Farewell to the Covid incubators

 KELO recently did a story on a couple who moved to South Dakota for its freedom.  They came from Oregon, which they apparently found oppressive.  The shifting demographics of South Dakota has been a powerful event during the last few decades, but the state's media and political analysts have chosen not to directly examine it.  South Dakota is now a single party state, just as the Soviet Union was a single party country before its breakup.  With the invasion of Russia into Ukraine, we see Russia returning to an autocratic status under Putin.  South Dakota is under the rule of an autocratic political party and it offers people of a like mind the "freedom" to live a life free of other people's political choices.

The political and cultural division in America is reshaping the nation.  People are moving to places where they can find people who think like they do.  The Covid pandemic accelerated that movement.  People who objected to Covid mandates resented being told what to do, and looked for places that did not require the wearing of masks.  Some GOP officials made resistance to mask mandates a matter of political doctrine and said mask requirements were an imposition of big government.  In an NPR story covering the migrations, a person  who had moved from California to Texas, rejoiced, "People weren't wearing masks — nobody cared. It's kind of like heaven on earth."

Of course, the wearing of masks during outbreak of contagious disease is not a matter of politics.  It's a matter of health science.  When people go to the dentist, they find that the people who work on their mouths wear masks.  Or when they go to their physicians or the hospital for certain treatments and procedures, they are attended to by people wearing masks.  By now, most people understand the scientific fact that masks can block the transmission of airborne infectious diseases.  Masks are not a cure or a certain preventative, but they are an effective measure of control.  We have known that for more than a century.  That's why healthcare workers can be fired--and usually are--for not wearing masks when they are prescribed to prevent the endangerment of patients and fellow workers.

With the death toll from Covid-19 nearing one million in the United State and surpassing six million world wide, the wearing of masks is a minor inconvenience when they can reduce the transmission of fatal diseases through the air.  But an attitude of belligerent stupidity has become a political fashion on one side of the partisan divide.  So, some people who resent being required to follow prevention measures against a deadly disease choose to move to places such as South Dakota, which allows them to be free to spread disease if they want to.

However, while those who move into the state as a gesture of their right to be belligerently stupid, little attention is paid to the motives of those who leave the state to avoid the belligerents.  South Dakota officials have for decades complained about the brain drain in South Dakota.  People of intelligence and talent leave the state, and politicians and other leaders have noted the outmigration and proposed ways to slow it down or halt it.  Ironically, the reason people leave the state is the same one that attracts people into the state.  Anti-maskers come for what to them is freedom.  People of intelligence and talent leave the state to get away from the stifling stupidity that dominates the state's culture.

A professional organization once characterized the state as an undesirable place to work for people whose occupations involve advanced education and creativity.  Back in the 1980s, the president of Northern State U. found from a student survey that a major expectation that students had for a college degree was to be competitive in finding good jobs in the national labor market, and they assumed those jobs existed mostly out of state.  To advertise that the university could meet that expectation, it adopted a slogan calling Northern "the gateway institution."  This set politicians and community leaders into a fury because the slogan appeared to endorse leaving the state as a reason for getting an education.  The regents forced the president to drop the slogan.  The fact is that bright and ambitious students go to college to develop the knowledge and skills that are a passport that qualifies them to make a life in a more intelligent and benevolent society.  They want to get out of state.

The demographics show that South Dakota is firmly in the hands of the belligerents.  The voter registrations show that with 280,955 Republicans, 152,182 Democrats and 140,429 independents.  The regressive majority likes to think of itself as South Dakota nice, but that posture is belied by their malice shown by their belief in the right to recklessly spread infectious disease.  They believe freedom is the right to declare biowarfare  against their fellow humans, if they so please.  They are in control of the state, and flaunt that control with absurd demonstrations in the legislature.  Watching the South Dakota state legislature at work is like watching a therapy session in the retard ward.

The state celebrates those who move into the state to exercise what they regard as their freedoms.  While it may bemoan the brain drain, it actually enjoys making refugees out of those who hold a more progressive view of humankind.  We celebrate those with intelligence and talent who make it out of the state with their faculties intact.

https://www.npr.org/2022/02/18/1081295373/the-big-sort-americans-move-to-areas-political-alignment