In the Jan. 24 op-ed by George Will, “Why do people like Lindsey Graham come to Congress?” Will writes, “During the government shutdown, Graham’s tergiversations — sorry, this is the precise word — have amazed.”
Will needn’t have been sorry. The word “tergiversation,” which commonly is used as a synonym for “equivocation,” has a unique meaning: desertion of a cause, position, party or faith. This indeed precisely describes Graham’s behavior and that of other Republicans who have supported the lunacy and depravity of President Trump without batting an eye.
Will raises the question “Why?” in the title of his piece. Perhaps the answer is contained in Arthur Koestler’s 1940 masterpiece, “Darkness at Noon,” where Koestler sought to explain why so many communists accused of crimes they didn’t commit by the nightmarishly evil Joseph Stalin meekly submitted to show trials in which they confessed their “crimes.” Koestler’s thesis is that many of them came to believe that they were in fact guilty, not of the crimes they were accused of, but of helping to create the system that made a Stalin possible.
Could it be that Republicans in the Senate and in the House, like Lindsey Graham, are similarly buoying up a monstrous system that they know they played a large part in creating?
Michael A. Kalm, Salt Lake City
