“…Come on, do the right thing. Delay just means more death and suffering. Flatten the goddamned curve…”

Missouri Governor Mike Parson (r) still has not issued a “stay at home” order for the state. Because, we don’t know, “rural, something, something.”

Meta.

Yesterday morning on Show Me Progress I put up a post titled “Are you smarter than Missouri’s governor?,” highlighting the Lafayette County Commission’s “stay at home” ordinance in response to the COVID-19 pandemic – as opposed to the refusal of Missouri Governor Mike Parson (r) to do the same. There has been a precipitous rise in cases in Lafayette County.

The post caused a significant traffic spike. Significant as in the largest number of daily “hits” in almost five years of operating on this platform.

With a traffic spike comes comments and trolling. Show Me Progress is set so that I must personally approve all comments before they’re posted. I see the IP address and the e-mail of the commenter, along with their typed remarks.

I try not to engage right wingnuts directly. By any definition of their thought processes and ideology, it’ a colossal waste of time. I generally delete their comments as they’re in moderation. There’s an old music adage: “You can’t teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time and it annoys the pig.” So, I tend to delete trolling comments and ignore them.

Unless it amuses me.

Yesterday morning I received the following, unedited (it went into the trash):

All the armchair warriors .. Your not in charge!
Till you are in control if your (R) or (D) sit back and be quiet.
Your time to comment comes at the polling station.
Since we don’t have all the information we must assume the decisions are best for the majority
Even if it’s not good for you..

A champion of the First Amendment, eh? And don’t start with, “wait, aren’t you censoring this person?” Don’t be an idiot. The First Amendment applies to government action. If trolls want to spew stupidity on the Internets they are perfectly free and able to start their own blog. A place where people can freely choose to read their drivel, or not.

You think they kept their opinion and counsel, not speaking out, from January 2009 to January 2017? Right…

“Even if it’s not good for you..” Seriously, someone believes that. “The needs of the 1%, outweigh the needs of the many” is quite a moral perversion.

That deference to authority figure(s) “…[s]ince we don’t have all the information…” is the ultimate laziness in the Information Age. Such laziness as a foundation for all other social behavior is so 21st century.

Grammar and incoherence aside, somebody should inform this poor person that the current governor of Missouri was not elected to that office.

This (unedited) also went into the trash:

Your article is a hit piece not news. Governor Parsons is doing a great job. In case you are not aware of this we live in a federal style of government. Therefore the local towns can issue a stay at home order when necessary. The whole state does not need to shut down. Show some respect.

Show some respect, learn to spell your governor’s name.

Something, something, Federalism backwards. Ignore actual expertise (science! math!). Ignore the problems in a pandemic (science! math!) generated by a patchwork of responses from county to county, and town to town, because, you know, people don’t ever travel from one place to the other. [That’s how a fucking pandemic works.] Ergo, tautology. Deference to authority, no matter how incompetent. Obvious ignorance of the concept of exponential growth. And willfully ignoring that rural Missouri doesn’t have the health care capacity to deal with the exponential growth of cases of COVID-19 to come.

If I’d bothered to answer this one directly it would have been: “Fuck off, you Neolithic self-righteous sociopathic prig. How’s that for the respect you deserve?”

There are hotspots across Missouri. Urban, suburban, and rural. The whole state does need to shut down. Lives are at stake.

Governor Mike Parson (r) [2018 file photo].

Well, Governor Parson (r)?

Stay Home. Wash your hands. Don’t touch your face. Good luck to us all.
#FlattenTheCurve

Previously:

Gov. Mike Parson (r): Do the right thing (March 23, 2020)

Gov. Mike Parson (r): “What, me worry?” (March 26, 2020

Gov. Mike Parson (r): Still wringing your hands, eh? (March 28, 2020)

Are you smarter than Missouri’s governor? (March 31, 2020)

Are you smarter than Missouri’s governor? – part 2 (March 31, 2020)