THE STATES ARE THE PETRI-DISH OF CIVILIZATION.

     It is said that the states are the laboratories of democracy, and that may have at one time been true. In our present day, the states have become the petri-dish from which monsters emerge. Not all states, it must be admitted, but a significant number of them. States where elected office-holders cannot tell when the word democracy should be capitalized. States where a prominent politician from its dominant party thinks that bacteria is grown in "peach-tree dishes" and conflates Gestapo with a cold tomato soup (you can bet MTG doesn't pronounce that particular fruit, to-mah-to). Another state, not too far from the left coast and which is desirous of increasing its size to become some sort of "greater" entity, has a state Senator whose inflated sense of humor led him, a dairy farmer of four decades, to opine that his experience milking cows gives him a sufficient understanding of women's rights. He was forced to apologize for that faux-pas but the damage has been done and there will be few Idaho women that will forget that come re-election. Or maybe Idaho women are okay with that. We all know the abysmal behavior of the governors of Texas and Florida. They are familiar because the insults are so cruel and  persistent. But it is in the smaller states, on the periphery of the Mason-Dixon line and below, where the most arrogant examples of white male acrimony emerge. Idiocy can also be found in more northern states recently turned red. A fellow named Don Bolduc from New Hampshire, believes children are taught in public schools to be "furry's" and use a litter box. For a while this bullshit was promoted by blogger, Dan Boldino. School board meetings have never been more entertaining. Did I mention that we are closing out the first quarter of the 21st Century, not the 16th? 

     Missouri has most recently emerged as a laughingstock of Republican cluelessness. We all know that Republicans have a very diminished role for women in society, and Missouri's state legislature made that the center of it's legislation on the proper form of dress for women in the statehouse. The centerpiece of this legislation is the proper display of skin above the elbow. Since this is a Republican dominated legislature with a Republican governor it has not escaped the cynic that they are seeking to restrict the right for women to bare arms. This is not some 2nd Amendment fundamental right, this is a right not considered important by men in the state for those citizens whose fundament is often admired in the most creepy fashion.

     We can be sure that there are women who are free to bare arms in the state of Missouri, also know as the "show me state": young women, pole-dancers where Republican legislators unwind after a grueling session restricting the rights of lefties. Perhaps even behind the office doors of those legislators, female pages will be allowed such liberties, assuming the politicians aren't closeted. Should the pages in question be male, they would not be covered by this legislation. But it's not about bare arms or fine bottoms, it's about where women belong in the republican hierarchy. There are, of course, Republican women in this hierarchy, they are women who have sold out their sex for the illusion of power. As Marjorie Taylor Greene has shown, that is a right only as long as the right people (men) hold the strings of greater power. The author of this bill is one of those women, her name is Ann Kelley. We can't say for sure what her motivation for this legislation is. She is relatively young and, presumably she does not have her wardrobe designed by Omar the Tent-maker. Still, there is very little that distinguishes Congresswoman Kelley from her Muslim counterparts who require women to wear a burkha while in public. Taliban or Christian Taliban. They are different sides of the same theocratic coin.

     Years ago I used to enjoy reading some of the short stories of Flannery O'Connor. They need to be read aloud with the same stilted southern drawl common to television and movies of the 1950s. Think of Gomer Pyle or The Beverly Hillbillies. But I never would have expected a female in one of Flannery O'CONNOR'S stories to be as malignant as the folk you would find in James Dickey's Deliverance, complete with dueling banjos.