq and Afghanistan right now. What if we tell them — what are we going to do? Go to them and say, ’Hey, pack up, you have to go back to El Salvador?’ That’s just not fair.”
Somebody please tell McCain that life’s not fair. Because for a lot of American citizens — that’s Citizens with a capital “C,” not with an “I,” for Illegal — the view from the legal world is that while life ain’t fair, the government’s role should be to at least try and be fair to citizens first, illegals maybe second, or even third.
But here’s the real issue with McCain’s complaints: Nobody really cares about transgenders in the military — except when taxpayers are asked to pay for hormone treatments, or sex-reassignment surgery, or to stomach as normal the idea of men dressed as women showering with real women for the sake of some politically correct ideal.
In other words: Transgenders — serve away. Just don’t make your transgender disorder into a military social justice experiment.
But McCain fails to note the political hotbed that transgenderism in the military has become, chalking it all up to a “not fair” White House ban — and then he takes the so-called Dreamers controversy and tries to lump it as part and parcel of the same fight for equality. They’re not the same at all.
Dreamers are illegals — calling them by another name is simply a sly means of pushing amnesty. Either way, they have no legal right to be in this country, whether they’re serving in the military or not.
Transgenderism and illegal immigration are not the same fights for rights and equality and justice and so forth. McCain should know better — and honestly, he probably does. It’s just his politically expedient way of dinging Donald Trump, yet again.
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