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[wierd]

I would question "What is the INTENT for such an action" in such a vacuum then.  Again, the results would be identical to if you just ignored states even exist.

[dragdeler]

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[dragdeler]

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[wierd]

Geographically, much of the land area in the central corridor states are rural.


They live in tiny towns of about a few hundred people, tops-- if they live in an actual town at all. 


As such, notions about "Going for a night out" and such, are alien concepts, at least in the same proportions of say, an urban LA resident.


For a good comparison, see how say-- an appalachian mountain person differs from your typical californian.  (I mean, they only made a fucking sitcom about that kind of thing.)


[Note:  This is not meant to imply that rural central US residents are exactly like Appalachian mountain people.  Only that they are more like said demographic than they are like people from LA.  The intention with the comparison above, is to point out that radical differences exist, and have existed for a very long time, to the point of being a literal humorous cliche.  A show like Beverly Hillbillies would not work at all, if such cultural disparities did not exist.  Within the central corridor states, you have culture shaped from local transmigrations (such as from the 30s), from neighboring states that had similar cultures, from similar geographically isolating circumstances, such as from panhandle oklahoma, or from almost swamp-like regions of Arkansas, or semi-mountainous areas in Missouri.  The local rural culture (in at least Kansas, which I can speak about at length, since I grew up there, and in that environment) differs significantly from urban culture, in a number of respects;  Firstly, you cannot rely on local law enforcement *AT ALL*.  The counties in question are poor, have large land areas, and cannot afford large police forces to begin with. Poor bridge maintenance from low county incomes and generally dirt roads of dubious levels of maintenance, mean a "Rapid" response to a disturbance is about an hour or two after notifying 911.  That's assuming the police are driving like maniacs over washboard, Dukes of Hazard style. So, your typical neighborhood setting is less "Suburban US", and much more "About a dozen families in a 30ish mile radius all have mutually understood agreements to monitor each other's properties to make sure miscreants and hooligans from the local towns dont come out and shit everything up."  A noteworthy example, is from people from a nearby town thinking it is 'perfectly OK' to use their brand new quad bikes they got for their birthday, to go "Dirt racing" and "Terrace hopping" on recently plowed fields.  The reality is that the farmers will miss the planting season if they have to re-plow, because hooligans can't understand that this is simply not allowed.  Farmers are busy people, regardless of what the urban stereotype of them is-- and they can't always be watching for such hooligans-- which is why this kind of de-facto neighborhood watch exists.  People understand the implications of such misbehavior out in the sticks, where such rationalization of complex consequences never dawns on the more urban-raised.  The cliche of "Farmer with shotgun is unfriendly", derives from city people getting told rather bluntly, that their hooliganism cannot be tolerated, and to please leave. The reality, is that if you aren't up to hooliganism, the farmers tend to be very personable and friendly people. They just take a dim view on having mountains of city people's trash dumped on the roadsides, or having their cows tipped over, or having their freshly plowed fields tore up by dumbfucks-- and band together to stop that kind of bullshit-- often with guns in hand, because the police cannot respond in time. This kind of extended familiarity and insular community has much more in common with the Appalachian mountain people, than it does your typical LA resident.  As such, the rural people probably will take a very dim view to having a shitload of LA miscreants that see a plowed field and think "OH WHAT FUN! LET'S TEAR IT UP!" dumped on them-- just for starters.]

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[wierd]

It's quite hilarious, as most rural communities cannot operate without an analog of communism.

See my bracketed edit above.


People still have a concept of land ownership, but there is also an over-arching 'community maintenance' social dynamic that holds it together-- and even allows for it to operate at a financial level-- see also, the various cooperative unions in the rural parts of the US, that enable crops to get harvested and processed.


The issue with modern attempts at communism, is that they all attempt to enforce what needs to occur naturally, and attempt to do so between disparate groups, resulting in abuses.  (See also, the holodmor and pals.) 

Much like in the bracketed aside-- the city people do not understand, do not care to understand, and actively seek to countermand-- the overarching social dynamic of the rural areas, in order to exploit the resources and labor of those populations for thier own selfish ends. (dumping trash, destroying fields on a day trip with an ATV, et al.)


