People used to ask "what's the matter with Kansas?"
The better question today is "What the fuck happened to Missouri?"
I spent most of my youth there, and lived a good portion of my adult life in Missouri.
I've lived all over the US at this point, Alabama, Texas, Maryland, Missouri, Minnesota.
Missouri used to be the "Show Me" state. As in, "that sounds nice, but you're gonna have to show me."
Somewhere along the way something broke, and instead of being proud of some of the pro-democracy quirks MO has (voters explicitly voting on whether or not to rewrite the state constitution every 20 years, for instance) they've been electing people who seem to actively hate the electorate.
The voters keep doing insane things like voting for sunshine laws when asked directly but electing people who actively break those sunshine laws.
I hope that things get better there, but my family was driven out.