This is not so say that John McCain is not delusional, but to some extent we all are. We see and hear things based on our life experiences. We would see water boarding in an entirely different light if we had spent 5 plus years in a North Vietnamese POW camp. The trick is for the rest of us to consider how someone’s life experiences are going to affect their view of life and be careful not to put someone in a position where a skewed view of some aspect of life can become federal law.
I can’t even begin to imagine the defense mechanisms John McCain had to develop to get by from day to day while he was a POW. And they would continue with him for the rest of his life, despite the fact that they no longer served a useful purpose.
We do the same things, although in a much smaller way. When we were kids we developed all sorts of defense mechanisms to deal with the day-to-day challenges of life. For some it was abusive parents, for others a bully in the rest room and for still others a very shy personality. We develop these little patterns to handle the problem, but when the problem is gone away we don’t always discard the mechanism. The things that let us handle a fifth-grade bully are of little use to us as an adult, but anytime we encounter behavior on someone’s part that reminds us of that bully years ago our response is to automatically turn to that old mechanism. It might have worked then, at least it was our way of handling it, but now that we are adults it is very much out of place and runs the risk of adding to the problem we are facing.
I don’t think there is any way in this world that John McCain could have returned to civilian life after his experiences without having all sorts of problems. His temper is probably just one manifestation of what he had to endure.