Progressives think the sudden death of Lindsey Graham is a big joke. Brought to you by the party that idolizes Luigi Mangione and decided abusing women was bad only when a Democrat got hurt, the latest internet craze is slinging insults and making vulgar wisecracks at the expense of the late South Carolina senator.
Leftist commentator Ana Kasparian said she was “elated” and “overjoyed” at the news of Graham’s death. One tweet with 129,000 likes exclaims, “Lindsey Graham AND Mitch McConnell in the same year?!” (Sorry to disappoint these brutes, but McConnell is, in fact, alive).
“Expecting Mitch McConnell but getting Lindsey Graham is like ordering a chocolate chip cookie but getting a snickerdoodle. I’m confused, but not upset,” said someone else. Other comments with tens of thousands of likes make crass sexual remarks that don’t deserve repeating.
Another person threw chum to the feeding frenzy: “Ever wake up and quickly realize the internet is going to be funny funny for the next 12 hours[?]”
You know it’s bad when Kamala Harris has one of the better things to say. “I am saddened to learn of the passing of my former colleague, Senator Lindsey Graham,” the former vice president tweeted on Sunday. “He was full of wit, energy, and charm, and he cared deeply about the Senate and the people of South Carolina.”
Unsurprisingly, however, Harris’s comments are full of leftists complaining that she was too nice. “Really bugs me when politicians give their evil colleagues eulogies like this,” one said. “He was a racist war monger who gave [sic] two sh*ts about Americans.”
Whether or not Harris means it, it’s the thought — that expressing sadness at the death of a political opponent is the right thing to do — that counts. Politics is nothing without phoniness, but this is the kind of performative well-wishing we should support. President Donald Trump rightly received bipartisan criticism for his tweet minimizing the gruesome death of anti-Trump director Rob Reiner. If you have ill-will toward the dead, you might consider keeping it to yourself.
But wishing violence upon people who hold what the wisher considers to be the “wrong” political leanings, usually conservative ones, is now so normal that we barely even register it. Leftists on X are constantly joking about “it” happening and wanting to be ready to enjoy it when “it happens.” What they mean is the death of President Trump, who has already survived six assassination attempts.
The good news is this way of thinking is still abhorrent to normal Americans. YouGov polling in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s fatal shooting found “Americans overall are far more likely to say it’s always or usually unacceptable to be happy about the death of a public figure they oppose, than they are to say this is acceptable (77% vs. 8%).” The group does note a disparity, that “liberal Americans are more likely than conservatives to defend feeling joy about the deaths of political opponents.”
That explains why cracking jokes about Charlie Kirk, specifically about his death, has become popular among internet leftists over the past year. Generation Z is so numb to political violence that the audio of the shooting was trending this spring for TikToks about outfit changes and hair transformations. The brutal death of a husband and father became a ploy for engagement so 20-year-olds could literally dance on his metaphorical grave.
For Republicans who have the misfortune to die for whatever reason, the leftist message is simple. “Live your life in such a way that more than half of Al Gore’s internet doesn’t celebrate when the news of your death breaks at 2:30am,” one person on Threads said.
Short of changing your politics so people aren’t happy when you die — something that sounds more apace with Chairman Mao’s China than modern America — there’s only one thing to do. The answer here is the same thing it was during the era of Peak Woke, the thing that eventually helped weaken the tyranny of cancel culture and restore some sanity to the public sphere: Never give in to bullying. Those of us who remain in the land of the living have a responsibility to do what we think is right even in the face of great cruelty.
The leftists fulminating over his death wish they could have half the influence Graham did over his lifetime. Graham himself offers some guidance on how to respond when people have horrible things to say in the face of death. Consider what he said about Trump’s treatment of Graham’s good friend, the late Senator John McCain.
“It bothers me greatly when the president says things about John McCain,” Graham said in 2018, just days after McCain’s passing. “It pisses me off to no end, and I’ll let the president know it. The way he’s handled the passing of John is just disturbing.”
Speaking well of the dead, or at least not openly mocking them, seems to be outdated etiquette in our post-norms age. But we can’t let this vicious rhetoric pass without pushback. What once seemed to be common sense is now worth emphasizing: Celebrating the death of your political enemy doesn’t make you the good guy.
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