Weekly Mind Dump: Ruminations on the Dead, Undead & Soon to Die

For amoral opportunists like Lindsey Graham and Mitch McConnell, their legacy will hang loose about each of them, like a giant’s robe upon a dwarfish thief.

The Undead and Unwell

Week of 6/5-6/11, 2026:

Senator Lindsey Graham’s sudden passing at 71 reminds us all that we are on this earth for a short period of time no matter how long we live, and how people will remember us depends on how we lived our lives. Late senators J. William Fulbright, Everett Dirksen, Charles Sumner, Arthur H. Vandenberg and Henry Clay are considered by historians to have been among the greatest U.S. senators. Lindsey Graham will not be. Nor Mitch McConnell, the subject lately of speculation as to whether he’s even alive.

Graham falls into the category of honorable public servant/citizen-turned-amoral-sell-out, a topic of many of my essays over the years. A question that has always fascinated me is how individuals who stem largely from good families, are well educated and have pursued solid careers and respectable lives suddenly decide to make a Faustian pact with evil for riches and fame, but mostly for power. In modern times, think Albert Speer, Alexey Vyshinsky, Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. Today, in the Trump Era, there are almost too many such opportunists to name. But recently we have J.D. Vance, Todd Blanche, Marco Rubio, Scott Bessent, Elise Stefanik, Megyn Kelly and Lindsey Graham, to name a few. These are amoral people who would, with relish and gusto, publicly eviscerate their grandmother to get more media attention and boost their numbers.

Graham is the guy who, faster than you can say “relevant,” went from calling Trump a “race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot” and “jackass” to “Mr. President, you’re not far behind God” and “we can’t grow without him.” Graham made multiple phone calls to Georgia’s secretary of state to try to get him to throw out all absentee ballots from certain counties in order to swing the 2020 election in Trump’s favor.

And, of course, Vance once called Trump “America’s Hitler” and “cultural heroin.” The hypocrisy of these fools and fellow sell-outs is nothing short of shameless and jaw-dropping.

Mitch McConnell went from excoriating Trump for being “practically and morally responsible” for the January 6, 2021 mob assault on the Capitol to voting to acquit him in the follow-on impeachment. He’s the true patriot who said his central purpose as Senate leader was to deny Barack Obama a second term, and unconstitutionally blocked Obama from having a Senate confirmation hearing for his Supreme Court nominee, yet rammed through a conservative appointment to the court lickety-split under Trump. Moscow Mitch engaged in cynical and corrupt maneuvering to attract Russian investment in an aluminum plant in his home state of Kentucky, a deal that ultimately fell through.

So, here we are with Lindsey Graham being most definitely dead. The jury is still out on 84-year old McConnell, who has been hospitalized now for a month with his office divulging little about his condition. Skeptics speculate that Republicans want to pretend he’s alive until the deadline for filing senate candidacy passes to prevent GOP gadfly Tom Massie from running. A recent photo of McConnell with his wife in the hospital is speculated by some to have been AI-generated. Alive? Not alive? We might as well categorize Senator McConnell as Undead until proven otherwise. Unless there’s a Second Coming of Jesus, don’t count on him ever returning to work. As for his legacy— whether he’s alive, dead or undead — for McConnell party always prevailed over country.

Which gets us to Donald Trump. He just went through yet another physical — two months after his last — including yet another cognitive test (you know — “Person. Woman. Man. Camera. TV”). His previous physical exam required 22 specialists. Why? Trump these days looks like eight miles of bad road during a shit storm on Halloween, bless his heart! It comes from a life of no exercise, consuming burgers and fries choked down with Diet Coke, and, oh yes! — galloping dementia, which runs in his felonious family all the way back to Kallstadt. Did I neglect to point out that he just turned 80? Here’s another interesting factoid: the average lifespan of a White male in America today is 73.7 years — unless you have an army of the best doctors keeping you going daily with extraordinary elixirs and the wonders of modern alchemy shot through your forehands, neck and extra-large diaper.

We are increasingly governed by geezers. With a median member age of 64 years old in the Senate and 58 in the House, the 119th Congress is the third oldest since 1789, according to an NBC News analysis.

To this writer, old age and ambition seem incongruous, even sinful, like s’mores prepared by a Michelin chef. What’s the point? What I don’t get is what drives a man in his ninth decade of life, whose only turn at public office was a failed and chaotic single term as president, one that saddled him with two impeachments, 91 felony counts, 34 felony convictions and potentially jail time — not to mention a legacy of treason. To escape legal punishment, for sure. But I believe it is more than that.

As we age, the youthful drive to succeed and achieve gives way to resting on one’s laurels, enjoying the fruits of one’s life and family. There is a point in the aging process when reflection begins to eclipse ego.

Sure, there are plenty of people who retain ambition into old age, though seldom does it take the form of raging megalomania and overreach much less uncontrolled avarice and ardently seeking vengeance and retribution on one’s enemies. Such people invariably possess disordered personalities. Donald Trump is a prime example. Shakespeare’s Macbeth dramatizes the damaging physical and psychological costs of political ambition on those who crave power, especially in old men. Trump can be seen as a latter-day Macbeth, just as self-destructive, but dumber.

Trump, hobbled by bottomless stupidity, lack of conscience and inherited evil, can almost be forgiven for not caring about being remembered negatively by future generations. He can’t help it. His delusional mind believes that slapping his image and name on everything will lend him immortality. Oblivious of history due to his semi-literateness, the reputational fates of Hitler, Stalin, Mobutu and other egomaniacal historic failures as leaders don’t enter his mind. As with them, his name and scowling image will be assiduously erased by the American people and the very mention of his name will eclipse the infamy of Benedict Arnold.

As for Lindsey Graham, Mitch McConnell and their ilk, they will go down in history as asterisks pointing out their hypocrisy and amorality during the second Gilded Age. Returning to Shakespeare, their legacy will hang loose about each of them, like a giant’s robe upon a dwarfish thief.