Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell appeared to freeze for about 30 seconds on Wednesday while speaking with reporters after a speech in Covington, Kentucky.
The incident is similar to an episode McConnell experienced at the US Capitol late last month and is likely to raise additional questions about the fitness of the 81-year-old to lead the Senate Republican caucus.
Wednesday’s episode occurred when a reporter asked the Republican leader if he was planning to run for reelection in 2026. McConnell had to ask him to repeat the question several times, chuckled for a moment, and then paused.
Someone at his side then asked him, “Did you hear the question, senator, running for reelection in 2026?” McConnell did not respond.
Article includes video of the incident.
That is hard to watch. I hate his guts and everything he’s done and stood for in politics, but it’s still rough to watch a man just fade away like that.
He needs to retire and stop clinging desperately to power. The stress of it alone is probably literally killing him.
Edit: Just so we’re clear, here, I’m not offering him sympathy. I have none to give for a monster like Mitch McConnell. The man has done enormous damage to the country, and people like him are why I worry about the future for my kids (both LGBTQ+).
I was only trying to express that on a gut level, it’s still unpleasant to see someone basically drain away like that.
He lost all potential sympathy from me when he denied Garland and rammed in Barett during an election year before RBG was fucking cold in the ground. That decision and denial of representation has made shockwaves of regression in terms of civil rights, voting rights, women’s bodily autonomy and LGBTQ rights …and that’s what we have gone backward in…so far (birth control and gay marriage being illegal again is coming) and we will feel these effects for several decades way after he’s gone.
tots and fucking pears, goddamn ghoul.
Yup. SCOTUS is eternally corrupted thanks almost exclusively to one man, and the sooner he’s worm food the better. Hell, even the fucking worms will gag on his bones.
I feel the same. Terrible human being. But taking joy in the suffering of others is not something I will do.
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Just kidding, this isn’t Reddit
Don’t worry I’ll have your share, get fucked Mitch.
I know McConnell is just a lightning rod for hate for the GOP and as soon as he’s gone some other amoral, sociopathic mercenary will take his place, but damn if he’s not just the worst.
Convince me that’s a human being.
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Whether he clings to power and dies from stress is kind of his decision.
I don’t enjoy seeing a person, even him, suffering illness. Even as much as I despise that horrible piece of shit.
My initial response is to feel empathy and compassion when I see this, it’s awful. Then I remind myself how many people have been hurt by him and how many people continue to be hurt by him and my compassion is tempered. I don’t delight in his ailing, but I can’t say I feel the same about this as I would if it were someone else.
He lost “human” status a long time ago. I actually like reptiles and lizards, so I have a better one:
Ghoul.
Exactly this ^
The insane vitriol of some people on here, wishing death to this man, rejoicing in very obvious cognitive decline, it’s harrowing.
The policy this man has supported and even pioneered is horrific, and frankly he should never have been allowed to push that shit nor would I ever support it, but you can bet your fucking ass I’m not going to be sat here laughing about an old man in clear mental distress or wishing death on him, because I’m not a piece of shit and I actually have some form of morality.
Don’t worry, though, if the tables were turned Mitch himself would gladly cackle to himself knowing that some policy he enacted resulted in your suffering, so long as it earned him a buck in the process.
Fuck him. Right in the ear. With a pineapple. On a drill.
Honestly fuck the dude above acting like it’s some superior morals to coddle a scumbag. That’s how you reinforce their behavior and teach generations that being a corrupt piece of shit has no downsides, as everyone has to be nice to them anyway. It’s a lie that keeps masses from revolting against corrupt politicians/rulers/governments etc. Fuck that shit let’s remind those at the top its us at the bottom who support their little lavish lifestyles and can take it away in a damn instance.
I want him to stop hurting people. If that means voluntary retirement that’s cool. If it means dropping dead or becoming too disabled to continue that’s still preferable to him continuing to hurt people. I wish him a long retirement, specifically I hope it’s the rest of his life long.
Na I hope he has a very painful and suffering filled decline full of mockery so shitstains like him understand they will reap what they sow. Treat them like anything other than that and you create a system that is ripe for abuse as we see today. Enough following the bullshit rules of power that allow corrupt greedy narcissists to remain in power because we should treat them kindly even though they are not treating others the same. That just rewards corruption and abuses of power, and I do not fuck with fascists.
Utilitarian moral theory is an entire field of ethical philosophy, even if you don’t agree with it. Someone who believes strongly in this could argue that we should have actually killed Mitch decades ago to prevent all of the pain, suffering, and death that he has wrought on this world.
