In one small prairie town, two warring visions of America
By TIM SULLIVAN
Associated Press
BENSON, Minn. (AP) — The headline in the little newspaper said COVID-19 numbers were spiking in the farm towns of western Minnesota. Doctors urged people to get vaccinations, the Monitor-News reported. But to some in the town of Benson, the Monitor-News was lying. It’s vaccinations that are killing people, they say. It’s another measure of how, in an America increasingly split by warring visions of itself, division doesn’t just play out on cable television, or in mayhem at the U.S. Capitol. It has seeped into the American fabric, all the way to Benson’s 12th Street, where two next-door neighbors — the publisher of the Monitor-News, and a harsh critic — can live in different worlds.
