Lindsey's war games
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News broke over the weekend that Alex Holder, a documentary filmmaker, had been making a film about Lindsey Graham called “Lindsey’s Game.” Holder had been afforded extraordinary access to the dead senator, an attention whore who spent his days vandalizing the world.
The film will no doubt spotlight Graham’s ceaseless freneticism and manic tail-chasing as he flits about the world like Flat Stanley, a two-dimensional man who lacks the depth to see complexity, culture and history.
‘Flat Lindsey,’ a peripatetic traveller with a title, an iPhone and a suitcase full of vanities, insecurities and secrets, thought he was a statesman. He was really a clown playing a deadly game. The whole world is about to see how sick that game is.
I have no doubt whatsoever this forthcoming documentary about Lindsey Graham will be as disturbing a horror film that has ever been made.
I also have no doubt about the reaction to what’s coming.
People will be genuinely horrified by the carelessness, flippancy, and arrogance with which America’s rotten political leaders send America’s young men and women into harm’s way. In an era during which nothing shocks this will shock the conscience of the nation.
The scenes captured between Lindsey Graham and foreign leaders will be bone-chilling. It will send George Washington, who warned of foreign entanglements in the same speech he warned about the dangers of political parties, spinning in his crypt like an Iranian centrifuge.
The descriptions of Lindsey Graham’s work and his physical and intellectual slovenliness weren’t the least bit surprising to me because I spent much time with the doughy court jester and sidekick from the cradle of American secession and racial animus, but you deserve a taste of MAGA gluten for your breakfast this morning.
According to The Wall Street Journal story, Graham tells the film crew after the US began strikes on Iran in February:
Look what we’ve done here. I almost cried. How long have we been pushing this? I talked to Trump this morning, he’s jacked. [Trump then said] ‘Best thing I have ever done.’ He loves blowing stuff up.
He told Holder that “this was a game,” and that he thought it was so bizarre that a senator from South Carolina had a closer relationship with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman than anyone in a Democratic or Republic administration.
Graham also told Holder that if his movie was a success, he could take credit for it. If it turned out bad, Graham told him:
I’ll just call you a bunch of Communists and raise lots of money.
This is going to be a loon-behind-the-curtain film that’s going to do for MAGA and the Republican Party what Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle” did for the meat-packing industry. It will expose the rot, corruption and derelictions completely.
What the world will see is a vapid and lonely man playing with a Lego set — except it isn’t. In this movie, the world burns for real.
Lindsey Graham was the smallest of men.
Thankfully, there was a microscope around to record the insanity that will soon leave the American people slack-jawed.
I promise.
When this come out it will create a national ‘holy shit’ moment that registers in ways that people won’t see coming.
At some level, it’s a real-life version of Spielberg’s “Disclosure Day.”
You’re about to find out the truth about how America goes to war. It’s so much more appalling and stupid than you can possibly comprehend.
Wars enrich the richest and as the rich become obscenely wealthy they see themselves as demigods with no limits on fulfilling their desires. People become commodities and concern for them vanishes in the heady air of profits beyond imagination. All of these horrible developments create a nightmare scenario. I submitted the following to my local paper as a "guest essay."
Nothing is more illustrative of the terrible consequences of the growing wealth gap in our country than the deteriorating and unsafe housing so many Americans are forced to suffer in.
The following quotes are from a column, “The housing crisis you’re not hearing about - quality,” by Todd Swanstrom:
“Most lower-income families…rent or buy homes that are so deteriorated…that they have become affordable.”
“They live in homes with unsafe wiring, damaged roofs, leaky plumbing, dangerous mold and uncomfortable temperatures that threaten their health and safety.”
“A report by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia pegged the total cost of needed repairs for all occupied housing units in the United States at $198.4 billion in 2024; $4.6 billion of this total would be needed to address the needs of lower income households lacking the resources to fund their own repairs.”
The current net wealth (I refuse to call it worth, these men are worth nothing in the true sense of the word) of Elon Musk (Tesla, SpaceX) is $725.1 billion, Larry Page (Google) $263.2 billion, Jeff Bezos (Amazon) $243.2 billion. https://www.forbes.com/real-time-billionaires/
This means anyone of these men could afford to repair all of these homes, greatly improving the lives of millions and still have a net worth in the billions of dollars.
Democratic Socialists are not trying to destroy the incentives of the capitalist system, but they do want government tax policies that would require the ultra wealthy to pay their fair share. That fair share could be used as interest free loans or flat-out grants to help needy Americans live in safe and comfortable homes, access health care, and educate and properly clothe and feed their children, at the same time, growing the economy and creating meaningful jobs. In the long-run taxes could be lowered as an educated and healthy population will not have to rely on government programs to survive. It could be used to re-fund USAID and help sick and starving men, women, and children around the world.
In the end, the rich would also benefit as our country and others would be stable and war far less likely. But then, so many billionaires make their money through government spending on the military. The military-industrial complex that President Eisenhower warned would take money from spending for the public good, diverting it to the military, is alive and well and destroying our nation and world. Too many billionaires are willing to risk living in an unstable and violent world for the privilege of having more than they could ever spend. They are willing to support a wannabe dictator, a man who promised peace and delivered a catastrophic war of choice in the Middle East, a man who assembled the most corrupt and incompetent cabinet in our history, to keep the current economy working in their favor.
“We the people” in America will have the chance to begin to right the terrible consequences of the national and global wealth gap this November 3. Let’s do it.
Ready for more. I know Lindsey was a war hawk. He never saw me a war he couldn't immediately start over some false pretense.