Projection
Joe Klein hits it out of the park today.
Anyone who talks about the “pro-American” parts of the country is making an anti-American statement.
Anyone who talks about the “real” parts of Virginia doesn’t understand that all of Virginia is real–just not the reality as fantasized by the sort of people who see some parts of the country as more “pro-American” than others.
Anyone who describes one part of the country as “most patriotic” has lost all sense of what patriotism means.
….
But, seriously, you have to wonder why John McCain has spent so much time questioning the patriotism of others, especially his opponent, in this campaign. Is it because he once signed a prison “confession” that he considered treasonous? If so, please know that we don’t blame you. You’re a patriot, Senator, and a hero…at least, you were until you started questioning the patriotism of others–by saying things like they’d rather win an election than a war, and by implying that they’re soft on terrorists. Then you became something else entirely. And it hasn’t worked very well, has it?
Yes, he went there. In a good “Have you no decency?” kind of way. He did not attack McCain for his actions while a prisoner of war, because who would? I would like to think that I can handle torture and that I would never give in to my enemy captors, but the reality is, I probably would, just to stop the pain, or to save another prisoner of war’s life. That is what John McCain did. They threatened him and tortured him, and said they would kill another if McCain did not sign the confession. He signed it. That is not treasonous at all. That is heroic. That is courageous. But maybe John McCain is not proud of what he did, and he is trying to project what he thinks is his failings onto others.
Delving deep into the psychology of John McCain, you have to realize that John McCain has never really been on any team except during his service in the Navy. In the Republican Party, he is geniunely reviled as a RINO or a liberal among the base. In Congress, a lot of his Republican colleagues consider him an asshole, and have nearly come to blows with him on several occassions. In Arizona, he is not well liked among the state Republican appartatus. Hence his mavericky reputation.
Indeed, McCain joked once that his base used to be the press corp. But it was not a joke, it was true. But now even that is gone. Many in the press are no longer tire swinging on his ranch, but are very critical of him. So besides his service in the Navy, John McCain is a loner. Not a part of any group. Thus his Naval career is very important to him, as it should be. But maybe John is ashamed of his actions during his captivity. He shouldn’t be, but let’s say he is. If he feels he is vulnerable to a charge of anti-Americanism, then the Rovian mindset requires that you attack your opponent on your weakness. Maybe John McCain thinks he is not a patriot, that he is not a real American, so that is why he must attack Obama’s patriotism.
The key to all of this psychoanalysis is the McCain campaign’s penchant for projection. They say Obama is running more negative ads, when the truth is they are. They say Obama has run the most negative campaign full of smears, when the truth is they have. So maybe they are saying that Obama and his supporters are not real Americans or pro-Americans because they have not been.
I really don’t care anymore. John McCain’s legacy will now be that of a dishonorable man who used lies and racist smears to try to win an election. He will be regarded as a small man in the history of this country. And that is a shame. Even if he lost this race, he could have preserved his honor and dignity. He chose not to.
Tags: 2008 Election, John McCain
Again, this Rolling Stone article is a must read:
…But the subsequent tale of McCain’s mistreatment — and the transformation it is alleged to have produced — are both deeply flawed. The Code of Conduct that governed POWs was incredibly rigid; few soldiers lived up to its dictate that they “give no information . . . which might be harmful to my comrades.” Under the code, POWs are bound to give only their name, rank, date of birth and service number — and to make no “statements disloyal to my country.”
Soon after McCain hit the ground in Hanoi, the code went out the window. “I’ll give you military information if you will take me to the hospital,” he later admitted pleading with his captors. McCain now insists the offer was a bluff, designed to fool the enemy into giving him medical treatment. In fact, his wounds were attended to only after the North Vietnamese discovered that his father was a Navy admiral. What has never been disclosed is the manner in which they found out: McCain told them. According to Dramesi, one of the few POWs who remained silent under years of torture, McCain tried to justify his behavior while they were still prisoners. “I had to tell them,” he insisted to Dramesi, “or I would have died in bed.”
Dramesi says he has no desire to dishonor McCain’s service, but he believes that celebrating the downed pilot’s behavior as heroic — “he wasn’t exceptional one way or the other” — has a corrosive effect on military discipline. “This business of my country before my life?” Dramesi says. “Well, he had that opportunity and failed miserably. If it really were country first, John McCain would probably be walking around without one or two arms or legs — or he’d be dead.”
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It’s all about him, not country or patriotism, but soley for personal glory.
