from the let-them-eat-caskets dept
I’ll start this off by acknowledging that, sure, there are times when it is perfectly reasonable to say, or even shout, “We’re all going to die!” Say you’re on a plane that has just lost all engine power and is hurtling towards the ground, for instance. Or perhaps someone has asked you the question, “Name one thing every human being has in common.” In each of those situations, the phrase is fairly appropriate, and I’m sure there are others.
But if you’re a Republican senator fielding questions from constituents at a town hall event and you are questioned about your support of Medicaid cuts despite the negative outcomes that will result, your response probably shouldn’t be, “Well, we’re all going to die, for heaven’s sake.” And, yet, that is precisely the route that Joni Ernst chose to take.
The exchange began with an attendee complaining to Ernst that the bill would give significant tax breaks to the ultrawealthy while kicking some people off Medicaid and food assistance programs. Ernst said the only people who face getting booted are those who should not be on Medicaid in the first place.
“They are not eligible, so they will be coming off,” Ernst said, which is when she was interrupted by the attendee who yelled, “People are going to die!”
“People are not — well, we all are going to die, so, for heaven’s sakes,” she said, prompting resounding jeers.
This is one of those things that is not technically wrong, but serves mostly as a non sequitur. Sure, we’re all hurtling towards death in some form or another, as Nietzsche pronounced in his philosophy all those years ago. But the general idea of, you know, medicine is to prolong life for as long as possible. Medicaid helps provide healthcare for plenty of people, primarily disadvantaged or poor citizens. The claim that 1.4 million illegal immigrants are on Medicaid is, unsurprisingly, almost entirely made up.
She later claimed that 1.4 million undocumented immigrants are receiving Medicaid benefits. That figure, which the White House and other top Republicans have also cited, is based on a Congressional Budget Office analysis that said that one provision of the bill would cause 1.4 million people to lose coverage (including but not limited to those without verified immigration status).
But even so, this kind of callous response to a reasonable concern by the very people Ernst represents is very much a Things Not To Say In Politics 101 sort of thing. Acting so cavalier while essentially acknowledging that support of the bill will result in lives being snuffed out before their time is, well, fucking evil. Even if were the case that some illegal immigrants, or even many of them, were benefitting from Medicaid, those are still people’s lives. To hand-wave their deaths away as though it were nothing is the sort of thing that should result in a psychiatric evaluation, not re-election.
If you were assuming that Ernst must surely have apologized for this by now, you’re right. If you were assuming that the apology was genuine or made things better in any way, hoo-fucking-boy, are you ever wrong.
Now, at great cost to my own desires, I’m going to go ahead and just leave entirely alone the juxtaposition of the Tooth Fairy and Ernst’s god as though a sizable portion of the world saw those two things as fundamentally different. Applaud me, because that took effort.
Instead, I’ll simply point out that it takes an incredible amount of entitlement to fuck up the political messaging as badly as Ernst did, only to turn around and essentially call the audience at her town hall event stupid and childish. So, let me try to clear this up for the senator.
I go to the dentist, even though some day, no matter what, my teeth will fall out. I go to the gym, even though some day, no matter what, my body will decline into a doughy bag of goo. I take my car to the mechanic for regular upkeep, even though some day, no matter what, that car will be fit for the junk yard. And I access my own privileged ability to get medical care, even though some day I’m going to die.
My humble suggestion is that we should have senators representing us who understand these distinctions. It appears that we have at least one example of a senator who does not.
Filed Under: death, death cult, healthcare, joni ernst, medicaid
