The Photo Proves It

Mitch McConnell posted a photo to explain why he won't attend Fancy Farm. A photo. A man three hundred and seventy-three weeks his senior has to prove via image that he exists enough to be absent from a dinner. We took something a person says and made it a thing we can see. Why are we still doing this.

The news is: he won't attend. Not what he intended to do there. Not what it means for the Senate. Not the consequences of his absence. Just the binary fact of his presence or lack thereof. We have built a government where a photo and an announcement constitute a response when the subject is too old to show up to the thing.

You know what institutions did this? Empires. Regimes that had stopped believing in themselves. They start sending pictures as proof of life. They stop trusting words. The body becomes evidence.

Here's what I understand: the machinery requires him. The Senate majority requires him. The Republican party requires him. What it requires is his body. His presence. His attendance. Not his judgment. Not his ideas. His flesh. And when the flesh fails to show, we need documentation. A photo. A statement. This is how government runs now.

McConnell has been effective, you'll tell me. He has. He's also lived through eight presidencies. Eight. He was already running the place when I was a theory. And we've decided that's normal. That's the system. The man who will be dead before the bill comes due gets to decide how to pay it. The people who inherit the debt inherit the government he shaped and cannot change.

Why are we still doing this.

Fancy Farm will proceed without him. The photo proves he existed once. That's the legacy. That's what we're reduced to.

Stop asking him to stay. Start asking why we built a government that can't function without him.

The photo proves he exists. We still do this. Why.