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I’m in a long-running Sunshine Law suit with a Missouri government agency, their Department of Health and Senior Services, over a simple request for what is ess

I’m in a long-running Sunshine Law suit with a Missouri government agency, their Department of Health and Senior Services, over a simple request for what is essentially a big genealogy spreadsheet of the names of local dead people, some from 100+ years ago. It’s a very boring request, as these things tend to go. But I have been shocked at the number of people from Missouri who have actively responded to news of the suit on social media not on the merits of the request whatsoever, but by saying that I shouldn’t win because I’m “not from there” and therefore this is “none of my business”, or that I’m “some California coastal liberal elite” (practically an exact quote), or that it doesn’t matter that many other states routinely make this data freely available (including Oklahoma, right next door) because “well, that has nothing to do with Missouri”, and so on. At least one of these people has a giant Confederate flag as her primary Facebook banner image. Some of these people have open-to-the-world Facebook posts about family involvement in white nationalist groups, discussions of the “Seth Rich cover-up” and how Obama will be indicted any day now, and use of language that would indicate close familiarity with alt-right fever swamps. It’s been...enlightening.

opportune 9y ago
I'm originally from a state like that and living in a bit more enlightened one. I have very mixed feelings about the prevailing mindset/attittude in my home state, those similar to the people you saw on Facebook. Those people are my family members, friends' parents, and even teachers. It's somewhere between anger, pity, and disgust. You have to understand that these people are unhappy (mostly due to economic reasons) and are being spoonfed media bullshit all the time. Some of them are legitimately hateful, but a lot are just not very bright and have terrible bullshit filters. It doesn't help that the South's culture is pretty generally reviled elsewhere in the US and that they get brain-drained pretty bad.
dsfyu404ed 9y ago
>But I have been shocked at the number of people from Missouri who have actively responded to news of the suit on social media not on the merits of the request whatsoever, but by saying that I shouldn’t win because I’m “not from there” and therefore this is “none of my business”, or that I’m “some California coastal liberal elite” (practically an exact quote), As impersonal as it may be I don't blame them for being distrusting by default of outsiders from the coasts. Look what happened to Colorado.
- Asparagirl 9y ago
  ...uh, what happened to Colorado?
  - dsfyu404ed 9y ago
    A bunch of Californians moved in and changed politics for (what the locals would consider) the worse.
    - HammerJack 9y ago
      I think it depends which side of the fence you were on before we passed amendment 64. CO has always been a purple state, I get the feeling you consider yourself red/conservative/etc and are noticing the red:blue ratio swing against you. I cannot say I share your concerns for a number of reasons. Locally, as in at the city level, we fight the old guard regularly just to pass enough taxes to keep our infrastructure from crumbling entirely. We have to fight the old guard just to have enough taxes to keep the street lights on in the summer, to put our police officers in cars newer than a decade old. The new folks, us young folks, don't have a problem with a lot of these, we see the value in our police officers having modern vehicles, in our streets and storm water systems being maintained (and avoiding costly lawsuits in the latter case), in the value for my community safety and other people's families to have lights on in neighborhood past 6 PM during the summer for Pete's sake. We're the ones at the city hall meetings fighting grandma, and her racism, and her NIMBYism, and her staunch refusal to pay for any of the public services she takes advantage of. So I struggle to see what politics have been changed for the worse. Oh, Oh, and after a few record breaking years for wild fires, guess if it was the old guard (who wants to bust up the state forests and lands for fracking) or the new guard (who are generally more conservationist) who voted we shouldn't allocate more budget to fire fighting@. Gosh, that certainly will not bite us after a dry winter when the US forest service predicted an even worst wild fire season this year. Oh no how the budget will suffer and the old guard will make it seem like this was completely unavoidable and unpredictable. @edit: at the state level I take a personal ire with your baseless comment since I live in what's historically been known as the hate capital of the west; located right here in friendly Colorado. So, in my opinion, if the KKK and some of these rather bigoted church congregations have their ideals and their politics dragged out into the light of society and can't survive it good riddance. So please, please tell me what politics the Californians (and somehow I hear; Elite West Coast Liberals in there, if not Libruls) have brought us that made our state oh so terrible over these past few years.

opportune 9y ago

I'm originally from a state like that and living in a bit more enlightened one. I have very mixed feelings about the prevailing mindset/attittude in my home state, those similar to the people you saw on Facebook. Those people are my family members, friends' parents, and even teachers. It's somewhere between anger, pity, and disgust. You have to understand that these people are unhappy (mostly due to economic reasons) and are being spoonfed media bullshit all the time. Some of them are legitimately hateful, but a lot are just not very bright and have terrible bullshit filters. It doesn't help that the South's culture is pretty generally reviled elsewhere in the US and that they get brain-drained pretty bad.

dsfyu404ed 9y ago

>But I have been shocked at the number of people from Missouri who have actively responded to news of the suit on social media not on the merits of the request whatsoever, but by saying that I shouldn’t win because I’m “not from there” and therefore this is “none of my business”, or that I’m “some California coastal liberal elite” (practically an exact quote), As impersonal as it may be I don't blame them for being distrusting by default of outsiders from the coasts. Look what happened to Colorado.

Asparagirl 9y ago
...uh, what happened to Colorado?
- dsfyu404ed 9y ago
  A bunch of Californians moved in and changed politics for (what the locals would consider) the worse.
  - HammerJack 9y ago
    I think it depends which side of the fence you were on before we passed amendment 64. CO has always been a purple state, I get the feeling you consider yourself red/conservative/etc and are noticing the red:blue ratio swing against you. I cannot say I share your concerns for a number of reasons. Locally, as in at the city level, we fight the old guard regularly just to pass enough taxes to keep our infrastructure from crumbling entirely. We have to fight the old guard just to have enough taxes to keep the street lights on in the summer, to put our police officers in cars newer than a decade old. The new folks, us young folks, don't have a problem with a lot of these, we see the value in our police officers having modern vehicles, in our streets and storm water systems being maintained (and avoiding costly lawsuits in the latter case), in the value for my community safety and other people's families to have lights on in neighborhood past 6 PM during the summer for Pete's sake. We're the ones at the city hall meetings fighting grandma, and her racism, and her NIMBYism, and her staunch refusal to pay for any of the public services she takes advantage of. So I struggle to see what politics have been changed for the worse. Oh, Oh, and after a few record breaking years for wild fires, guess if it was the old guard (who wants to bust up the state forests and lands for fracking) or the new guard (who are generally more conservationist) who voted we shouldn't allocate more budget to fire fighting@. Gosh, that certainly will not bite us after a dry winter when the US forest service predicted an even worst wild fire season this year. Oh no how the budget will suffer and the old guard will make it seem like this was completely unavoidable and unpredictable. @edit: at the state level I take a personal ire with your baseless comment since I live in what's historically been known as the hate capital of the west; located right here in friendly Colorado. So, in my opinion, if the KKK and some of these rather bigoted church congregations have their ideals and their politics dragged out into the light of society and can't survive it good riddance. So please, please tell me what politics the Californians (and somehow I hear; Elite West Coast Liberals in there, if not Libruls) have brought us that made our state oh so terrible over these past few years.