Recent Ridiculousness, Right Here In River City...

 To briefly recap some recent ridiculousness, right here in River City, from the usual suspects:

1. 'We cannot possibly start any new projects to improve the city until the potholes are fixed, every last pothole, and there are no new potholes, forever. Only Mason City has potholes, and they keep having new potholes every year, and it is surely because we have bad leaders. All money for projects, even grant money, must be some taxpayer's money somewhere, and it would be better spent on fixing potholes, even if it's not legal to re-appropriate it for fixing potholes. Also: nobody ever does anything new or interesting around here. Our city leaders should definitely start some new projects or something interesting. I don't know why they don't try that. Just don't use any taxpayer or grant money to do it though.'

2. 'There are not enough high school marching bands in the Band Festival anymore. Surely this is because high schoolers Just Do Not Care, and not because the fifty school districts within driving distance fifty years ago have consolidated down to a fraction of that since the farm crisis. There are definitely more towns with high school bands in Minnesota. This definitely has nothing to do with the massive public education cuts made by the Iowa State legislature. It is definitely the fault of the local 'woke' school board. Also the local high school marching band can't possibly sound as good as it used to when it was under the Old Mascot.'

3. 'The local school board is full of 'Social Justice Warriors' who clearly hate teachers and that is why there's not an agreement on the teacher contract. The book banning White Nationalist school board candidates who liked the Old Mascot and attacked trans students and hate immigrant students would definitely have given the teachers a better contract.'

4. 'There were never, ever, ever any Immigrant people who did not speak English in this town before. They all just showed up yesterday. My grandparents and great grandparents spoke perfect English and never had to learn a new language when they got here five generations ago from [insert country]. The teachers back then never had to deal with immigrant children like they do now. No, don't show me any of your 'woke' historical photos or news clippings or the local cemetery or church records. Can't see how any of that would be relevant to this discussion.'

5. 'There aren't enough floats in the Band Festival. There need to be more floats. Why aren't there more floats? Also the parade is over two hours long. That's too much....'

(For the record, the Band Festival was one of the best in recent memory, and we had perfect weather for it Saturday. The bands were all amazing, especially our local band, and each high school band had an impressive number of kids participating given the size of their school districts. And there were at least 20 different languages being spoken in our local school district a century ago, many of them European and Eastern European, but also from around the world, due to our local industries).