Your Opinion: Changing status from moderation for extremism

Dear Editor:

I have loved this state, my adopted state, since moving here in the early 1970s. I've loved its great natural beauty, the diversity of its topography, from the hills and rivers of the southeast to the beautiful plains of the west. But mostly, I have loved the friendliness, the warmth, the openness of the people in this state - so different from where I grew up.

Back then, we were known as a "bell weather state." Back then, pundits would look to Missouri as a bell weather state, neither red nor blue, but a state which might go either way and which might reflect a national trend in the upcoming elections. We had great political figures, from Harry Truman to Jack Danforth, and so so, many others. We were moderates, and we could go either way.

Just recently, I heard on a news program that we are now "a Red State" like Mississippi and Alabama to the south of us. We have now traded civility for extremism, tolerance for intolerance. One only has to look at the statistics: we are high in rural poverty, rural health care, overall obesity, high in gun rights, and lowest of all in state workers salaries, lowest in taxes to maintain our roads and on and on.

When did all this occur? How did this happen?

Can it ever change?

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