The rural people are against such forced, "top down" solutions, while simultaneously manifesting more actual proto-communist mores. 

They (rightly, IMO) fear the city saying "There are more of us, and you have to do as we say."

This is especially so, in rural Kansas; Lots of the local Mennonite and Amish demographics out here directly ESCAPED the holodomor.

[dragdeler]

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[Starver]

I was pretty sure that Starver's hypothetical goal was to satisfy some OCD, not preserve the sovereignty of the states.

Naturally. I couldn't care less about what the inhabitants think. If I have to entirely smoosh out the 'smaller' states to roll over 'suburbs' or even more of distant cities (¿••, "Portland, Wyoming", "Chicago, Nebraska", "Detroit, Iowa", ••?) then let it be so!

(How many of the Infinity Gauntlet stones do you think I need to finger-click this into happening?)

[voliol]

To answer Delphonso some page back: There is a plan for subverting the EC, the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact(NPVIC). I only know it from another CGP Grey video, but basically it is a contract for the states to sign, where they are obliged to vote for the presidential candidate who won the common vote nationwide, but only if enough states have signed the NPVIC that they have a majority of the electoral votes. At this point, the EC would still techically be there, but the majority of the electoral votes would go to the presidential candidate who won the common vote, and it would thus be nullified.

It’s a slow and bureaucratically heavy plan, of course, but disregarding that, would it actually help? Yes, I would say, mostly because it strenghens the American democracy at the concious level. While it doesn’t reduce the spoiler effect caused by third-party candidates, FPTF would still ravish at the state/county/town levels, and reelya is probably right it would hurt ”liberal oases” of the USA, it would also hurt any and all conservative ”oases”. Basically, the average voting power would increase, which could be a great motivator to get people to vote, and have them be further invested in American democracy.

[JoshuaFH]

Geographically, much of the land area in the central corridor states are rural.


They live in tiny towns of about a few hundred people, tops-- if they live in an actual town at all. 


As such, notions about "Going for a night out" and such, are alien concepts, at least in the same proportions of say, an urban LA resident.


For a good comparison, see how say-- an appalachian mountain person differs from your typical californian.  (I mean, they only made a fucking sitcom about that kind of thing.)


[Note:  This is not meant to imply that rural central US residents are exactly like Appalachian mountain people.  Only that they are more like said demographic than they are like people from LA.  The intention with the comparison above, is to point out that radical differences exist, and have existed for a very long time, to the point of being a literal humorous cliche.  A show like Beverly Hillbillies would not work at all, if such cultural disparities did not exist.  Within the central corridor states, you have culture shaped from local transmigrations (such as from the 30s), from neighboring states that had similar cultures, from similar geographically isolating circumstances, such as from panhandle oklahoma, or from almost swamp-like regions of Arkansas, or semi-mountainous areas in Missouri.  The local rural culture (in at least Kansas, which I can speak about at length, since I grew up there, and in that environment) differs significantly from urban culture, in a number of respects;  Firstly, you cannot rely on local law enforcement *AT ALL*.  The counties in question are poor, have large land areas, and cannot afford large police forces to begin with. Poor bridge maintenance from low county incomes and generally dirt roads of dubious levels of maintenance, mean a "Rapid" response to a disturbance is about an hour or two after notifying 911.  That's assuming the police are driving like maniacs over washboard, Dukes of Hazard style. So, your typical neighborhood setting is less "Suburban US", and much more "About a dozen families in a 30ish mile radius all have mutually understood agreements to monitor each other's properties to make sure miscreants and hooligans from the local towns dont come out and shit everything up."  A noteworthy example, is from people from a nearby town thinking it is 'perfectly OK' to use their brand new quad bikes they got for their birthday, to go "Dirt racing" and "Terrace hopping" on recently plowed fields.  The reality is that the farmers will miss the planting season if they have to re-plow, because hooligans can't understand that this is simply not allowed.  Farmers are busy people, regardless of what the urban stereotype of them is-- and they can't always be watching for such hooligans-- which is why this kind of de-facto neighborhood watch exists.  People understand the implications of such misbehavior out in the sticks, where such rationalization of complex consequences never dawns on the more urban-raised.  The cliche of "Farmer with shotgun is unfriendly", derives from city people getting told rather bluntly, that their hooliganism cannot be tolerated, and to please leave. The reality, is that if you aren't up to hooliganism, the farmers tend to be very personable and friendly people. They just take a dim view on having mountains of city people's trash dumped on the roadsides, or having their cows tipped over, or having their freshly plowed fields tore up by dumbfucks-- and band together to stop that kind of bullshit-- often with guns in hand, because the police cannot respond in time. This kind of extended familiarity and insular community has much more in common with the Appalachian mountain people, than it does your typical LA resident.  As such, the rural people probably will take a very dim view to having a shitload of LA miscreants that see a plowed field and think "OH WHAT FUN! LET'S TEAR IT UP!" dumped on them-- just for starters.]

