McCain's Brain's Associations

McCain looks a little ashamed of himself at the moment.  Behind the canned smiles and the rhetoric, he knows what he’s doing.  He knows that he’s wiping his shoes on every principle he’s ever believed in or stood for with regard to how he always has said campaigns ought to be run.  Supporters and campaign alike, the desperation is almost tangible.  They’re wounded, frightened and still furious. 

Palin, it must be noted, does not look ashamed; she’s doing God’s work, no need for irksome morals.  Like Scarlet O’Hara, she’ll think about it tomorrow.

That the Bush administration has been a calamity approaching the biblical is by now clear to even the staunchest intelligent republican.  They’ve played into Al Qaeda’s hands by plunging our treasure and blood into the quicksand of Iraq.  9/11 wasn’t an attack on our freedom; it was an attack on our economy.  Al Qaeda: 1 / 401k: 0.  Privacy rights, citizen’s rights, human rights all trounced.  A major American city lost.   Justice obstructed.  Torture.  Lies, lies, and more lies, costing thousands of American lives.

Now that the Bush catastrophe has begun to cost people actual money, they’ve sat up and taken notice.   They seem to be abandoning McCain.  

So, what’s left?  With the prospect of actually losing, and the rational no longer working, the higher-layer functions of the campaign’s brain have maxed out and been peeled away and cast aside.  What’s left is the Crocodile o Best Beloved; ancient, thoughtless, reactionary, and capable of doing -- saying anything to survive. 

Witness the latest eruption of bile from the McCain/Palin ticket attempting to tie Obama to Bill Ayers actions during the Vietnam War, when incidentally Obama was around 8 years old.  McCain left the audience to cast the verdict itself, “Ayers was once a terrorist thus, Obama is a terrorist”.  The conspicuous logical fallacy notwithstanding, predictably the audience ate it up and asked for seconds, calling out “Terrorist!”, “Treason!” and most ominously “Kill him”.  Obama and Ayres both served on the board of an Anti-Poverty Philanthropic foundation.  Sentence: Death.

Similarly, Gov. Palin’s remarks blaming the “gotcha” media for her abysmal performance in softball interviews, which were in format more personality pieces, evidently drew the ire of her rally attendees.  Dana Milbank: “Palin supporters turned on reporters in the press area, waving thunder sticks and shouting abuse. Others hurled obscenities at a camera crew. One Palin supporter shouted a racial epithet at an African American sound man for a network and told him, ‘Sit down, boy.’”

At long last the campaign is rousing a bloodthirsty mob from the stinking bowels of the rankest swamp in this mostly great country to make their last desperate stand.  Though I really can’t conceive of how, if for anyone the choice has heretofore been unclear, I hope this racks it into tight focus.  And as long as we're making associations, the choice is not between which of the candidates you support, it is between which of the supporters you are going to be.