Unhinged

I have two Facebook accounts. The one I log into most days is my Piper for Missouri account, where I post political content and essays and news articles. I have around 100k friends on that page, and it is where many folks keep up with me and my commentary on Missouri.

It’s also where my ugliest trolls pop up.

I still have my old Facebook page that I opened about 15 years back. It was full of family updates and photos of my kids through the years, and is now scrubbed clean of family references and photos, because there are crazy folks out there, and I work in politics in a very red state. I don’t post on that Facebook page anymore, but I do log in a few times a month to scroll through Facebook Marketplace.

I may not want anyone to see my kids or grandkids, but I am a sucker for a deal, and Marketplace is one of my favorite haunts.

I have been looking for end tables for my living room for several months. My current mismatched ones are fine, but I’d like the look of something farmhouse-like but not farmhouse kitsch. The real stuff. Old farmhouse antiques.

When I logged into my old Facebook to start scrolling for treasures, a post from a local woman caught my attention because I saw my State Senator’s name. I paused to read the long post about the same meeting I wrote about a couple of weeks ago, and my Senator’s smug appearance in town.

The lady writing the post had a different point of view. She was gushing praise for our lawmakers who showed up “when they didn’t have to.”

What? Showed up when they didn’t have to?

That is one of the biggest responsibilities in being a Representative — they are supposed to show up and listen, but they rarely do, so I don’t think they need praise for doing the bare minimum, but it wasn’t my post, and I digress.

The lady went on for a few paragraphs, and then towards the end of her post, she referenced the folks in the audience who were “unhinged.” She had an apology for the lawmakers who were subjected to questions — unhinged questions from a constituent.

Reader, she was likely referencing me.

un·​hinged

adjective

:Mentally ill, highly disturbed, unstable, or distraught

I was not unhinged in that meeting, but I did shout out a question to my lawmaker, asking him to address the hundreds of thousands of dollars he has accepted from an organization that sends Missouri taxpayer money to private religious schools. I did tell him that I was forced to shout a question because he refuses to answer emails and phone calls asking him the same question.

Unhinged is not a word I would use to describe a constituent calmly asking a hard question of her Representative, but I do think the word is applicable to many folks in the meeting, including the one who made the post in the first place.

Unhinged behavior is working a low -wage job and standing behind a Representative who voted to take away your right to earned sick time.

Proposition A was approved by 58% of Missouri voters in 2024. It gave eligible workers the right to earn 1 hour of paid sick leave for every 30 hours worked up to 40 hours annually. After the proposition passed, Missouri Republican lawmakers passed HB 567, which struck the paid sick leave mandate from the law and stripped out cost-of-living adjustments to minimum wage.

My Representatives voted against the will of their constituents and made the lives and health of Missouri workers worse. Voting for any of these lawmakers is unhinged in my book.

Unhinged behavior is existing as a woman in this state and voting for lawmakers who would sign your death warrant with a cruel abortion ban and restrict access to reproductive health, even after Missourians passed a Constitutional amendment to secure the right to reproductive care.

Even more so, these same lawmakers just signed a “Born Alive Bill’ that could ban palliative care for dying newborns, tying the hands of doctors in tragic medical scenarios, including lethal fetal anomalies. In these cases, parents and doctors may currently choose palliative care to ensure the infant does not suffer, rather than undergoing aggressive, futile, or painful resuscitation.

I wholeheartedly believe that voting for lawmakers who would force cruelty onto suffering babies and grieving parents is unhinged.

Unhinged behavior is sending your kids and grandkids through Missouri public schools while voting for lawmakers who defund those schools to send taxpayer money to private religious schools.

Unhinged behavior is knowing that our current income tax covers two-thirds of Missouri’s budget, but voting for a lawmaker who wants to eliminate the income tax in lieu of a massive sales tax that will harm Missourians. Knowing that the most vulnerable seniors and those living on fixed incomes could see their taxes double just trying to buy groceries.

Unhinged behavior is voting for lawmakers who vote to put loaded guns on city buses and arm school teachers and give guns to domestic violence offenders.

Unhinged behavior is voting for the same party over and over again, even after that party has promised to decimate your schools and hospitals and post offices and sidewalks and libraries and put your state on the fast track to the bottom of the barrel.

Unhinged behavior is joining a cult masquerading as a political party and pretending that any of this is normal.

It’s not.

No one has to like how I asked the questions at the meeting with my Reps. No one has to agree with my politics. Call me unhinged if you want. I’ve been called much worse.

But I hope folks will look at what’s actually happening in Missouri and ask if this is what you voted for. Because this isn’t about me being “unhinged” at a meeting — it’s not about me at all.

It’s about whether the people we elect are listening, or if they’ve decided they don’t have to anymore. Do they just do the bidding of their highest donors?

I already know the answer to that question. At least in my state.

And that’s something all of us, no matter the political stripe, should be concerned about.

~Jess