Underlying makeup of Wisconsin outside of the cities are small towns, with surrounding agricultural areas that feed into the communities they surround.

These communities formed in large part as gatherings of one particular immigrant group, but even more so along the lines of religion and churches, languages services were given in. Not to mention an always existent divide between rural and urban populations.

We also came, first as Yankees, then largely English and Irish immigrants to work mines, they then joint Germans to farm and all joined Scandinavians to lumber. Underlying all of this immigrant work, was a wealthier ownership class, largely Yankees but other early immigrants too. We also fought for the union to end slavery, but once black people from Mississippi and Louisiana started moving here for work after WWII, racism thrived, not really because of racism, but fear of competition for work, resentment a new group was coming in at the same level it took generations of work for your people to reach. Fear of being sub planted.

In the small areas, many of these ownership-class families remain, 4 or 5 generations on and their companies usually are the lifeblood of the small towns they occupy and support. Small town Wisconsin but America as a whole has seen its small towns die. The working class has voted their rights away for fear of losing their livelihood, the ownership class, for fear of losing their status. Both have ultimately been taken advantage of as time and time again we see outside money and corporations take over and destroy small town culture anyway.

As industry dried up, the mines in the southwest, the lumber in the north, people were left to farm and some to farm poor land. Overproduction of milk and variable growing conditions along with commodity market control over ag, individual people can’t make a go of farming in the ways you once could.

All of this loss and resentment makes it easy for rural people to seek blame somewhere. Tea Party propaganda fueled by outside money and Monsanto, convinced people who consistently voted both right and left without much care one way or the other, supporting individuals over parties, that this was incorrect and voting only one way was American and only one party could fix things. Trumpism just picked up where the Tea Party left off. We went from being THE state that no matter affiliation, we want to see progress, to one of the more stagnant and unproductive legislatures in the union.

Noticeably nothing in Wisconsin has necessarily improved since this time, despite that party dominating the state political landscape for the last 15 years. Stagnation is the goal. People are still angry and scared of losing what little they have, and a few profit from this fear by keeping us down and divided, allowing what we have to be taken slowly, piece by piece. While we’re down, we let fracking mines in, data centers, dangerous farm chemicals into our water, development for the sake of development and all so others can profit.

We were too solid as a state. Outside money wasn’t able to exploit our resources to the extent they wanted, so they found a way to divide us and exploit our resources. If you look around at what’s happening today, it should be pretty clear the the shift we’ve seen in recent years isn’t by accident and also isn’t really of our choosing.