Ghost Senate

The vanishing of Mitch McConnell.

Someday this will be an obituary. Or rather, a son-of-a-bitchuary. But not yet.

It is considered rude to speak ill of the dead. But is it rude to speak ill of the undead? That is the question surrounding Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell, missing since June and rumored to be deceased. His staff will not respond to inquiries.

When a Senator dies, the US government lowers the flag. On June 20, I passed a construction crane swinging above a flag swallowed by storm clouds, rendering its pole invisible. The flag floated in the fog: half there, half gone. This is how the US government is honoring its first Ghost Senator, Mitch McConnell.

I’ve been through this charade before. For a decade, I worked primarily as a scholar of Uzbekistan. After becoming independent from the Soviet Union in 1991, Uzbekistan was ruled by Islam Karimov, a communist apparatchik turned nationalist dictator whose declining health was a frequent target of rumor.

In August 2016, Karimov had the misfortune of suffering a fatal brain hemorrhage shortly before Uzbekistan’s Independence Day: the holiday Karimov used year after year to prove he was alive by smiling and waving at the festivities. For days, state media told Uzbeks that Karimov was recovering from a minor ailment as locals in Samarkand wondered about the sudden construction of an elaborate grave.

Had Karimov not died so close to a holiday, the ruse may have gone on for weeks. Karimov was the only president in Uzbekistan’s twenty-five-year history. Since discussing his mortality was forbidden, his successor was not immediately evident, and a quiet power play among elites ensued behind the scenes. A product of the Soviet system, Karimov continued the tradition of Yuri Andropov and other delayed dead dictators by perishing on paper well after he had departed in life.

On September 1, Uzbek state media announced that Karimov wished the Uzbek people a happy Independence Day. Once the celebration was over, on September 2, Uzbek state media somberly declared that Karimov had died just that evening.

As one of few Americans who ever cared that Karimov was alive, I was tasked with covering his death. On August 29, the New York Times asked me to write an op-ed on Uzbekistan’s future without Karimov. There were three versions: one where he was “alive” (I knew he was dead), one where he was brain-dead (the compromise position), and one where he was dead-dead. The Times debated when to print the piece and chose to wait for the official announcement. My op-ed ran on September 3.

In 2016, Uzbekistan was one of the most insular dictatorships in the world. But I was able to ascertain news of Karimov’s death through Uzbek social media and the thriving mish-mish (gossip) underground of Uzbekistan. Uzbeks figured out the truth about their president despite living in a near totalitarian state.

In contrast, the United States, ranked as a flawed democracy, has no idea if Mitch McConnell is alive. The governor of Kentucky, Andy Beshear, has failed to get answers. The gutted US press has barely bothered to investigate.

Americans are less adept at discerning the mortality of our leaders because they do not fully realize they are living in a mafia state and that basic protocol — like letting the public know where an ailing Senator has been for two months — will not be followed. Americans lack the great skill of the Uzbeks: mish-mish, which replaced facts so long ago, it became honed into a form of discernment.

When you constantly expect lies but refuse to accept lies (a critical distinction), you become better at finding the truth. Surviving an autocracy means not only believing that the unfathomable is possible, but that it’s probably happening, so you better start planning for what comes next.

It is very unpleasant to live in a state run on mish-mish, but at least Uzbeks know it’s mish-mish, instead of calling it, like, “The Washington Post” or something.

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The secretly incapacitated leader is not entirely new to the US. Woodrow Wilson famously stroked out near the end of his term and left his wife in charge. Reagan and Biden showed signs of debilitating senility. The voters in my state, Missouri, hated John Ashcroft so much that they voted Mel Carnahan, who died in a plane crash on the campaign trail, Senator in 2000. Carnahan is possibly America’s first Ghost Senator, but at least it was honest. (His wife, Jean, took his place in office.)

The reason the Mitch McConnell saga is so disturbing isn’t because McConnell may be dead, but because the Senate is. Senator Patrick Leahy made this clear in 2018 following the appointment of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court.

“This judiciary committee is no longer an independent branch of Congress, and we’re supposed to be,” Leahy said. “The Senate is supposed to be. But we’re an arm, and a very weak arm, of the Trump White House. A resemblance of independence has just disappeared. It’s gone.”

Leahy was the rare Senator to be honest about the Senate’s demise and the entrenchment of Trump’s mafia state. As the author of the Leahy Law — a law which forbids the US from funding foreign militaries which violate human rights; a law the US breaks every day — he has witnessed failure carried out in his own name and is inclined to point it out in others.

In 2023, the then 82-year-old Leahy made another anomalous move: stepping down before dropping dead. But the generation that replaced him is one of rotating villains: hypocrites like John Fetterman who run on a banner of human rights and then perform loyalty to a genocidal foreign country, Israel, over the US. If it’s not Israel, then it’s Russia, or Saudi Arabia, or Silicon Valley oligarchs, or any other apparatus of the mafia state — all of which are honored before the American people.

As Senate Leader, McConnell was a prime enabler of Trump and a bureaucratic architect of some of this era’s greatest evils. Dead or alive, that is his legacy. Dead or alive, it does not matter much: and that is the legacy of the modern US Senate.

“Kentucky,” the Everly Brothers crooned. “You are the dearest land outside of Heaven to me.” I’d ask McConnell which is better, but I doubt he’s spending time in either.

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