I think what you meant to say is that you have some form of feeling morally superior.
The same utilitarian ends could have been reached, and should have been reached, in any one of thousands of different ways, years ago, that wouldn’t require this.
Fuck the ghoul and all he’s done. But just think of the level of political degeneration required to get to the point where a malicious actor gradually being paralyzed by illness in public is your most feasible option for resolving a political problem. I can understand why you would cheer for this, but the reminder that your country is even in such a situation that cheering for it makes any sense at all is itself something that I find horrifying.
Besides, the entire point of utilitarianism is to evaluate possibilities dispassionately, and choose what results in the most useful outcome and end state. Like the other commenter said, “There is nothing utilitarian about taking ghoulish delight in the suffering of an evil old man”— The entire concept of evil is a more deontological or virtue-based construct— He’s on his way out, great, so celebrate the fact that he’s no longer causing harm, but once he’s gone, he actually doesn’t matter anymore— Contain the damage, tunc damnatio memoriae.
Idk. I feel for y’all, I guess. In a well-functioning democracy, this should have probably been resolved almost an entire generation ago, and you should barely even have any reason to know his name anymore. Everything about this situation is horrifying, from what he’s done to what’s happening to him now to the fact that he even still matters at all in the first place.
There is nothing utilitarian about taking ghoulish delight in the suffering of an evil old man.
He’s falling apart and you’re enjoying it because you hate him. At least be honest with yourself.
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Not to mention that the first example that people always go to when trying to explain utilitarianism is always to use it to justify setting a precedent of murder, as long as doing so might feasibly produce benefits for somebody else in the future.
Plus the future is never certain, while the present is arguably more real in any moment. Consequentialist frameworks in general are basically betting away guaranteed morality in the present in exchange for possible/imagined gains in the future.
Personally I’ve also found that because everything is just so complicated, depending on what axioms you start with in a consequentialist perspective, you can also not only justify but make it compulsory to do literally any awful and disastrous things both to yourself and to other people.
(Plus you necessarily end up having to introduce some sort of a concept of a “causal event horizon”— How far forwards into the future you are willing and able to try to predict events in order to evaluate the consequences of actions— If you actually try to apply and use utilitarianism or any consequentialist framework— Which means that your ethics change depending on your computing power, plus you’re in constant and actually agonising pain because having to always try as hard as you can to feel the consequences of future outcomes as far in advance as possible is fucking excruciating. … or maybe that was a specific situation (but still, what use is ethics if it just mutilates you as soon as difficult questions need to be asked?))
Utilitarianism: The preferred ethical system for edgy youth, sheltered academics, idealistic extremists, and B-movie villains since the 19th century! …I say this having previously positioned myself somewhere between those categories.
I do tend to think deontology is just delusion, and virtue is just ego, though— … Human “philosophy”, and academics: Maybe some dead old dudes being paid by Kings and Churches to sit around doing nothing but think weren’t actually the best qualified to empathise with how people actually live, and understand what is the right and wrong way to do it— The incentives for sounding good in a clean and neat published paper can hardly be expected to align with the incentives of actually being applicable to the messiness of reality, can they?
Just don’t hurt people, Ffs— (And define “hurt” rigorously in terms of game theory and preserved options for autonomous constructive personal growth and equitable power dynamics, epistemology and the preservation of knowledge and feeling plus metaphysics and the preservation of identity and self, and thermodynamics and the avoidance of unconsensual entropification, if you need to)— just don’t hurt people; it shouldn’t be that complicated…
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For fucks sake, it’s not some superior morals to allow a corrupt abuser to die or suffer for the agony they caused. It’s a lie to keep a power systems masses docile and in check. It’s even worse morals to know what this guy does and hope for the best for him instead of him dropping dead. Fuck that, and fuck all this shit that allows corruption to remain unfettered because oh we need to be kind to the fascist narcissistic egotists or what we have to deal with them like we always have. You should be aware of how they act and be ready to address that shit from day one when it’s called out. We know we need chemo to kill a tumor why the fuck are we acting like we should be feeding it and nurturing these shit stains who are actively cannibalizing the human races ability to survive over greed. Cut the tumor out or fucking irradiate it to death. Any fucking fascist peice of shit should be getting the same treatment. You don’t want to be mocked and laughed at as you die in old age? Well than start by giving a fuck about others first and maybe we will return the favor. I treat others based on how they treat others, fuck around like a shit stain get laughed at and paraded around like the shit stain you are.