Mitch McConnell and the Real Radicals: Cancer on the Body Politic
In the fall of 2017, I met with my surgeon to discuss surgical options to treat my breast cancer. Luckily for me, four months of grueling chemotherapy had already shrunk the aggressive tumor. Not so luckily, I would still need a mastectomy.
Make that a double.
“Okay,” I said to the surgeon. “As long as we send what’s left of Mitch to Mitch.”
“Excuse me?” the surgeon said. “Who?”
“Mitch. That’s what I named my tumor. After Mitch McConnell. So, can we send it?”
My surgeon seemed to think I was kidding.
I was, and I wasn’t.
I was first diagnosed five months after Trump was inaugurated. As I fought to keep food down during chemo, Trump, Paul Ryan, and Mitch McConnell fought to kill the ACA — Obamacare — again and again. And though I didn’t rely on the ACA for coverage, I did and still do rely on one of its essential provisions: the guarantee that I won’t be denied insurance because of my illness.
The cruelty of GOP efforts to rob millions of Americans of access to healthcare was infuriating but not surprising. My name for my tumor, however, surprised some of my doctors. Did I really think that Mitch was the most malignant politician of them all? After all, it was the Trump administration that banned Muslims, separated children from their parents, opened the U.S. up to hacking, and defended white supremacists, all while the Trump family trampled over norms, raked in profits, and picked the pockets of Americans.
But the McConnell malignancy was growing long before Trump ever took office.
Mitch’s tenure in the Senate has been marked by his utter refusal to do anything that doesn’t benefit him, no matter how desperate the needs of the people. Pass a stimulus package big enough to ward off a looming depression? Mitch said no. Improve an unjust healthcare system that causes two-thirds of all bankruptcies? No. Put qualified judges on the bench? No, no, no. Because he has no principles beyond the quest for power, Mitch has changed his views on minimum wage, the debt ceiling, immigration legislation, civil rights, judicial confirmations, the filibuster, etc., when doing so thwarted Democrats and/or made his dark money overlords happy.
When the American people were going broke and dying by the thousands, Mitch took a vacation.
After Trump was elected, things only got worse. But the Trump administration couldn’t have caused such chaos and destruction without Mitch’s support. While Trump golfed, and Mitch gave huge tax breaks to billionaires, rammed through hundreds of unqualified or radical-right activist judges, ran up the national debt, and made sure that Trump was acquitted after impeachment — all in service to Mitch’s own ambitions and his bank account. When Americans began dying of coronavirus by the thousands and losing jobs by the millions, and Trump lied about the dangers and crushed the CDC, Mitch scoffed at the stimulus bill passed by the Democratic House to help struggling Americans and…went on vacation.
“He never had any core principles. He just wants to be something. He doesn’t want to do anything.”
And yet, nine months later, Mitch finally allowed a vote on a mere ghost of the Democrat’s package. Because Americans are jobless and hungry? No. Because nearly 350,000 people are dead? Of course not! Mitch is worried the Georgia run-offs will go to the Democrats, and he’ll lose his control of the Senate.
One wonders why, with so little interest in governing, Mitch even wants the job. GOP stooges yell RADICAL LIBERAL SOCIALISM! every time someone mentions doing something that might help people other than billionaires. But Mitch and his shameless band of crooks, liars, abusers, and conspiracy theorists are the real radicals, the kind of people who attend private briefings on coronavirus and then secretly invest in body bags. The kind of people who shriek about “stolen elections” while actively trying to steal one. The kind of people who engage in “I-know-you-are-but-what-am-I” schoolyard rhetoric to hide the fact that the only lives they value are their own.
The truth: Trump only stayed in office this long because Mitch found him useful. If there’s any comparison to be made to Castro, Maduro, Duterte, Putin, Kim Jong-un, or other dictators willing to starve, steal from, even kill their own citizens to enrich themselves, it’s Mitch and the GOP that fit the description. Never let them trick you into thinking otherwise.
During a debate, Mitch’s challenger Amy McGrath took him to task for abandoning the American people when they needed help the most. Mitch’s response was to chortle like a cartoon supervillain. I would call this sociopathic, but that might be an insult to sociopaths. Instead, I will keep calling him what he is: a runaway tumor, a cancer eating at our democracy, the real radical. If he keeps control of the Senate, America might never recover.
Georgia, it’s time to cut him off.
___________________________
Laura Ruby is a teacher, novelist and two-time National Book Award finalist. She is the author of Bone Gap and Thirteen Doorways, Wolves Behind Them All, among other works. Find her at www.lauraruby.com and on Twitter at @thatlauraruby.
