If you’re a Star Trek fan, you get the reference. If you’re not, it refers to the original captain of the starship, Enterprise – Captain Pike (played by Jeff Hunter). Captain Kirk – played by William Shatner – replaced Pike because Hunter bowed out of the show after the pilot aired. To make the switch make sense, the writers conjured an accident for Captain Pike that left him a mute cripple who could only communicate – yes or no – via lights that flashed on the face of his futuristic wheelchair.
Well, Captain Pike – so to speak – has returned to the show.
Mitch McConnell, that is. To the show that is Congress. They wheeled him in – just like Captain Pike – to show that he is, at least technically, alive. Adrenochrome works wonders.
So, 84-year-old Mitch will return to “work” – whatever that means in this context. How much work can a crippled, wheelchair-bound 84-year-old man do? It’s very sad – but not just for him. It is sad for us, the American lumpenproletariat, to know that enfeebled old men (and women) well into their second childhood have power over us. Bad enough that anyone has power over us, of course; but to be ruled over by senile citizens who probably have trouble remembering what year it is adds a dollop of effrontery to the mess.
It is also a kind of mirror of the decrepitude of the United State. Deliberately singular. McConnell – and Trump – are the embodiment of our decline as a nation; they are congruent with the pot-holed streets and falling-apart sense of things. There is no future – not much of one, at any rate – for these octogenarians. Nor for the United State, either. 
It was once held together (after it was forced together) by a commonality in most of the important things that has evaporated like the oceans of Mars, leaving a dried out landscape where nothing grows except a sense of futility that waxes with each uptick at the pump, each trip to the supermarket. It probably felt the same to the people of the old Soviet Union – which was a “union” in the same sense that the United State became one after the armies of the “union” forced it into one.
Toward the end – of the Soviet Union – Americans watched images of the Soviet gerontocrats waving feebly to the cameras – with comfortable unconscious assurance that America was not like that. It only took about 35 years for America to become very much like that; i.e., a clearly on-its-last-legs thing. 
Mind, this is not a rant against age. It is a rant against decrepitude. The distinction matters. Ron Paul is in his 90s but he is still in his right mind. Old, yes. Senile? No.
Captain Pike – whoops, Mitch McConnell – will be wheeled out of the Senate in a few months from now (assuming he isn’t wheeled into the Slumber Room before a few months from now). Donald Trump will be 82 going on 83 – or just about as old as McConnell is right now – by the end of his term a couple of years from now. Both men are obviously in decline, both physically and cognitively.
Will there still be a United State come 2028?
They were probably asking the same question in the old Soviet Union back in ’89 and ’90. They got their answer soon enough and I suspect we will also.
. . .
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Vividly remember last few years of Soviet Union. Had the grim aura of a hospice. Amerika has same feel. Soviet death however gave birth to a better era for Russia. I think our situation is more akin to 1917 when the Bolsheviks gifted Russia with four generations of absolute misery.
“Age ain’t nothin’ but a number.” – Anon
It starts with the idea that your identity is inextricably tied to the collectivist cohort called “generation” such as, “He’s a boomer” or “I’m Gen-X”, etc. As with all collectivist ideas it eliminates the need for discernment or analysis of individuals as individuals.
This starts early. Its sole purpose is to divide people. Us vs. Them. (Side note: People who use the word “verse” in place of “versus” are idiots.)
Ron Paul, at 91, is far more coherent than JD Vance(or whatever name he’s using today) My Dad is 96, plays golf every week and can debate pretty much any topic you choose…and destroy your argument in the process with just a handful of questions.
What McConnell does reveal is that being a member of Congress can destroy your mind if you let it. If you always vote the way your AIPAC Handler or largest donor, but I repeat myself, you turn your thinking over to others. Use it or lose it, another longstanding bromide, is just as true.
‘It is a mirror of the decrepitude of the United States’ — eric
Yes, it is. Mitch McClownell has over forty paid
stafferstax feeders. His chief of staff, Terry Carmack, started with him in 1985.How is it that these seasoned political pros let speculation about the senator’s health fester for three months, to the point that even other Congress Clowns suspected he was dead?
Only gross incompetence or utter contempt for constituents can explain this epic public relations faceplant. I favor the latter. In the District of Corruption, never ascribe to mere incompetence what can be plausibly attributed to willful malice.
Dirty Old Turtle begone!