Hank Munzer is one of those far-right nuts, a braggart and bully, and one of those people who was in Washington DC on January 6th, and who is proud of it, despite being arrested and facing a prison sentence. He’s also unfortunate because one of his fellow residents of Dillon, Montana has written an essay about how screwed up small-town conservatives have become, and uses Munzer as a specific, named example. That’s a brave act — I guarantee you that this essay is a hot topic at the Dillon cafe and in telephone gossip. I know, because his description of his county sounds a lot like mine.

A generation ago, one national politician described our state as “hyper rural.” You know the feeling? My county, larger than Connecticut, boasts about 9,000 residents and few traffic lights. Most Americans can’t imagine or understand or appreciate such a mode of life. Many pass through but few would choose to stay. In pockets like mine, it’s an unimaginable distance to D.C. or New York—other countries.

Stevens County, Minnesota is a bit smaller geographically, and we have 10,000 residents (optimistically), and two, count’em, two traffic lights. Similarly, both Morris and Dillon were named after late 19th century railroad executives. But we also have a university in town. I guess that makes us immensely more cosmopolitan than Beaverhead County, Montana, but we’re still in the same ballpark of rural, conservative counties, and the descriptions sound familiar.

Hank Munzer’s building also has analogs here.

The paint job on Hank’s business building proves his lie as it is far more than an eyesore; as a calculated act of visual violence, it repels many of us and, according to one local realtor, dissuades occasional prospects who considered moving here. One friend told me she no longer drives on this main street; another said she chants “a–hole, a–hole, a–hole” every time she rides by. The city council does nothing because of Fred’s ostensible First Amendment protections.

My stomach used to cramp as I passed but in more recent seasons, I’ve grown numb, pretending to ignore this bizarre paint job. Most townspeople do their best to ignore it. I’ve never seen a building, graffitied or otherwise, like this one anywhere.

The essayist needs to get out more. I’ve seen similar in lots of places. Here in Morris, there’s a house on 7th Avenue with huge crudely painted signs saying “ALL LIVES MATTER,” with a thin blue line police flag and various other unsightly splatters on it — coincidentally, I also mutter “a–hole, a–hole, a–hole” when I drive by. In Glenwood, several miles away, there was a construction detour that forced us to swing through a residential zone with a house covered with gigantic Trump posters and signs — it was a major eyesore that had me saying even ruder things every time we had to drive by it.

I wish I could say it’s just one fringe lunatic in a small town in Montana, but they’re everywhere. And they’ve become bold and outspoken and swagger when they trumpet their idiotic conspiracy theories, and pretend they’re not on a downward spiral.

In his spot-on analysis of my state, “Fifty-Six Counties,” novelist Russell Rowland defines a fierce love of “the land or their families or their country” characteristic, I believe, of rural Americans: “They love until it makes them blind, until they feel the need to barricade themselves against anything that threatens that love.”

That circling-the-wagons mentality against ostensible outside threats, a species or xenophobia and denial, results in destructive conduct: “So we drink. We kill ourselves. We throw our sinking self-image out onto those around us, sometimes in violent, ugly ways, and we decide that our problems are everyone else’s fault, and that if they would go away, or act more like we do, or learn to think more like we think, then we would feel better.”

In such soil grows the Hankss of rural communities. After all, “they” are out to get us, right? And rural problems come from elsewhere, according to this self-delusion.

This toxic combination of ignorance, victimhood, naiveté, and auto-hypnosis, now commonplace, would remain minuscule but for alt-right media platforms.

That’s the thing: they’ve found self-reinforcing online communities where every stupid thing they say and believe gets echoed and praised by other people who also believe the same stupid thing, and they lose all sense of perspective and swell up with righteousness and think petty obsessions make them great and meaningful. So here’s where Hank Munzer stands now.

He was arrested about a week after the Capital riot and charged with one felony count and four misdemeanors, two of those disorderly or disruptive conduct. Among other things he was accused of recording videos inside the Capitol. Six days later he posted those on Facebook. That fact alone evidences his online dependency. Did he know or care about legality? He thinks he did nothing wrong and only exercised free speech.

He was arraigned then released on bail—he grins in his orange prison suit—and then he got to work on his business’ building in Dillon.

Hank was supposed to go to trial in August 2022 but now there’s been another half-year postponement. He’s wanted a change of venue but will be tried in Washington D.C. He prefers to represent himself rather than use a lawyer. That fact suggests the level of his self-righteous zealotry or his narcissistic personality disorder. Or both.

Meanwhile, he enjoys local notoreity. He even ran for city council and garnered dozens of votes. Whose sick joke is that? Exactly whom in rural America is he speaking for? One flavor of rural America consists of a range of deep resentments; above all, resentment of the federal government. Nothing new here, given the long history of agricultural subsidies and dependencies.

Same here, except that I’d add that many of those resentments are fostered by the corporate farms that have eaten up the small landowners. It’s just good policy to give the peons a far-away enemy to hate, lest they notice that greed is destroying their local community.

I agree, though, that small town problems have been getting enflamed by the pernicious poison of talk radio, Fox “News,” and Facebook.