Did you hear the one about the 81-year-old man who froze up and looked confused and terrified during what appeared to be a serious medical episode? It's a real knee-slapper.

"The robots are malfunctioning," yukked one meme, after Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's extended pause before reporters in Washington last week. "It's called buffering lol ... data is still downloading," offered another. "Uh oh ... time to retire, Mitch," gloated a third.

These sentiments and worse were bouncing around the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, and in other corners of the internet, following McConnell's episode. Regardless of individual opinions about one of the more polarizing political figures of our time, how did America get to the point that this kind of fundamentally indecent response to a fellow American's health scare is widely viewed as appropriate?

In mid-sentence during a press conference Wednesday, the Republican leader suddenly froze in silence for some 20 seconds, staring wide-eyed as members of his caucus gently tried to prod him to speak before finally leading him away from the lectern.

He returned a few minutes later to finish the press conference, responding to questions about the episode only with, "I'm fine."

Whether that's true is a valid question, given McConnell's position as a political leader. The advanced years of much of America's leadership — and whether that's a healthy trend for the nation, given the challenges and vagaries of aging — is a recurring theme these days. Certainly, Republicans (and even many Democrats) have made it an issue regarding 80-year-old President Joe Biden, and the topic has come into play regarding key members of Congress in both parties, especially in the Senate.

It's one thing to raise those issues in the legitimate debate about age as it impacts political leadership. It's quite another to express gleeful schadenfreude at the health struggles of those on the other side of the political divide.

The fact that much of the political world is buzzing about Biden's personal call to McConnell wishing him well — a courtesy that once would have been viewed as unremarkable and even expected, regardless of party — says volumes about the state of political discourse today. That it's darker, meaner and more personal in toxic ways than it was even a few years ago is virtually beyond dispute.

It's debatable whether former President Donald Trump ushered in this trend with his norm-shattering nastiness toward political opponents, or if he was just a symptom of forces already pushing the country in that direction.

In any case, it's notable that Trump — who long ago put McConnell on his enemies' list of fellow Republicans for real and imagined offenses — didn't bother with the kind of well-wishing call that Biden did. Showing that kind of class, of course, is not Trump's style. It's also unsurprising that much of the recent meme-fest at McConnell's expense is pretty clearly coming from MAGA-world.

Much, but not all. Liberals and progressives who are joining in should stop and consider that they're stooping to the level of those who have celebrated the health challenges of Democratic Sen. John Fetterman, the attack on former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's husband, Paul Pelosi, and the physical and verbal mishaps of Biden himself. People who chortle at the health problems of others are not good people, regardless of their politics.

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Photo credit: Gage Skidmore at WikiMedia Commons