Deluded and Desperate

It’s sad–really sad. Looking at John McCain and what he has become makes me feel the same kind of sadness that I feel when seeing my mother in the nursing home where she–or her physical self–now resides. All that she had been is lost; all that is left is the body that contained her former self. Sadly, again, that seems also to be true for John McCain.

Not that I ever felt love or affection for John McCain, but I did respect him for a man who had survived five horrific years in unimaginably awful circumstances as a POW–and then lived to not only tell about it, but to go on and make something of the rest of his life–even though I rarely, if ever, have agreed with his political views.

What is left now of the man who once was John McCain, POW survivor and US senator? All I see is delusion and desperation–and it only gets worse with each of his last speeches as a US presidential candidate.

Sarah Palin, certainly the worst political choice of all time, winks. A lot. John blinks. A lot. Have you noticed? I know you’ve seen Sara’s winks, but equally, or perhaps even more disturbing, are John’s blinks. He blinks non-stop during debates and interviews–indicating his huge discomfort with what he is saying, and/or that intense underlying seething anger that he is desperately trying to keep under wraps–never too successfully. And that anger is scary–very scary. His tendency to impetuous decision is one thing when it results in a bad choice of a running mate, but applied to a decision about dropping The Bomb could easily be what would end us all.

It is hard to imagine that McCain can even believe himself–like when he blames Obama for waging a negative campaign against him. What? Here’s where the delusion shows up in grand form…and maybe this explains also the blinking.

McCain is the man who has sponsored more negative and hate ads than can be counted, pointed directly at his opponent, whom he has accused of palling around with terrorists, implied (in print ads) that he (Obama) is a terrorist and/or a Muslim, verbally implied that he is a socialist, and even un-American. What has Obama accused McCain of? Nothing. Notice the difference: Obama has leveled no personal attacks, nor any attacks on McCain’s character–only on his policies and lacks (as in his lack of knowledge of the economic issues, his wanting to cut Medicare, and his smear campaign tactics). And McCain calls Obama on running a “negative campaign?” Delusion reigns in the McCain brain. A cardinal sign of a desperate man.

Even though there have been the occasional signs of the re-emerging of McCain’s sanity amidst all of the desperation and delusion (this also happens on occasion with the case of my mother and her dementia), these moments are, unfortunately, very fleeting and short-lived. There was the campaign rally where an older woman (judging from her gray hair and body posture-we never saw her face) stood up in the crowd and expressed her distrust of Obama, saying that “He…he…is…an…an…Arab.” To which McCain, to his credit, immediately responded, “No, no ma’am you’re wrong–he’s not an Arab. He’s a decent family man….” Yay John!!! I wrote him a letter commending him for this–this is the high road we hoped you’d have been on all along. Even if he ever reads such letters, which I’m quite sure he doesn’t, it didn’t have the desired effect, as just a few short days later McCain was back at it–mud-slinging the personal attacks and accusations at Obama the man–not the issues, the man. Delusion returns.

And then, just last night (10/29/08) McCain came to again–happily, it occurred on Larry King for all the world to see and hear. He finally admitted that he doesn’t really think Obama is a socialist after all of his and his campaign’s rhetoric to the contrary. It made me think again that there is still hope for the man, that finally he is coming to his senses. Sometimes I think that about my mother and her dementia too–but of course any moments of lucidity quickly vanish with her, and so it also seems to be with McCain.

Deluded and desperate. Not pretty, and very, very sad.