From the #Unverified Files

Folks around here seem to love satire, conspiracy theories, and I suppose satirical conspiracy theories as well. If you're one of those folks, this one is for you. It explains so much about what's currently going on in politics in just a handful of words. When you read it, everything just falls into place. It just makes so much sense.

My name is Mitch McConnell and I am the Majority Leader of the United States Senate. As you may have heard, the health care bill I secretly drafted would result in 22 million Americans losing their health care coverage. I understand your frustration with the bill, but you also have to understand my side of things. I’m in a serious bind here. I owe Thanatos, the God of Death, exactly 22 million human souls and he’s come to collect.

My relationship with the God of Death began as these things typically do: I met him at a Republican donor event. We bonded over our mutual love of back deals and being drunk with power. Before I knew it, I had agreed to trade 22 million human lives in exchange for a sizable donation to several GOP congressional candidates. I made a terrible deal from which I cannot be unbound.

Ah, jeeze. You’ve really done it this time, Mitchy. If this were one or two lives that I owed to the God of Death, I could close out my tab the old-fashioned way: by murdering a couple of my summer interns. But, this is 22 million lives we’re talking about. That’s a sizable portion of the country, so the only way I’m going to kill that many people is through cruel, heartless, and targeted legislation.

Look, I get it. I really wish I could present a reasonable, fiscally-conservative alternative to the Affordable Care Act. But, I promised a boat-load of lives to an angry, merciless demon-god of the underworld. That means I have to put forth a bill that’ll take healthcare away from poor people, disabled people, senior citizens, children, new mothers, and people hit hard by the opioid crisis. The streets must run red with blood for the pact to be complete. America shall be one big graveyard and then Thanatos will be pleased.

Let's run the standard analysis. Who has the power to get this done? Mitch McConnell, obviously. Who benefits? Mitch McConnell again. I can't imagine that defying the God of Death would work out very well for him. Finally, who has the power to cover it up? That would be Mitch McConnell once more. So it follows that this is obviously a true story, and that the Senate Majority Leader of the United States has entered into a pact with a death-dealing entity from the underworld. Right? Maybe it's also why he looks like a turtle.

Even posting the story on a satirical news site is the perfect cover. When you yell at me "But this is satire!" understand that that's exactly what Mitch McConnell wants you to say. The best place to hide is in plain sight, where his pact with the God of Darkness will easily be dismissed as the crank ravings of his political enemies. Or does it have to be covered on InfoWars before anybody out there is willing to consider it true? Mitch McConnell is clever in that regard, making sure that the story is only available through other outlets.

The point being that this story is way, way more plausible than half the garbage that gets covered by conspiracy shows like InfoWars. I'm not singling Alex Jones out, either. His show just happens to be one of the most popular, and there are many others lurking in the corners of the Internet. Exercise critical thinking, folks, before you wind up with a mind so open somebody can drive a truck through it.