Just write a book wierd, just do it. Any topic is fine, I'd just like to see you tackle a subject or story in long form, whatever it is.

[wierd]

O.o

Where did this come from?

I really dont have the time to sit down and invest in writing a book..  Besides, what I consider interesting is usually not of much interest to other people, and tends to be niche.

[JoshuaFH]

O.o

Where did this come from?

I really dont have the time to sit down and invest in writing a book..  Besides, what I consider interesting is usually not of much interest to other people, and tends to be niche.

That was just the first thing that popped into my head after reading about the foibles of rural farmers. It just made me curious what a book by wierd would look or read like. IMO, a book's topic doesn't matter much, the author's attitude and personality will bleed through, which actually determine how good the book is. Now, whether or not it would sell is another thing entirely.

Though now I'm a little embarrassed. I feel I've been inappropriate.

[wierd]

I'll just take it as flattery.


I am a kid that loved computers, who grew up in the last generation without internet, who had to suffer large trying to get internet service out in boonieville land, where daily weather and wind patterns would cause sufficient data errors on your dialup internet connection (That of course, being rural, goes through enough antiquated phone network switching equipment that has not been properly serviced since the 1940s, when they were installed DUE TO AN ACT OF CONGRESS, making what should be a 56kbaud connection actually closer to a 28.8kbaud connection, from all the resends and parity errors the connection suffers) --- Who grew up rural, then moved to the city---  and as such, has experienced both walks of life, and thus can critique both.


Personally, I find that the rural people tend to be better "People"--- in that they tend to treat each other and strangers much better than city people do, by and large. (there are always assholes. Always. They are a fact of life.  However, if you have say-- a 10% incidence rate of assholes, and 10 families in a huge area-- the incident asshole population is gonna be 1 to 2 people, and EVERYONE knows know they are, and EVERYONE works together to deal with the resident asshole among the rural community and their bullshit.---- HOWEVER, in a dense urban environment, where you can have 100 people in a single apartment building-- that same 10% statistic means you have 10 assholes in that one building alone, and people are less chummy in general, because they are subjected to much greater levels of asshole each day.  This leads to a kind of festering "Fuck it-- I will do what *I* want, because you are all assholes anyway!", which leads to a degenerate cycle, socially speaking.)

Due to their isolation, they tend to be more ignorant; As in, their total knowledge pool is diminished.  However, that does not make them "Stupid".  (This is a very important distinction, and often urban people think that farmers are dumb. This is simply untrue.)  They tend to be more honest, they tend to work harder and understand the consequences of not working better than those who are sheltered (such as through multiple layers of social support networks, or simply from pathological cases of afluenza) from such consequences.  (Please do not take this to mean that inner city poor people are not well aware of such consequences; By no means! Indeed, the rural people tend to have more natural resources at their disposal to deal with such adversities than do the resource constrained urban poor, which is why urban poor have to resort to criminality to survive.)  This means that as a cultural fixture, the whole community works together to tackle large, but necessary projects, and often simply volunteer work without any notion of direct recompense.  EG, The farmer that lives next to an essential, but often hard-to-maintain section of dirt road, will invest time and energy keeping it graded and passable, which other farmers in the area then make use of in the area-- in exchange, they may monitor that person's property better for hooligans or wild nuisance animal activity, or may monitor fencing for signs of wear and tear, and do volunteer repair work, etc---  and in so doing, the local community of farmers all contribute to each other in small but meaningful ways;  This is the "Proto-communist" more I am referring to.  Each does according to their ability, to each, according to their need, and everyone comes out of the arrangement better off-- but each one clearly owns, and respects not only their own property but that of all other members of the community-- Ownership is still very much a thing.

