Is Mitch McConnell a Terrorist?

                Calling someone a terrorist is problematic on any number of levels, not the least of which is that it has become such an overused label that it is often little more than name calling.  Even so, some characteristics of terrorism have remained clear.  Terrorism requires the intentional act of someone of extreme and dogmatic character; someone willing to inflict pain, suffering and even death on the innocent to achieve their own ends.  We usually attribute that sort of orthodoxy to religious beliefs, but there is no reason that the extremism cannot be politically motivated.  Using this broad definition, it is time to ask whether or not Majority Leader Mitch McConnell should be considered a terrorist?

                The initial response to this question is probably to assume that it is a flippant and hyperbolic overreach to equate a political figure like McConnell to a terrorist.  I think a careful analysis of the damage the Leader’s actions have created, however, make it a matter of serious consideration.  I contend that no one has done more to harm the democratic institutions that this country is founded on than McConnell.  No matter how gruesome and horrendous the attacks of terrorist networks have been, none of them have threatened the American political system more than the Senator from Kentucky.

                McConnell has led an assault on the very foundations of American democracy by refusing to let those institutions function as they were intended.  Terrorists who attack buildings and people pose a threat to those buildings and people, but they don’t inherently challenge our form of government.  In fact, attacks from the outside can even strengthen the government, forcing petty and patrician issues aside to focus on more important threats.   McConnell and the rest of the Republican leadership has done exactly the opposite.  They have taken the radical and extreme partisanship of a small minority of their party and used it to bring the federal government to a complete standstill.  The Congress can’t pass a budget, keep the government running or pass funding for natural disaster or the Zika outbreak without the drama of extreme political dysfunction.

                A democracy requires compromise, and this iteration of the Republican party refuses to compromise.  Instead, they offer only the most extreme ( and often already debunked) ideas and use the procedures of the congress to insure nothing ever happens.  I don’t think this is a coincidence.  While making sure nothing happens is bad for the majority of the country, it suits the interests of the Republican donors just fine.  The utter failure of this congress to do anything is the only way that the people supporting the Republicans can stay in power.  They need our energy policies to stay focused on the hopeless expansion of fossil fuels, and they need our economic policies to continue to benefit the very richest tenth of one percent for them to keep their power.  McConnell has even gone so far as to violate his constitutional duty to participate with the duly elected chief executive to fill the current vacancy on the Supreme Court.

                This extremism has led to the lowest approval rating ever recorded for congress.  It has led to a generation of millennials vital to the future of our country to turn away from the political system, and who can blame them.  It is naïve to assume that this is not the intended outcome.  McConnell and his backers can only succeed if the system fails and the young voters stay home.  McConnell isn’t just ‘playing politics,’ he is destroying politics.  In doing so he is striking at the heart of what makes us a democracy.  No plane, no bomb, no gun can do that.

                If you think it is blasphemy to equate politics to terrorism because it somehow doesn’t honor the memory of the 3,000 or so people who died on 9/11 or the brave civilians and veterans who have died fighting terrorism, I offer this response.  Over 30,000 people a year die in gun violence in this country and at least 60,000 people die from the effects of environmental pollution.  Where is the honor in their deaths?  Mitch McConnell has become the face of a party willing to knowingly kill its own people for the sake of ideological purity.  If that isn’t terrorism, what is it?