ED CURTIN—The recent spectacle over John McCain’s death is a perfect example of myth creation. McCain is, however, a metaphor for the larger ongoing narrative that has been going on for centuries and seems to have no end. McCain’s apotheosis is a made for TV American hero movie, one that he first helped create and one that John Wayne would envy, as blatantly jingoistic and racist as Wayne was in “The Green Berets,” a movie released in 1968, the year after our hero McCain’s dubious involvement in the tragedy of the USS Forrestal aircraft carrier that killed 137 sailors, his being shot down while bombing North Viet Nam, and his subsequent years in captivity.