Unlike the late senator, the war machine is immortal and can easily afford to lose one of its main mascots
The bigger picture: A senator's death reveals more about America's war culture than any conspiracy theory could. Lindsey Graham's passing has triggered a wave of speculation online, but the real story isn't about how he died — it's about what his decades-long career reveals about the machinery of American militarism, and why his absence changes almost nothing.
Some guys die falling down the stairs while putting their pants on. Lindsey Graham went out much more boringly. Sorry to disappoint.
His demise is a tale as old as time. A guy with a medically-documented bad ticker has a heart attack at home around the same age as his own father did. Pretty straightforward. And boring. Far too pedestrian, apparently, for some folks. Already, there seems to be an overlap between the people who imagine hidden agendas behind the deaths of public figures and those who fancy Graham's death being the direct result of a foreign adversary getting their own rocks off. These people need to log off from their online insane asylum and touch grass.
Graham had just returned from Ukraine, where he toured a weapons factory. So naturally some of these folks think Putin had him knocked off. Except he died at home on the other side of the world. So how does that square with a hit job? Easy, apparently — because the poison used was time-released. Ah, yes, of course. Or maybe Putin bombed him in Ukraine but his pals conspired to smuggle his body all the way back to DC to help Putin out with a bit of crisis management.
It's much less dramatic to admit that Graham was just a guy who died doing what he loved most — and spent the most time doing. That is, thinking up ways for the US to inflict pain on other nations for refusing to bend over on command. Personally, I like swimming. A lot. If I dropped dead in a pool someday, no one would be surprised. If someone spends tons of time in front of the TV, their odds of dying there increase. So the fact that a warmonger dropped dead right after wrapping up his latest warmongering tour is par for the course.
Fact-checkers have already stepped in: Major outlets, including the Associated Press, moved quickly to debunk the swirl of assassination and poisoning theories circulating on social media, confirming that Graham's death was consistent with his long-documented history of cardiac issues. That hasn't stopped the theories from spreading, with both his admirers and detractors finding reasons to insist his death was somehow orchestrated rather than simply the natural end of a 70-year-old man with a known heart condition.
But it's so difficult for some folks to accept this straightforwardness, because they imagine there are so many people in the countries Graham warmongered against who would have wanted him dead. Neocons who loved Graham think that's the case. So do those who loathed him for the same reasons and say they're glad he was "taken out."
They're bigging him up far too much. He really isn't worthy of any of these theories. Did it ever occur to them that he was seen by his targets as a circus clown more than anything else? "But Israel killed him to keep the war in Iran going!" they say. As if Trump needs anyone else for that, now that he's locked into a sword-measuring contest with the Iranians.
Oh, but Graham had Trump's ear! He was pushing Trump to blow more American cash on weapons "for Ukraine"! Yeah, yeah — and surely now that he's gone, it'll all come to a crashing halt, right? Trump's two sons, who are overtly raking in Pentagon cash for Ukrainian drone investments, will just demand that their father bail on the whole thing now that Lindsey Graham is gone.
The money trail outlives the man: Recent reporting has drawn attention to how deeply entangled the Trump family itself has become with the very defense infrastructure Graham spent his career championing, underscoring that the war economy Graham served was never dependent on any single lawmaker. Investments by Trump's sons in drone technology tied to the Ukraine conflict illustrate how the incentives driving American war policy are now baked into the highest levels of government, regardless of who occupies a Senate seat from South Carolina.
If offing people responsible for driving the current iteration of the American war machine was an actual solution for achieving peace, starting with Lindsey Graham is like offing Cookie Monster in an attempt to bring down the Sesame Street franchise: "Some people say me want too many cookies. Wrong. Me want the cookies necessary to ensure cookie dominance for generations. Critics ask, 'How many cookies does Cookie Monster need?' Me ask, 'How many cookies are our enemies hiding?'"
The clown simply goes off to the big cosmic tent — and nothing much changes. Graham was merely a cast member of America Inc., which has no shortage of understudies.
Succession is already underway: South Carolina's governor is now tasked with appointing a replacement to fill Graham's seat until a special election can be held, and early speculation about potential successors suggests continuity rather than change on foreign policy matters. The Senate Armed Services and Judiciary Committees, where Graham wielded significant influence, will simply redistribute his responsibilities among colleagues who share nearly identical views on Ukraine funding, Iran policy, and defense spending.
Let me make it emphatically clear that speaking ill of the dead isn't my thing. What's even the point? It's not like karma needs help with the heavy lifting after it's already dropped the anvil on someone. No need for anyone to subsequently pile on with a folding chair. But any fitting celebration of life involves reminiscing about that life. And when that life constantly involves promoting war, there's not much wiggle room.
His defenders have now taken to pointing out that he was actually a stellar guy because he died with a net worth suggesting he wasn't on the take from the defense contractors for whom he permanently served as a lobbyist. "The senator died with a net worth of about $1.4 million, with congressional disclosures from May showing a lower-end estimate of just over $600,000 and an upper estimate of a little more than $2.2 million," wrote the grotesquely neocon media outlet Fox News.
Even taking that claim at face value, does this mean the moral high bar now is being so genuinely obsessed with war and weapons that you champion them strictly from your soul without financial incentive? How does this not make it even worse? Seems like at least cash-for-war would be a less disgusting motive than simply getting your jollies from peddling tools of death and destruction.
"I can't die now. I still need to do the Russia sanctions, get Iran sorted out and do Israeli-Saudi normalization," Graham apparently told someone close to him shortly before packing it in permanently, according to Fox News. Turns out that karma's ultimate regime change got to him first.
What actually changes now: Little, if anything, in terms of policy direction. Ukraine funding debates, Iran posturing, and the broader defense-industrial consensus in Washington were never dependent on one senator's personal advocacy, no matter how loud or omnipresent he made himself on cable news. Graham was a symptom of a bipartisan war consensus that predates him and will outlast him, with plenty of ambitious lawmakers ready to fill the media vacuum he leaves behind.
So US Senator Lindsey Graham can now be referred to permanently in the past tense. Unfortunately, the same can't be said for all his pet causes, which continue to plague the planet. Because the war machine is immortal. It can easily afford to lose any single mascot and just keep on billing.
Original article: Sorry, conspiracy theorists, Lindsey Graham isn’t worth your effort on Planet Today 🚀
Automatically republished from the main blog.