However, the memories remain

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When the guys from Metallica released “The memory remains” in 1997, they explained that the lyrics to the song described an artist who loses her mind as her fame fades away.

The song has been referenced for those who continually seek the spotlight through whatever means necessary simply to continue to remain in that light.

Part of parenting in the Internet age is teaching children that words that are said and recorded never really go away, and everything printed online is recorded for that moment in time and saved forever SOMEWHERE.

Of course, if you were to review the social media postings of many adults, that’s perhaps a lesson that not just our children need to be taught.

At the paper, we have print copies of papers going back to 1911. Digital reproductions of the paper can be found on newspapers.com that date back to 1884. In other words, what has been printed doesn’t simply disappear, either.

Perhaps someone should remind South Dakota’s governor about this.

In recent stops across the country giving speeches — because it’s not as if there are any pressing issues here, right Dept. of Corrections? — Governor Kristi Noem has begun to lay out what can only be described as a pre-2024 White House run level of verbal warfare against her own fellow Republicans, specifically those that may also be eyeing a potential 2024 Presidential run.

At a recent speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference, better known as CPAC, Noem criticized other governors who enacted COVID-19 safety measures in their states and are now coming out strongly against such mandates.

“Demand honesty from your leaders and make sure that every one of them is willing to make the tough decisions,” Noem remarked to the crowd. She noted that South Dakota didn’t order businesses to shut down. “We didn’t mandate. We trusted our people and it told them that personal responsibility was the best answer.”

Gov. Noem can certainly present that image, and she has throughout the last year, beginning with a distinct change in her speech around the issue of COVID in June of 2020.

However, if we as voters are to “demand honesty”, then she will be in bad shape.

Reviewing the Plainsman archives from March, April, and May of 2020, I found no less than 40 articles covering press briefings that included the Governor with conversation about COVID closures or mandates at some point in the article. My email showed more than 20 press releases from the governor’s press team in those months relating to mandates or closures — and those are just the ones I still have saved.

The consistent messages from Governor Noem from March-May of 2020?

First, that she would not be ordering anything from her office. That is consistent. However, that is not the whole story, nor the truth, but we’ll come back to that.

The state constitution requires legislative approval of statewide closure actions, so she would have needed legislative support for such an action.

The governor set forth a trio of bills to the legislature on the final day of the 2020 session, including one that would have given the Department of Health shut-down power and emergency declaration power, but the legislature did not approve that measure.

So, while she did choose not to make statewide orders herself, she did attempt to give similar power to another department in the state, so to say the intention wasn’t there is disingenuous at best and flat lying at worst.

The second consistent message from that time period was that in lieu of her office making the order, she would entrust county and community governments to make those determinations for their own population, which did go along with the way the state constitution was set up - giving closure powers to municipal governments rather than state offices.

When Beadle County and the City of Huron put in notable mandates on March 22, 2020, those mandates were reviewed as more restrictive than what multiple states had put in place. In seven different pieces from March through May last year, Noem specifically praised Beadle County and/or Huron for swift, decisive action and praised the results of those actions in restricting further spread of COVID in the county in the month of April 2020, so she was not just on board with local governments putting forth restrictive mandates, she ENCOURAGED other counties to follow suit with the ones that were successful!

Third, the governor consistently put the ball in the court of businesses to close as outbreaks occurred, not acting from her office. She was putting the virus on the people, but not as a mode of personal responsibility, instead as a way of dodging any potential responsibility for her actions.

Yet, she issued an executive order on April 7, 2020, that ordered residents in Minnehaha and Lincoln counties who were deemed most at risk (those aged 65+ or with increased vulnerability due to underlying conditions) to stay home for a period of three weeks.

On that same day, she added stronger language for businesses across the entire state in Executive Order 2020-12 that both stated enclosed businesses shall “suspend or modify practices” for groups of 10 or more people and also stated that local governments shall restrict public gatherings of 10 or more people in their area, unless necessary.

That one day’s actions sure sounds like restricting “personal responsibility” and “mandating” behavior that Gov. Noem is so quick to downplay in her own actions around the virus.

While national voices did call out Gov. Noem in the early months of the pandemic for not shutting down businesses and such things at a state level, she was also positively cited frequently for encouraging strong local response by the state and local media.

That positive local press changed significantly as Noem became a divisive figurehead for COVID deniers to use on the effectiveness of state and local mandates, and by the time children returned to school in the fall of 2020, nearly all local mandates had been significantly reduced or removed, many stating their change was due to public pressure — pressure certainly encouraged when the state’s leader is disparaging any such actions that she was once encouraging.

After being praised by the governor for their quick and decisive response, local county and city leaders in Huron and Beadle County were left to feel as if the protections they had put in place were a negative thing by those words from the state’s top official, especially when further actions were taken within the city and county to require a mask in November 2020 as the virus peaked in the area.

Local leaders agonized over each of those decisions, yet were quickly and flippantly dismissed as “controlling” and “manipulative” by local residents heeding the governor’s language.

Now, we see a governor similarly flaunting her lack of action on a national stage this summer. While disingenuous at its core, it’s also harmful in the response it brings from the average citizen.

Two area women were recently featured in the Plainsman as they battle long-haul COVID contracted during the state’s significant surge in October/November 2020. They are among thousands in the state who survived the virus but are now suffering long-term effects.

Rather than the desire for the spotlight driving just HER mad, as the song says, it could endanger lives within the state, as vaccination rates have stalled to near zero at the same time that variants begin to also take hold within the state.

Perhaps it’s best to hand off the duties of leading the state to someone actually concerned about its inhabitants if the national spotlight focus is what is desired. South Dakota certainly wants and needs the leader described in that speech — honesty, grit, willing to take responsibility for making the tough decisions, not pass it off on others.

The evidence shows that’s not what we’re getting.