Crown Prince of Gonzo Journalism, Matt Taibbi, has published a piece in Rolling Stone that demands reading. It offers a ruthless, raw perspective on the kind of campaign McCain is running, and how it resonates with the tortures he - and America, collectively - endured in the Vietnam era.

Then as now, the crime of the Obama class in the eyes of a wronged veteran like McCain wasn’t that they caused these wartime sufferings; it was that they didn’t cheer them as righteous and necessary, and unhesitatingly support the sending of more soldiers to the same fate. In the present day, it is George Bush who got us into this new Vietnam-like mess and revived the specter of tortured prisoners, but McCain’s anger isn’t focused in that direction. He’s not mad that it’s happening again, not looking to blame the people who actually started the fire. Instead he seems re-energized by the fact that we are all back in that same hell, back to living the PTSD-inducing nightmare that McCain himself never got to leave — and if it takes dumbing down his act and playing to the Rush and Hannity crowd to give his story a happy ending this time around, he won’t hesitate. So if you thought Hillary was bad, buckle your seat belts: The really dumb stuff is just beginning.

It also presents the blood-chilling notion that the same demons of willful ignorance, vanity born of desperate fear, and anger born of spiteful pain have their chains around the necks of the American voter. If Matt Taibbi’s America - McCain’s America - is the America that will be pulling the poll levers this November, expect the worst.

Expect another victory for those too scared, too spiteful or too spineless to accept certain bitter truths about their country - chief among them being that it is time for change.