When constituents of US Iowa Senator, Joni Ernst, shouted their anger that cuts to Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) would cause people to die, an impish smile stretched across her face. “Well, we are all going to die,” the senator responded.

People were stunned. A senator laughing at the certain deaths of human beings due to lack of food and healthcare? Due to the deliberate cutting of the very thing that keeps them alive? Laughing at the deaths of the elderly, disabled and children?

But the senator didn’t feel one bit of remorse. In fact, she doubled down on her stance, posting a video of her standing in a cemetery. In it, she sarcastically took aim at those who were outraged. “I made an incorrect assumption that everyone in the auditorium understood that yes, we are all going to perish from this earth,” she said. And proceeded to proselytize to them about how accepting her Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, would ensure everyone eternal life. Ironically, she said this after mocking her constituents for believing in the tooth fairy.

But was this out of character for the senator? After all, this is what she believes. This is Maga Christianity. It is the firm belief that the only respite you are entitled to in this life is in some afterlife you are sent to if you believe in their narrow, heavily curated and extremely exclusive version of spiritual salvation.

Maga Christianity, like the one espoused by Ernst, is not a new phenomenon. It is the natural evolution of American Christianity. One that was born out of the rationalization of Indigenous genocide, justification for the enslavement of Africans, the normalization of perpetual war, and a fanatical adoration of the predations of capitalism.

It is what enables them to overlook the cesspit of Donald Trump’s morals, trash the environment (after all, God is going to destroy it anyway), and support genocide in Gaza. The latter comes down to an eschatological worldview that requires the state of Israel to exist so that the second coming of Christ will be ushered in. Never mind the fact that this worldview posits the forced conversion or eternal condemnation of Jewish people. Never mind that it ignores the very existence of Palestinian Christians. Never mind that hundreds of thousands of people, including thousands of children, are being bombed, burned alive, and starved to death.

Their worldview demeans and diminishes life here. It ridicules suffering or says it is inevitable or necessary. Well, at least for those they deem subhuman or “sinners” or heathen. But for Maga Christians, their eternal reward begins here with unfettered access to power and wealth.

Ernst and her ilk will likely never come to see her faith as a bludgeon. She will likely never develop a real sense of empathy. And since empathy is rapidly being classified as a sin in the Maga religion, why would she?

To the rest of us, her callous cruelty and sadism will not be forgotten, nor forgiven. Her little joke at the expense of the ill, the disabled, children, elderly, impoverished and dying will forever be likened to the phrase “let them eat cake.” And we all know what happened to the person that was attributed to.

Kenn Orphan, June 2025