We met in a Walmart parking lot.
It was early. Misty. An empty shopping cart rolled by, unpushed but vaguely purposeful.

She wore a faded “Ernst 2014” pin, a trench coat two sizes too large, and a pair of headphones blasting old C-SPAN reruns.
She introduced herself as Empathy, but she didn’t offer a handshake.

“Touch is conditional now,” she said. “Like healthcare.”

This was the long-lost emotional compass of Senator Joni Ernst, Iowa Republican and recent viral preacher of the gospel of universal death. Her words—“We all are going to die”—delivered in response to a constituent's fears about losing Medicaid, had spiraled across the internet like a slow-motion morality collapse.

But we weren't here for her. We were here for the thing she’d lost.

Empathy lit a cigarette that wasn’t there and exhaled a sigh shaped like the U.S. healthcare system.

🎤 Filthee News: So... where have you been?

Empathy: Mostly boxed up. Last few years I’ve been folded between campaign slogans and heavily redacted Bible verses. I tried to crawl out when she co-sponsored that bill to cut SNAP benefits, but... she turned off location services. I haven’t seen her frontal lobe since 2019.

🎤 Did you hear her apology?

Empathy: You mean the cemetery video? Yeah. She stood among the dead to explain to the living why dying is the most cost-efficient option. Bold aesthetic. It’s giving “compassion via funeral home influencer.”

🎤 But to be fair—she was talking about reality. Everyone does die eventually.

Empathy: So does your Wi-Fi. That doesn’t mean you cut the lifeline and say “we’re all buffering anyway.”
Mortality isn’t a policy position. It’s an inevitability. Medicaid is supposed to help you survive until then.
Not schedule it.

🎤 She mentioned the Tooth Fairy.

Empathy: Oh yeah, that part was poetic.“I’m glad I didn’t bring up the Tooth Fairy.”That’s a woman equating healthcare with childhood mythos.If Jesus is her co-pay and the Tooth Fairy handles dental, I guess the Easter B

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