
Of Course Combative John McCain Loved His Hummingbirds!
Joe Lieberman told us, “Most people would be surprised by how much pleasure this combative senator got from watching the hummingbirds at the McCain home outside Sedona, Arizona.”
Surprised, that is, if you’ve never watched humming birds have at it around a hummingbird feeder. Because they are fierce combatants, fending off rival hummingbirds with aerial antics that would have delighted any naval combat aviator. Stop mid-flight, hover, tail-feather flare — attack! Chase! Poke! Repeat! And occasionally steal a quick refueling sip of sugar water to fight another day.
Some species, like ants, are hyper-social — the successful transmission of genetic material depends on doing their part in a delicate dance of intra-species cooperation. Hummingbirds, not so much. Rivalry seems to be their game.
As it seems, increasingly, to be our ours. The world is a suspended container of sugar water with only so many openings and too many hungry mouths to feed. Or so we often behave. Or so we are led to believe, by a President who spent the Memorial Service for John McCain golfing at his private club, and tweeting.
Public figures are inevitably drawn into fierce rhetorical combat with their fellow public figures — a combat analogous to the hummingbird aerial-variety. Jesus, Gloria Steinem, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Mother Therese being no exceptions. Nor John McCain of blessed memory.
But these public figures had a code of honor in their combat. Pick on someone your own size or bigger. Go ahead and cherry pick some facts to buttress your case, but don’t just go making them up, like you’re some reality generating machine. Be proportional in your combativeness: Don’t throw the f-bomb with kids around, just to prove you’ve outgrown your own strict religious upbringing. Learn to back off and let the other person speak now and again. Assume that in the heat of the moment you might say something that crosses a line. Know there is a line. Remember, the ends do not justify the means. Say you’re sorry sometimes (and try to mean it.) Use humor. Laugh at yourself as much as at your opponent. Don’t regard them as enemies unless there is no other option.
Watching the hummingbirds at work or play or aerial warfare — it’s hard to know what it is to them — they have a code of honor too. They’re more into the flaring display, the visual warning, than they are out for hummingbird blood. When pressed, and the flaring display doesn’t do the trick, they seek altitude over their rival and dive. But never have I seen one hummingbird run another through with its beak and throw the vanquished corpse to the ground in triumph. Their rivalry is more World Wrestling Association than Mortal Kombat.
We had better start paying attention to the hummingbirds and the legacy of their combative admirer, John McCain. And not follow the lead of one who thinks the bully pulpit is meant to be filled with a bully.