The major source of adversity comes from city people who do not understand this kind of dynamic-- who think farmers are all a bunch of lazy dumb people who just inherited a bunch of land, and then fuck off all day after working for just a few days a year (and not year-round, all damn day, like actually is the case), and who are selfish, greedy bastards who just dont want to let them come out and play with their ATVs that the city wont let them drive around on the parkways (For the same fucking reasons, more or less-- EG, that the activity is ******NOT****** "Harmless Fun," SOMEBODY has to clean up after, and fix the damage they do when they engage in such activities on public lands-- and when they decide to sneak out and do it serruptitiously on private lands, they act like the world is out to get them, rather than wise up that hey, maybe there's a reason nobody wants them doing that.  Anyway-- when such people come out and go "Oh, nobody will notice if I just DUMP A SHIT LOAD OF OLD RUSTY APPLIANCES IN THAT OVERFLOW CULVERT--- or "Nobody will care if I dump 50 bags of used diapers and other disgusting rubbish on this roadside-- NOBODY (important, smart, or valuable that anyone cares about) Lives here!"  etc-- decide to enter the rural areas, and do those kinds of things, it is what rural people come to expect from city people (since otherwise city people are completely absorbed in their own daily drudgeries, and really, the intricacies of how to mend a fence when you see one down, or why you should round up your neighbor's cattle when they bust the fence (again), are alien concepts for them--- and so the community features of rural areas are alien things as well-- and never enter their minds-- so, they never have any reason to ever visit rural areas in a non-hooligan fashion.  It's always "Lets go out and go hunting (even though we dont actually know what a deer looks like, or how to hunt, and will frequently shoot at anything that moves, including cows, horses, dogs, cats, goats, sheep, and basically anything else, because of this lack of experience)" or "Hey, Let's go out to the river and have a good time! (where we will get drunk and disorderly, because we know the cops will take a long time to show up, will leave our bottles and trash because we know nobody will be able to enforce having us clean it up, will make a big assed uncontrolled pit fire, because no game warden, etc...)" and other such misbehavior. 

This then causes the farmers to respond instinctively with "get the shotgun."

It is NOT that the farmers are mean, surly, un-neighborly, or otherwise clannish horrible people like from Silent Hill.  It just means they understand, and have to contend with all the consequences that the city people are (purposefully) dumping on them, when they come out to "Have fun".  (Or when they dump trash, or unwanted large breed dogs, or otherwise be a menace to everyone else through their shamelessly selfish actions.)  It means that "No, we do not want to clean up after you and your bullshit-- Pack up and go home."

Naturally, that causes "Animosity."

[SalmonGod]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I'll just take it as flattery.


I am a kid that loved computers, who grew up in the last generation without internet, who had to suffer large trying to get internet service out in boonieville land, where daily weather and wind patterns would cause sufficient data errors on your dialup internet connection (That of course, being rural, goes through enough antiquated phone network switching equipment that has not been properly serviced since the 1940s, when they were installed DUE TO AN ACT OF CONGRESS, making what should be a 56kbaud connection actually closer to a 28.8kbaud connection, from all the resends and parity errors the connection suffers) --- Who grew up rural, then moved to the city---  and as such, has experienced both walks of life, and thus can critique both.


Personally, I find that the rural people tend to be better "People"--- in that they tend to treat each other and strangers much better than city people do, by and large. (there are always assholes. Always. They are a fact of life.  However, if you have say-- a 10% incidence rate of assholes, and 10 families in a huge area-- the incident asshole population is gonna be 1 to 2 people, and EVERYONE knows know they are, and EVERYONE works together to deal with the resident asshole among the rural community and their bullshit.---- HOWEVER, in a dense urban environment, where you can have 100 people in a single apartment building-- that same 10% statistic means you have 10 assholes in that one building alone, and people are less chummy in general, because they are subjected to much greater levels of asshole each day.  This leads to a kind of festering "Fuck it-- I will do what *I* want, because you are all assholes anyway!", which leads to a degenerate cycle, socially speaking.)

