Remember the Real Graham: Evil's Shape-Shifting Enabler
Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, a bona fide monster, hailed Senator Lindsey Graham as a beacon of “moral clarity.” Donald Trump, a man whose name is now synonymous with corruption and hatred, called Graham “a true American patriot.”
Meanwhile Democrats in Washington, praised his warmth or recounted aspects of their friendship with him, calling him a “good man.”
The disconnect reveals more about what is wrong with Washington, D.C., than it does about Graham.
The acceptance of those in the D.C. club of evil, because its proponents were pleasant to them at cocktail parties, is one of the greatest problems America faces. Morality, contrary to the assertion of Ben-Gvir, as profoundly immoral a man as any who currently walks the planet, takes a back seat in the Senate cloakroom, and at Georgetown cocktail parties, to the conviviality of the pampered lives in a bubble of D.C. insiders.
They have lost sight of the fact that an evil man who would laugh at their jokes or send them a note on the occasion of a child’s wedding or graduation is still evil.
Graham was a man who understood this and thrived in that environment. Few prominent figures in Washington have managed to be so public and yet such masters of personal opacity. He hid what he really felt or who he really was behind a career of offering strong but often........
