Mitch McConnell Might Be Dead & It Doesn't Matter

New Column by Lee Camp

Column and voice-over by Lee Camp, a human.

The fact that one of the leading senators in Congress might be dead — and has been brain dead for months, if not years — doesn’t matter at all. And the fact that it doesn’t matter actually clarifies just how lost the US “experiment” is.

Everything in Congress stays the same whether the members are dead or alive.

That should be shocking. It should be front page news. Instead, corporate media will ignore it like they do every deeper truth about the US empire.

Literally no one has heard from Mitch McConnell in weeks and hardly anyone seems to care. We just learned the other day that:

Two weeks ago, on the morning of June 14, he was found unconscious at his D.C. home and rushed to the hospital, after an EMS call reporting a cardiac arrest at his address and that he’d been given CPR. We only learned of the incident this week, after the emergency dispatch audio was published by Desiree Townsend…

We, the American people, are apparently not authorized to know his whereabouts or status or even whether a mirror placed in front of his mouth fogs up or not. But I truly don’t give a shit whether a racist, old, sad, bitter man is alive or dead. Neither does most of America.

What matters slightly more is what this says about the United States Congress. Clearly, it’s borderline meaningless. Important members can be in a vegetative state and nothing changes in the world or the functionality of said institution. There’s perhaps no better example of how worthless and limp-dicked this major governmental body has become.

The US president now has near dictatorial power. Congress rarely passes anything other than massive “must-pass” bills packed with everything from the $1.5 trillion Pentagon budget-of-death to whether a USPS postage stamp of Hygeia, goddess of health, can show nipple.

And anything Congress does pass always — and I mean always — aligns with corporate interests. So they’re essentially a rubber stamp for America’s great corporate death spiral.

Does anyone think Congress can’t rubber stamp our grim waltz off the cliff without Mitch McConnell or any other congressperson? No. They legitimately don’t matter.

In fact, Rep. Frederica Wilson of Florida:

…disappeared on April 17, and went radio silent for nearly a month without any public explanation. When she finally emerged on May 13, her office released a statement and local TV interviews attributing her 40‑plus missed votes to major left‑eye surgery…

Then there’s New Jersey’s Rep. Tom Kean who:

…emerged on Tuesday from a nearly four-month disappearance — missing 140 votes — that he never explained until his return. He now says he was suffering from clinical depression.

Yet, countless time, thought, effort and money is wasted discussing the elections of each of these meaningless people. It’s a tremendous national mind-suck and mind-fuck. It’s all theater of the absurd in a deteriorating empire — Theater designed to distract the American people from the people really making the decisions.

We all yell about what Congressperson X said or didn’t say while weapons contractors and surveillance companies decide who to watch and kill. We all freak out about a congressman falling two points back in the polls while a big oil CEO decides to coup a country, steal their oil, and keep all of us going down a path of climate disaster.

Everyone in Congress could be taxidermied right now, and it wouldn’t change the lived experience of a single American.

While Mitch McConnell currently might be dead or alive, the US empire is clearly a zombie.