“We are all going to die of Joni Ernst pushes the toxic Christian compassion of Maga on all of us

Senator Joni ErnstR -Iwa, has certainly absorbed Maga’s first rule: you are never in the wrong as long as you “trigger” the Liberals. Friday, She pulled the indignation of her voters in a town hall In Butler’s county, Iowa, with his bizarre defense to withdraw the medical care of people to pay tax reductions for billionaires: “Well, we will all die.” The crowd, furious at its plans to vote for drastic cups in Medicaid which will deprive millions of health care, hooked it. Ernst, after having absorbed Donald Trump’s philosophy to always double, replied on Saturday with something from Lady Maga favorite: pretend to be stupid.

“I made the hypothesis incorrect that everyone in the auditorium understood that, yes, we will all perish this land,” she laughs, walking in a cemetery. “So I apologize, and I’m really, really happy not to have to raise the subject of the Fairy of the teeth as well.”

Ernst can play the average bimbo for the cameraBut she is aware that people do not ask to live forever. They just don’t want to die from decades before their time, due to a lack of basic health care. But while most of the media focused on his act, his follow -up rotation was, if anything, even more insensitive. She invoked Jesus Christ as the reason why it is normal to let people die of easily avoidable causes. “But for those who would like to see eternal and eternal life, I encourage you to kiss my Lord and my Savior, Jesus Christ,” she said with mute.

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For those whose understanding of Christianity is based on compassion and love, this comment was shocking. But Ernst understands Maga’s second rule: their version of “Love” Christian is cruelty. When Ernst was asked about her comments by a journalist from CBS News on Monday, she broke. “I am very compassionate,” she said, running for an elevator.

Journalist: “Do you want to clarify your comments?” Joni Ernst: “I am very compassionate.” In a kind of Deville Carella …

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– Christopher Webb (@ cwebbonline.com)) June 2, 2025 at 10:28 p.m.

Sarah Longwell of the rampart speculated on MSNBC This Ernst “must have nervous breakdown”. This is doubtful, because Ernst went to the cemetery, registered and probably had a young staff edit and publish the video on Instagram. It was a deliberate choice, which makes more sense in the light of the greatest trend in White evangelical circles to redefine empathy as a “sin” And insist on the fact that infreation is a higher form of compassion. As David French explained in the New York Times::

At the same time, hard -right Christians began to turn against the very idea of ​​empathy. Last year, a popular right -wing podcaster, combined Beth Stuckey, published a successful book entitled “Toxic Empathy: How progressive feat Christian Compassion”. This month, a right-wing theologian, Joe Rigney, publishes a book entitled “The sin of empathy: compassion and his counterfeits”.

These Christians claim that real compassion has just rejected empathy, arguing that empathy bothers what they believe that these are “hard truths” with which they need to sail with alleged sinners. This is how the conservative Christian convinces himself, it is the love of refusing LGBTQ people their freedom, because convincing heterosexuality will put them in paradise. Or believe that it is the compassion to shout invective against a woman entering a clinic of abortion, which is reinvented as “advising” women to stop sin.

These are the rationalizations of people who want to hate while denying that they are hateful. Ernst’s behavior also shows how it can be used to justify opposition to republican hostility towards the appeal of Jesus to take care of the poor and the disabled, especially if this means a slightly higher tax rate for the rich. Holly Berkley Fletcher, the author of the next book “Missionaries children: unmasking the myths of white evangelism“explain This in his Monday newsletter. Evangelicals say they “prioritize the priority of wild souls for eternity to help bodies in the here and now,” she wrote. In reality, of course, it is a way “to avoid responsibility and reform and to serve their own interests”.

Ernst’s involvement that people should accommodate suffering and death have a long and despicable history. Fletcher notes that slave owners used this message to intimidate people enslaved in the 19th century. In recent years, the idea has been relaunched due to the COVVI-19 pandemic as a means of justifying republican opposition to vital measures such as social distancing, masks and, possibly, vaccination. By October 2020, Tucker Carlson of Fox News sounded this messageDeclaring: “At one point, we will all die. Dying is the central fact of life”, and suggesting that it was a sufficient reason to use all public health measures.

It was a message that obtained a huge boost from the evangelicals, in particular the pastors of Megachurch who did not want to put the religious services online, depriving them of the adulteration of the adorable crowd. The Reverend Tony comes out of Louisiana made the headlines at the beginning of 2020 By declaring: “Real Christians do not disturb me to die”. Mathis Caleb, Pasteur at the huge church of Carrefour de l’Ohiowrote at the time: “I hope it is the end of the world”, because he believes that heaven “seems quite incredible.” Even after the vaccine, Joy Pullman of the Federalist wrote an article entitled“For Christians, dying from Covid (or anything else) is a good thing.” In this document, she argued: “There is nothing that we can do to do today on earth a second more or more and more short”, and “Death is good”.

None of these people live according to their own pro-mort rules, of course. They see a doctor or take other measures to protect their health. It is only when they are asked to help others, whether by vaccination or by paying a little more taxes, that they find this duty in others to welcome death with a smile. But it is worse than usual republican hypocrisy. He also reflects the increasingly Christian nationalist fold of the GOP. They explicitly argue that everyone must live according to their fundamentalist religious belief that death is good. You can be an atheist, non -Christian or a more liberal Christian who believes in the healing of the sick. Too bad for you. In Maga’s view, we are all members of their fanatic death cult, whether we like it or not.

The good news is that the closed ideology and Die d’Ernst is not popular, even with many people who consider themselves conservative Christians. Monday, Democratic state representative JD Scholten announced ThaHe challenged Ernst in the 2026 elections. Scholten said in the monks register“When she doubled on Saturday with her, I felt very disrespectful comments, I said to myself:” OK, Game “.” It is a long shot in a deep red state, but Scholten has advantages, including being the launcher for the explorers of Sioux City. He also has a long history of defense of universal health care, contrasting with the nihilist opinions of Ernst. Iowa is considered conservative, but its voting population has a significantly higher percentage of elderly individuals compared to the rest of the country. They can be particularly hostile to the sucking and Ernst Die message.