Dd,
Maybe it is much simpler than that.
I still think that all McCain’s talk abotu the “real America” and patriotic parts of the country would have worked four years ago.
There was a bunch of phoney flag waving type patriotism back then and it just doesn’t play anymore.
There is a desire for substance and the more McCain demostrates his shallowness, the more it is his only choice.
To bring it home, the DEGOP has absolutly nothing to run on now that they can’t wrap themselves in George Bush’s “mission accomplished” brand of cornpone patriotism and bitterness. That’s why O’Donnell sounds like such an out of touch freak whenever she opens her mouth.
Wayne Smith, O’Donnell, McCain and are relics of a bygone age. Smith had the grace (or smarts) to retire.
I’m with Jason on this one. The playbook McCain, and other Republicans, is using is out of date. Which might explain the chaos the Republican Party is in. They keep trying another chapter when they need to toss the entire book.
What’s interesting is that I was thinking about McCain’s failure under torture this AM. I heard a complete lunatic call in to Al’s show and claim that Obama could be a real Manchurian Candidate.
Of course, Obama was never subjected to torture and psychological abuse in a foreign country, isolated from the rest of the world. Not to mention that he wasn’t even born in the United States.
Luckily, that line of attack will only come from complete morons on the right, so I won’t have to open a can of whoop-ass on them.
Next they’ll say he was dropped off by aliens.
Are you sure he wasn’t? He’s awfully skinny, isn’t he? And what better way to disguise that pale alien skin than by pretending he’s black?
If his Air Force One is saucer-shaped, that should clinch it.
Heh –
Kodos & Kang for Obama.
Al Qaeda & Taliban for McCain
Folks generally think of the failure in Iraq as a failure to keep the peace right after Saddam was tossed, and McCain’s failure is toss the typical GOP playbook in a craven play to win the Presidency. Not jettioning the playbook (and BushCo) betrayed all of the so-called maverick cred he had and kept him too tied to the BushCo failure. And every step he has taken to embrace the Karl Rove tactics has damaged any honor he ever had. And that honor he’ll never get back.
I’m with Jason and pandora. Republicans, and McCain in particular, still think Karl Rove is a genius so they’re following his playbook. The electorate has changed – there’s a lot more news sources, so we don’t have to follow the scandal of the day to determine policies and we can look up each candidates’ platform online easily. You can tell they are using the old playbook – politicians used to be able to say something inflammatory then deny it and rely on the TradMed to go “he said, she said.” Now it’s all captured on YouTube. Just like Democrats are much more sophisticated in the blogosphere, we’re also embracing the new technology sooner. I wonder why – I think it’s because we were used to losing so changing tactics was a good thing. Republicans were used to winning, so they kept using the tactics that worked for them.
I have a hard time reading anything with Joe Klein’s name attached to it.
Yeah, but Joe Klein has had a “Come to Jesus” moment, and he is trying to redeem himself so he can get into heaven.
Not defending McCain, but the “real” Virginia thing is something from Virginia itself (I grew up there; my family still lives there).
For years the people who see Virginia as an old-South conservative state have argued that the encroaching demographic invasion of northern VA (akin to the retirees moving to FL) was a form of carpet-bagging. When I was growing up the “real” northern border of Virginia was said to have become the Rappahannock instead of the Potomac River, because everything north of Fredericksburg and east of Leesburg had “gone Yankee.”
Point being: mindless as it may have been, it’s an internal state reference (in a way akin to “Slower lower Delaware”) whose local application has been mostly missed by the MSM.
That doesn’t make it any smarter to use it, especially now that Northern Virginia plus Richmond plus the remaining liberal vote throughout the state now constitutes a thin voting majority in the Old Dominion. That “real” Virginia has actually disappeared, except in the minds of the old FFV [First Families of Virginia].
Ok, that excuse covers the Real Virginia part. What about the “pro-America” comments?
dd
not excusing–explaining context; there’s a difference….
I think I was trying to say that the McCain campaign was pandering without the grace to admit they hadn’t made up the reference
Personally I feel the McCain camp knew nothing of the context you just provided, and were in fact referring to Republican strongholds in Virginia as Real Virginia, for they truly feel that only Republicans are Americans. It explains their “Pro-America” bullshit that Palin spewed in North Carolina and McCain used in PA.
No, the GOPers in VA have been using that “real” Virginia paradigm for years; I can’t imagine them NOT telling the McCain campaign to do it
I think they just fit it in to the pro-America crap