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Listening to Zurlina Maxwell say on MSNBC that the country will soon witness a demographic change in which the Whites will no longer be the majority, I thought, man, I bet that will make Mitch McConnell squirm. Perhaps that (or something else like it), is why the Republicans are so frighteningly and fiercely determined to prevail-at-any-cost over their challengers. It begs the question, just how far are they prepared to go in their quest for dominance?

I’ve long thought that, if Mitch McConnell cared about the Constitution, he would not have made some of the key decisions he has made in the past decade or so. To the extent that behavior denotes character, McConnell’s is shady at best.

What if, however, Mitch’s behavior was not lacking in integrity but rather true to his character? In that case, it might be explainable as behavior typical of a sociopath. Or, perhaps his actions are truly aligned, but toward a different cause entirely. We have been presuming up until now, or at least I have, that Mitch cares about the Constitution. Suppose that were not so. Allow for the possibility that Mitch has given up on the Constitution—that he’s graduated to a mindset in which authoritarianism is not only acceptable (so long as it’s called something else) but that its methods may be justifiably applied as deemed necessary in order to retain power and control over the government.

Then think about McConnell’s record of “achievements” since he’s been Speaker. If the pieces now seem to fit better, that’s no coincidence.

“Today,” writes Michael Gordon in the Business Insider, “representative democracy is on the brink as our government demonstrates an unprecedented disconnect from public opinion. We see time and time again that even overwhelmingly popular public views don’t translate to policy.” Gordon continues, “all three branches of the federal government are now in the hands of a group of politicians pushing distorted views to the mainstream.”

Seen through this light, Mitch’s behavior is in line with the current views of quite a few prominent Republicans. “The GOP,” Gordon notes, “consistently pushes the envelope to cement control, especially as it reads the tea leaves and sees an electoral future that looks grim for their party.” This “desperation to lock in unpopular Republican policies,” says Gordon, “is the basis for their embrace of trump, their efforts to pack the federal courts, their embrace of the Electoral College system, and their gerrymandering.”

In other words, get the fix in while we still can.

I wish and hope that this explanation was nothing more than a paranoid ramble and that Mitch and his gang will all turn out to be true patriots who, in the end, will remove their partisan hats and join with the growing majority of the public slowly waking up to the realization that their president is a fan of neither the Bill of Rights nor the Rule of Law, but rather is someone who views, in his unmatched wisdom, such documents merely as obstructions preventing him from acting as he pleases while he labors, when he isn’t busy either tweeting or playing golf, to un-make America greater, or whatever the Hell it is he’s trying to do, as if he actually knows.

I suspect, however, that we will sooner see thoughts and prayers succeed in reforming America’s gun laws.

I’ll close with a final musing about our esteemed senior senator from Kentucky: If one’s actions are true to one’s beliefs, but one’s beliefs are rotten, what does that say about one’s character?

Tim Konrad

2019.12.26