“Man once surrendering his reason, has no remaining guard against absurdities the most monstrous, and like a ship without rudder, is the sport of every wind.”
— Thomas Jefferson to James Smith, 1822.

“Across this country this is the agenda I have set before my fellow prisoners…”
— John McCain, at a campaign rally on Oct. 8, 2008 in Bethlehem, PA.

McCain’s Freudian slip was not only a nod to those who still support him – frightened hoodwinked hostages of vacuous Republican fanfare, convenient for-profit warmongering, and obdurate personal delusion, traveling on the GOP Bridge to Nowhere in faith it’s still the Yellow Brick Road – but to his own status as the decrepit and pathetic protagonist of a Russian novel, a man who has abandoned every conservative principle he previously claimed to hold dear, and scrapped every ounce of honor or dignity he may have once had to embrace his former abusers and speak drivel he knows to be false; a prisoner of his burning ambition to be president that has become an ugly and embarrassing obsession.

It’s said McCain loves to shoot craps; unspoken is that he often loses. In August, his dwindling audiences yawning and his poll numbers shrinking, he gambled his campaign on an inexperienced first-time governor with a lean resume from a state with three electoral votes, hoping that one throw of the dice would put him in the lead. While it temporarily gave him a boost, his numbers had started sinking, contrary to the Pundits spin, even before the depth of the economic crisis became the Big Media daily news lead. Now Palin has passed the barrier into public punch line while McCain himself attracted snickering at his last debate performance from not only Democratic and independent voters, but even Republicans.

McCain, at the head of one of the most deceitful and detestable campaigns in living memory, has abased his honor and integrity to the point of promoting palpable falsehoods, from the pitiful Joe the Plumber fiction and the ACORN ‘vote fraud’ distraction, to peevishly ridiculing his opponent’s popularity, all the while defending his beauty pageant running mate’s lightweight experience and outright lies connecting his opponent to domestic terrorists, and bizarrely grinning at his effort. McPalin are not just an insult to what’s left of the nation’s intelligence, they are an insult to the history of civilization as well.

So dismal, debauched and hideous is the McCain-Palin monstrosity that even formerly staunch conservative outlets such as the Chicago Tribune, a Republican newspaper that has never supported a Democrat in its 161-year history, just endorsed Obama, along with conservative-icon William F. Buckley’s kid Christopher, and none other than Reagan debate coach George F. Will.

Yes, McCain is a prisoner of his own making, trapped in a negative campaign of deception and bile that he apparently thinks is his only chance to win; trading off his integrity for an office that becomes more remote as the days until the election diminish, ironically offending those who supported him in 2000 to cater to packs of frenzied religious nuts, closet racists and fringe extremists, most of whom only show up to see Sarah Palin.

Now, with talk of an Obama landslide permeating even the Corporate Media broadcasts, McCain is a ditch digger who has brought a shovel to his own burial; a rudderless ship who has surrendered his reason to absurdities, his decency to expedience, his honesty to vanity, and his courage to scoundrels who once tried to ruin him.

After losing the war, where does an old fool so hollow go for absolution?