Y’all have probably been seeing many of the walking corpse jokes and memes circulating on the heels of Senator Mitch McConnell’s first day back to work after a 92 -day absence.
The 84-year-old Kentucky senator was clearly unwell, thinner, bruised, and the lights were not on upstairs. His glassy eyes were fixed on nothing. He couldn’t close his mouth. He didn’t turn his head toward the people asking him questions. There was zero visible engagement with his surroundings.
I watched one video clip of him being picked up at his home. Folks kept calling out: “Welcome back Senator McConnell.” “How do you feel?” “Are you feeling good Mitch?” He kept staring through their questions like it was a call-and-response with a cadaver.
And when he arrived at the Capitol, the performance continued. Folks were basically like, “Right this way, sir,” as his security detail and handlers gently steered and positioned him like a disoriented nursing-home resident going to the day room for Jell-O and Bingo.
Y’all . . . why were all those people speaking to him in such bright, cheerful, hopeful voices and trying to manufacture alertness on his behalf? Seriously. Do you think they rehearsed this? And the Republicans clearly didn’t give a damnbecause they just needed his body in the room and one functioning thumb on his skeletal mitt to vote “aye” on a farm bill. Okay, I’m being cheeky about the thumb. Mitch just needed to muster up enough breath to whisper “aye” for the clerk.
This is where we are in American politics, Y’all. Right now, Congress is looking like a damn taxpayer-funded hospice where we get to watch a gerontocracy of ancient white men deteriorating in front of our faces while still desperately holding enormous federal power because their bodies remain politically useful. And everybody around these men is pretending to ignore their obvious incapacity.
Now, please don’t get it twisted, I’m not into ageism and I’m fully aware that we’ve got Democratic leaders who are up in age too. I’m not out here arguing that old age should strip folks of dignity or political leadership. But at the very least, one should be able to demonstrate cognitive capacity and the ability to fulfill the duties of public office! But we are witnessing a whole political party exploiting McConnell’s declining body by propping him up and concealing the severity of his condition to preserve political power.
What’s also irking the hell out of me is another spectacularly grotesque double standard. We are watching white patriarchy build a life support system around one of its own. A whole government institution is rearranging itself around one old white man’s incapacity. Meanwhile, Black folks are out here being shoved out of the workforce by the hundreds of thousands, and having their degrees, credentials, experience, qualifications, and competency questioned at every turn, being called “DEI” this or that, or dealing with right-wing trolls who call our places of employment to get us fired.
But look at Mitch McConnell. Look at those video clips of him and tell me again how America is a meritocracy. Lie to us again about how white men have always had to prove they’re the smartest, strongest, most capable and indispensable people in the room. We all know that none of this is true. But what is true is that systems in this country will rearrange themselves around powerful white men’s limitations and nobody will question whether the institution has “lowered its standards” to accommodate them.
Do Y’all hear anybody shouting “PULSE HIRE” at the man? Nope. Ain’t nobody askin’ whether the senator from Kentucky is taking an opportunity away from somebody else more qualified. Nope again.
Such hypocrisy. This is the same cruel political party that mocks disabled people, snatches healthcare coverage from the sick and nearbout dead. This regime continues to dismantle all manner of civil rights protections and DEI initiatives because racial justice is a zero-sum game and tyranny in their minds. And they’re always frothing at the mouth about how everybody needs to compete on the same level playing field. But oh, look at how they’re accommodating the frail, cognitively impaired senator from Kentucky. Oh so now they can demonstrate empathy, patience, and institutional support. Umph.
But this ain’t just about McConnell. He is symbolic of how this aging white ruling class is desperately trying to hold onto to power while closing doors for everybody else and strangling the hell out of people’s lives every which way. Their pathetic desperation is everywhere we look. They’re attacking voting rights, workers, universities and K-12 schools, the economy, climate protections. They’re trying to hoard everything and destroy the damn Earth so that the future, which they know is majority Black and Brown, won’t be able to inherit anything worth a damn or thrive.
C’est la vie, Y’all.
That is the American standard. Some of my elders told me as a child that I had to be “twice as good as the white man.” Others later told me that “white men have to be half as good as everybody else.” And no matter how excellent we are, Black excellence will forever be on trial while white male power will be presumed competent right up until the body carrying it can no longer hold up its own head and close its gasping mouth.
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