The State of Misery

Like many college students, I have spent too much time during the past year scrolling through videos on TikTok. Of the many trends and styles of video on the app, there was one that centered on the state of Missouri. The videos that were part of this trend usually featured two people “on the phone” with each other, with Person A calling Person B to inquire about the location of Person B. Person B would then appear with a ‘Welcome to Missouri’ road sign green-screened behind them, mouthing the lyrics to the 2010 Maroon 5 song “Misery” where lead singer Adam Levine sings “I am in Misery!” The videos were funny and were a clever play on the similar pronunciation of the word misery and the state of Missouri. However, even if inadvertently, the videos were not far off from the truth. The state of Missouri is a state of Misery. 

I do not mean to say that every single person in Missouri is miserable. There are numerous wonderful things about the state of Missouri, and I have, for the most part, enjoyed my almost four years of education in St. Louis. That said, Missouri is a state in shambles. The state is frequently embarrassed on the national stage. From the now-infamous and arguably evil McCloskeys waving their guns in mustard-stained shirts at innocent protestors standing with racial justice to Missouri Senator Josh Hawley putting his fist up in solidarity with the treasonous insurrectionists who would go on to storm the Capitol Building to overturn the results of the 2020 election, Missouri’s national reputation has been tarnished for quite some time. However, these recent national embarrassments are not new to Missouri; scandal and public embarrassment are commonplace in the Show-Me state. In the past couple of years, Missouri saw its governor (now attempting to make a political comeback) resign over a sex scandal, came dangerously close to becoming the only state in the nation without an abortion clinic, had the leader of its largest county arrested and sent to prison on corruption charges, witnessed the mayor of its second-largest city doxx Black Lives Matter activists, and had a state lawmaker skip his own swearing-in ceremony to partake in the rally to overturn the 2020 election.

These scandals are not the only embarrassment to the state of Missouri. Locally, Missouri is struggling. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, about 11% of Missouri school districts had to switch to four-day school weeks instead of the standard five-day weeks in order to balance their budgets and have enough money to pay their teachers. In another hardship for the state, the opioid crisis has hit Missouri hard. The state has 27.6 meth labs for every 100,000 residents, the highest rate of meth manufacturing of any state in the country. As of 2018, Missouri had the highest rate of opioid-related deaths out of all fifty states. 

COVID-19 has only driven Missouri further into misery. Missouri is one of the few states without a mask mandate, and although the Governor of Missouri Mike Parson (R) has said his plan is to allow local jurisdictions to determine what health restrictions need to be put in place, Republicans in the state legislature disagree and are seeking to bar counties from implementing necessary restrictions. The state has failed in its implementation of the COVID-19 vaccine, currently ranking forty-ninth out of fiftieth of all states in the percentage of their residents who have been vaccinated, in large part because Governor Parson has neglected Kansas City and Saint Louis—the state’s two largest metro areas, which the governor’s own consultants called “vaccine deserts.”

The failures and embarrassments of Missouri’s descent into misery have been bipartisan. Yes, Republicans run the Missouri state government, but there have been shortcomings from Democrats too. At the end of 2020, the Missouri Democratic Party fired many of its union staff members with little to no notice, which came on the heels of the party firing its data director for attempting to unionize the staff. These were remarkable acts of hypocrisy for a party whose website professes to “lead the fight for working families,” and who relies on the support of unions and union voters for finances and votes. Earlier this year, after Democratic State Rep. Wiley Price was credibly accused of sleeping with an intern, all but one Democrat in the State House voted against a measure to expel him from office. Democrats did eventually expel him from membership in the Democratic caucus, although he is still a member of the legislature. This came after Republicans in the State House refused to include State Rep. Rick Roeber in their caucus (but did not expel him from the body) after his own children came forward during the 2020 election to beg voters to not elect their father because he physically and sexually assaulted them as kids. 

The misery of Missouri does not seem to be improving. The TikToks playing on the similarities of the words ‘misery’ and ‘Missouri’ were just teenage memes, but they rang quite true. Those TikTokers standing at the Missouri state border proclaiming to be in ‘misery’ were unfortunately correct. That said, there are great local leaders and organizers throughout the state—from Mayor Quinton Lucas in Kansas City to activist groups like Show Me Integrity and Action STL in St. Louis—fighting to take the misery out of Missouri. Missouri’s plummet into misery is happening at a rapid pace, but thanks to these admirable and determined activists, surrendering Missouri to a permanent state of misery is not an inevitability just yet.

Arik Wolk ‘21 studies in the College of Arts & Sciences. He can be reached at arik.wolk@wustl.edu.