BY MIKE MAGEE
Senator Lindsey Graham (R.,S.C.) is on summer season recess. A consummate skilled politician, and conflict hardened lawyer, Sen. Graham has made a profession out of flipping on a dime. His ethical calculus has been versatile sufficient to wiggle and weave, and change sides if cornered.
In a dream, I caught a glimpse of him studying on considered one of his state’s lovely seashores. He was juggling a weighty 1215 web page basic – Leo Tolstoy’s “Warfare & Peace” in a single hand, and a yellow spotlight marker within the different.
He seemed a bit on edge, perhaps as a result of this week a federal choose refused to dam a subpoena searching for his testimony for a Fulton County, Georgia, Grand Jury probe into efforts by then-President Donald Trump and his potential state Republican “alternate electors” to overturn Georgia’s Biden victory within the 2020 election.
When he hit the water to chill off, his e-book was simply sitting there on a Polo seashore blanket. I couldn’t assist however discover the MAGA bookmark – it’s was on web page 1133 with these phrases highlighted:
“Probability made the scenario; genius profited from it”, and a Lindsey’s scribbled notation “IMPORTANT.”
Judging from the heavy highlighting, it appears Lindsey had been fastidiously rereading a tattered private copy, and OCD’s on Tolstoy’s Epilogue, pages 1131 to 1136. They’re yellow marker heaven.
Lindsey is clearly on the lookout for some perception easy methods to handle his present predicament in Tolstoy’s literary undressing of Napoleon.
Proper there on web page 1133, he’s scrawled throughout the highest – “WOW.”
The second and third paragraph appear to have resonated as a result of there’s a yellow line alongside the left margin:
“…the previous insufficiently massive group is destroyed; previous customs and traditions are obliterated; step-by-step a gaggle of a brand new measurement is produced, together with new customs and traditions, and that man is ready who’s to face on the head of the longer term motion and bear upon himself all of the accountability for what’s to be carried out…A person with out conviction, with out customs, with out traditions, with no identify, not even a (army man or politician), seemingly by the strangest possibilities, strikes amongst all of the events stirring up (hatreds), and, with out attaching himself to any of them, is borne as much as a conspicuous place.”
The fourth paragraph is floating in a yellow bathtub, and within the margin a textual content field with arrow reads, “This hurts!”
“The ignorance of his associates, the weak point and insignificance of his opponents, the sincerity of his lies, and the good and self-confident limitedness of this man moved him to the pinnacle…the reluctance of his adversaries to combat his infantile boldness and self-confidence win him…glory…The shame he falls into…turns to his benefit. His makes an attempt to vary the trail he’s destined for fail…A number of occasions he’s getting ready to destruction and is saved every time in an sudden approach…the very ones who can destroy his glory, don’t, for varied diplomatic concerns…”
Turning the web page, there’s a scribble on web page 1134 subsequent to the first new paragraph, “TS/SCI/ Mar-a-Lago.” And on the opposite margin,“Soooo True!”:
“The best of glory and greatness which consists not solely in contemplating that nothing that one does is dangerous, however in being pleased with one’s each crime, ascribing some incomprehensible supernatural that means to it – that excellent which is to information this man and the individuals linked with him, is freely developed…His childishly imprudent, groundless and ignoble (actions)…go away his comrades in bother…”
In the midst of the identical web page, once more in Lindsey’s hand, “NO PLAN”:
“He has no plan in any respect; he’s afraid of all the pieces…He alone, along with his excellent of glory and greatness…along with his insane self-adoration, along with his boldness in crime, along with his sincerity in mendacity – he alone can justify what’s to be carried out…”
And on adjoining web page 1135, throughout the highest, “HE’S GOING DOWN.”
with a highlighted final paragraph that reads:
“However immediately, as a substitute of the possibilities and genius that thus far have led him so persistently by means of an unbroken sequence of successes to the appointed function, there seem a numerous variety of reverse possibilities….and as a substitute of genius there seems an unexampled stupidity and baseness…”
Lindsey is heading this fashion. Simply time for yet another web page flip. Web page 1136 and 1137.
“…all of his actions are clearly pathetic and vile…disadvantaged of energy and energy, uncovered in his villainies and perfidies…not solely does nobody arrest humbug everybody greets with rapture the person they cursed the day earlier than and can curse a month later. The person is required to justify the final joint act. The act is carried out. The final function has been performed. The actor is informed to undress and wash off his greasepaint and rouge; there isn’t a extra want for him…The stage supervisor, having completed the drama and undressed the actor exhibits him to us. ‘Look athwart you believed in! Right here he’s! Do you see now that it was not he however I who Moved you?’”
Lindsey’s smeared notation in everlasting black marker,
“MY NEXT MOVE.”
Mike Magee MD is a Medical Historian and writer of CODE BLUE: Contained in the Medical Industrial Complicated.
