What's wrong with Missouri

Cannot explain it

The Super Bowl is in Kansas City tomorrow. I am happy for the city because the residents of ‘fly over’ world do get tired of being ignored all of the time. Full disclosure: I lived there for a while and started my working life there). My dear friend and her husband live there as does my oldest friend from college.

But that is about as far as I can explain Missouri these days. It is a bewildering place, truly terrifying for any sort of rational moderation. I have a cousin, extremely well-educated, who retired there but had fallen prey to conspiracy nonsense years back as he espoused voting scandals before it became en vogue to do so. No evidence but he bought it.

Missouri politics, even before Josh Hawley, he-of-the-raised-fist-before-he-ran-like- the wimp-he-is-for-fear-of-his-mob, had become pretty weird. A state divided historically by the Mighty Mo River into Democrats in the north and Republicans in the south, it has become a characature of sanity. Every single right wing political approach is now carried to the nth degree in Missouri. Limiting abortion has been at the top of the rapid agenda.

I understand (not endorse) why Florida’s governor, with his naked aspirations for the White House, passes extremist legislation to preempt one of his constituents in Mar-a-Lago advocating some silliness but Missouri? Seriously? I realise Senator Hawley