McConnell, Graham and Epistemic Nihilism

Right-wing Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, former Senate majority leader and key senior legislator, went missing for weeks. No one -- including President Donald Trump and the governor of his home state -- knew whether he was sick, wallowing in depression like a recently MIA congressman from New Jersey, on a wild incognito adventure, alive, dead, kidnapped or in a coma. His office refused to clear up the mystery until July 12, when they released a "proof of life" photo, complete with old-school newspaper, that only aroused further suspicion.

Pressured to explain this bizarre situation, Republicans responded to their constituents and fellow citizens the way leaders of any major political party in the world's oldest and most powerful representative democracy typically do when honesty and transparency are clearly called for: They plotted a coverup.

A really stupid coverup.

If you read GOP accounts on social media platforms like X, you know that Republican- and MAGA-related feeds are coordinated to a ridiculous extent. Whether talking points are distributed to the various politicians and media influencers or they are directly managed from a central right-wing boiler room operation -- overseas in many cases -- I do not know. The results, however, are clear. Images and words -- exactly identical or lightly edited -- are spammed out by dozens of accounts at the same time.

Clearly, the word went out to the MAGA-verse: We need "proof of life" for McConnell.

As usual, MAGA World slavishly complied.

As McConnell, 84 and hospitalized since June 14, faced growing speculation and rumors about his health -- including unverified claims that he was in a vegetative or deceased state -- Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.), Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) and conservative commentator and former McConnell aide Scott Jennings issued a laughably coordinated set of public statements (with my emphasis added) on July 6 and 7.

"Leader Thune spoke with Sen. McConnell yesterday by phone," Thune's office said. "They had a lengthy and substantive conversation that covered a variety of topics, including national security."

Then Barrasso:

"Senator Barrasso and Senator McConnell had a lengthy conversation early this afternoon. Their phone call lasted roughly 20 minutes. They caught up about the latest news impacting Senate races, the Graham Platner scandal, and the recent Supreme Court ruling on coordinated spending limits. They also discussed the Senate's July work period, including the need to pass the NDAA and confirm President Trump's nominee for Director of National Intelligence. Senator McConnell was fully engaged and is eager to get back to the Senate."

And Jennings:

"I spoke to my old friend Mitch McConnell this morning, the senior senator from Kentucky. He's still recovering in the hospital. We talked for just shy of 20 minutes ... about Iran, Ukraine, the unfolding situation in Maine, my visit to the TR Presidential Library, and even a little bit of Senate history. I told him we want to see him back at work as soon as possible."

Adding to the hilarity, Jennings's employer, CNN, said it could not confirm its own employee's statement. (Note for readers under age 70: CNN used to be a newsgathering organization on cable TV.)

If this were Japan, the shame of it all would drive these three clowns to do a swan dive in front of a bullet train. (Note for American readers: Industrially advanced nations have high-speed rail.)

Charades like this are hardly new in America. Political hacks covered up the fact that Woodrow Wilson, Dwight Eisenhower and Joe Biden were physically and/or mentally incapacitated for parts of their presidencies. Culturally, however, we associate lying to the public about their political leaders' fitness to serve with authoritarian regimes like Cuba, North Korea, Zimbabwe and, most of all, the Soviet Union.

With this farce's tragicomic, not-so-carefully coordinated lies, the McConnell mess is nothing if not Sovietish.

As is the American people's lack of reaction. Like the Soviets, we are accustomed to being bullshitted by the authorities and their pet journalists who, once again, dutifully and unquestioningly transcribed official lies despite their outlandish improbability. We are experiencing "epistemic nihilism," the belief that objective truth is fundamentally unknowable or does not exist. Americans are withdrawing into cynicism, concluding that searching for facts is pointless since everyone is lying.

A democracy requires a well-informed electorate in order to function well. That includes transparency. If you can't believe the White House when it claims the president is 6-foot-3 and 224 pounds (6 feet and 290 pounds is more like it), how much will they lie about Israel or emoluments?

We would be terribly remiss if we omitted the nearly equivalent absurdity of the actual death (reportedly, probably true -- who knows?) of another right-wing bold-face name, Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who passed last week after a "brief and sudden illness" (a burst aorta) at age 71.

Graham -- never married, no kids, effeminate -- fit the classic profile of the closeted rightist politician. D.C. insiders have long said that Graham's homosexuality was an open secret.

I don't know. I hardly care, except that if he was gay, it takes a terrible human being to vote against every LGBTQIA+ bill just to keep your job.

On the evening of Saturday, July 11, D.C. emergency services received a 911 call around 8:30 p.m., reporting a person suffering chest pains at Graham's Capitol Hill residence. Who placed the call? An "unidentified woman in Baltimore," about an hour's drive away.

Graham may have been straight (or asexual), and that call may have been placed by a political aide or household staff member. The timing, opaqueness and likely coverup of Graham's sex life, in the midst of the McConnell story, naturally feeds the feeling that we are being lied to -- as usual.

Does it matter? Only if we want to believe that we live in a democracy.

========

Ted Rall, the political cartoonist, columnist and graphic novelist, is the author of the brand-new "What's Left: Radical Solutions for Radical Problems." He co-hosts the left-vs-right DMZ America podcast with fellow cartoonist Scott Stantis and The TMI Show with political analyst Manila Chan. Subscribe: tedrall.Substack.com.

----