Caffeinated Politics

Every community has its characters, but DeForest’s brief flirtation with anti‑fluoride fervor was a master class in what happens when logic takes a sabbatical and leaves the keys under the mat. For a stretch of time, the village’s drinking water policy was effectively held hostage by people who believed that decades of public‑health science could be outwitted by vibes, absurd and laughable Facebook posts, and whatever YouTube ‘researcherts’ served up.

Fluoride, you know, that boring, unsexy, dentist‑approved mineral that has quietly prevented cavities for generations, well, somehow it became the villain in a drama written by the anti‑MENSA crowd in this quiet Dane County village. And for a while, they won. They managed to yank fluoride out of the water supply, not because the evidence supported them, but because they were loud, persistent, and absolutely convinced that their Google searches outranked the CDC.

Then came the reckoning.

When voters recalled William Landgraf, both a foe of fluoride and someone who exhibited truly bizarre behavior, they had their first break in favor of sanity over the issue. Landgraf reportedly packed his bags and headed for Panama, which I suggest is a fittingly distant location from the public‑health standards he once helped dismantle. Shortly after, Rebecca Witherspoon, another ‘wunderkind’, seeing the writing on the wall in letters large enough to read from orbit, exited the board as well.

Their departures weren’t just political shifts; they were a restoration of basic civic hygiene. Both had positioned themselves as crusaders against fluoride, science, and, at times, common sense.

In conclusion, I want to press two points made in past columns about this matter. First, when elected officials treat scientific consensus as a conspiracy and public health as a personal experiment, the community pays the price. Second, it is the cautionary tale for every voter in every small town: crackpots don’t always arrive wearing a label. Sometimes they show up with a smile, a slogan, and just enough plausible normalcy to slip through an election unvetted. That’s how you end up with fluoride pulled from the water and a village board meeting that feels like an open‑mic night for pseudoscience.

I am very pleased that DeForest corrected its course. It proves that democracy prevails when the citizens demand accountability.