"When I was a prisoner ..." - how many more times will we hear this tired phrase from McCain?
That was a long time ago ... and who knows the real story.
After all these years, McCain no longer remembers in detail - just the shadows of memory, and sanitized. We all play with our memories; rearranging the details, like a child playing with blocks.
We omit and shade, adjust and delete - everyone "manufactures" the past to paint a better picture of the self, heal hard memories, and just make ourselves feel better.
If McCain's reliance on this "story" is tiring, what I find more difficult to imagine is how many folks latch on to the hero story.
Especially in a nation that cannot admit the truth about itself ... about anything ... so we tend to look for reasons to feel good about ourselves, because we have a crippling need to be good, to be innocent, to be right and righteous.
McCain is a tired, angry, old man living on the laurels of a story that has more luster than fact, the patina of age. I hope and pray that America will find something better on which to live.
