(07-12-2026, 08:19 AM)robkelk Wrote: RIP Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC), after a sudden illness
Two main thoughts about this: First, long flights are not good for your body; seek medical attention if other people think you might be having a medical emergency.
The second is something a lot of ink has been spilled over (
for example, but it's basically that the end of his life represents the banality of evil. That a man who once appeared to have principles was willing to repeatedly compromise those principles to stay near to power, and to achieve some ends. He once supported immigration reform enough that other Republicans made fun of his calls for amnesty, and this year, he backed a president whose strategy is to kill a few legal immigrants to scare the rest off. All so he could have say in foreign policy, mainly to push against Iran and for Ukraine.
In Russia, Graham is a villain, in Kyiv, he's a fallen hero. But the truth is more complicated. He's a soul who died while he was still lost, even at the last minute insisting he couldn't die because he had too much to do. The corruption was long, and deep, and he probably didn't realize how corrupt he was.
![[Image: https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.ama...6x248.jpeg]](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/%24s_!PA_F!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F22c62ad9-dec3-485d-b3c9-f70f21c0292c_1176x248.jpeg)
Was the honor I once saw inherent and then lost, or only held under influence from his colleague, John McCain? McCain was a war hawk, but otherwise a paragon of honor. Graham once acted similarly, but after McCain died, he's clung to other, less palatable figures. He still achieved some good things. But at what cost? We're already in the millions of lives lost from USAID cuts alone, and the fraying of the fabric of the republic will cost many more lives before it's all done, at the end of the age.
So really, it wasn't the heart attack that got him, it was the pandemic that got him first. The pandemic of corruption in American culture, that twists our hearts against their own desires in pursuit of false promises. I pray Lindsay Graham meets John McCain once again, who can explain to him what went wrong. Otherwise, well, he'll have plenty of time to reflect on the wages of sin.
