THE FIGHT FOR DEMOCRACY IN THE STATES.

• Author: Conniff, Ruth
• Position: MIDDLE AMERICA

A November 30 glossy magazine feature in Vanity Fair teased readers with the promise of "A Wisconsin Death Trip for Our Times," led by gonzo tour guide Jeff Sharlet, a journalist and best-selling author whose book is reviewed in this issue of the magazine. Sharlet's peek into the heart of Midwestern darkness depicts America's Dairyland as downright dangerous.

Knocking on doors with "F--Biden" and "Don't Tread on Me" flags, he interviews locals across the state and creates a composite portrait of deranged, tattooed, gun-toting insurrectionists readying themselves for imminent civil war. A friend of mine who lives in North Carolina sent me a link to Sharlet's piece with the message, "After reading this Vanity Fair piece, not so sure I wanna come visit y'all." Surely a Southerner could see through the Midwestern version of Deliverance, I told her.

Shuddering at stereotypes of exotic rural people is an increasingly popular pastime in liberal urban enclaves across the United States. It's not a healthy pursuit, as I said to Sharlet, who took to Twitter to defend his nihilistic take on my home state after I criticized it in a column for the Wisconsin Examiner. Yes, he's a talented writer. And yes, there are some paranoid, alienated voters out here in fly-over land. But reality does not look quite as dark as Vanity Fair's horror film depiction of the Midwest.

Sharlet follows in the footsteps of his former teacher Michael Lesy, who wrote the original Wisconsin Death Trip book, published in 1973, after rummaging through Wisconsin Historical Society archives as a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin. Lesy's eerie collection of black-and-white photos and newspaper clippings about arson, madness, murder, deadly disease, and suicide in Black River Falls between the years of 1885 and 1910 became a cult classic. (A 1999 documentary film version added dramatizations of the exploits of serial killers Ed Gein and Jeffrey Dahmer.)

Lesy writes about the brutal economic forces that bore down on workers and farmers in the late nineteenth century. Bankruptcy was as much an epidemic as diphtheria and smallpox. Ruined farmers frequently died by suicide. Paranoia was a natural reaction to the chaos and cruelty of the world at the time, Lesy theorized. What he missed was the larger political context, including the rise of "Fighting Bob" La Follette and the progressive movement, one of the most consequential developments of the last century.

Fast forward to...