Due to their isolation, they tend to be more ignorant; As in, their total knowledge pool is diminished.  However, that does not make them "Stupid".  (This is a very important distinction, and often urban people think that farmers are dumb. This is simply untrue.)  They tend to be more honest, they tend to work harder and understand the consequences of not working better than those who are sheltered (such as through multiple layers of social support networks, or simply from pathological cases of afluenza) from such consequences.  (Please do not take this to mean that inner city poor people are not well aware of such consequences; By no means! Indeed, the rural people tend to have more natural resources at their disposal to deal with such adversities than do the resource constrained urban poor, which is why urban poor have to resort to criminality to survive.)  This means that as a cultural fixture, the whole community works together to tackle large, but necessary projects, and often simply volunteer work without any notion of direct recompense.  EG, The farmer that lives next to an essential, but often hard-to-maintain section of dirt road, will invest time and energy keeping it graded and passable, which other farmers in the area then make use of in the area-- in exchange, they may monitor that person's property better for hooligans or wild nuisance animal activity, or may monitor fencing for signs of wear and tear, and do volunteer repair work, etc---  and in so doing, the local community of farmers all contribute to each other in small but meaningful ways;  This is the "Proto-communist" more I am referring to.  Each does according to their ability, to each, according to their need, and everyone comes out of the arrangement better off-- but each one clearly owns, and respects not only their own property but that of all other members of the community-- Ownership is still very much a thing.

The major source of adversity comes from city people who do not understand this kind of dynamic-- who think farmers are all a bunch of lazy dumb people who just inherited a bunch of land, and then fuck off all day after working for just a few days a year (and not year-round, all damn day, like actually is the case), and who are selfish, greedy bastards who just dont want to let them come out and play with their ATVs that the city wont let them drive around on the parkways (For the same fucking reasons, more or less-- EG, that the activity is ******NOT****** "Harmless Fun," SOMEBODY has to clean up after, and fix the damage they do when they engage in such activities on public lands-- and when they decide to sneak out and do it serruptitiously on private lands, they act like the world is out to get them, rather than wise up that hey, maybe there's a reason nobody wants them doing that.  Anyway-- when such people come out and go "Oh, nobody will notice if I just DUMP A SHIT LOAD OF OLD RUSTY APPLIANCES IN THAT OVERFLOW CULVERT--- or "Nobody will care if I dump 50 bags of used diapers and other disgusting rubbish on this roadside-- NOBODY (important, smart, or valuable that anyone cares about) Lives here!"  etc-- decide to enter the rural areas, and do those kinds of things, it is what rural people come to expect from city people (since otherwise city people are completely absorbed in their own daily drudgeries, and really, the intricacies of how to mend a fence when you see one down, or why you should round up your neighbor's cattle when they bust the fence (again), are alien concepts for them--- and so the community features of rural areas are alien things as well-- and never enter their minds-- so, they never have any reason to ever visit rural areas in a non-hooligan fashion.  It's always "Lets go out and go hunting (even though we dont actually know what a deer looks like, or how to hunt, and will frequently shoot at anything that moves, including cows, horses, dogs, cats, goats, sheep, and basically anything else, because of this lack of experience)" or "Hey, Let's go out to the river and have a good time! (where we will get drunk and disorderly, because we know the cops will take a long time to show up, will leave our bottles and trash because we know nobody will be able to enforce having us clean it up, will make a big assed uncontrolled pit fire, because no game warden, etc...)" and other such misbehavior. 

This then causes the farmers to respond instinctively with "get the shotgun."

It is NOT that the farmers are mean, surly, un-neighborly, or otherwise clannish horrible people like from Silent Hill.  It just means they understand, and have to contend with all the consequences that the city people are (purposefully) dumping on them, when they come out to "Have fun".  (Or when they dump trash, or unwanted large breed dogs, or otherwise be a menace to everyone else through their shamelessly selfish actions.)  It means that "No, we do not want to clean up after you and your bullshit-- Pack up and go home."

Naturally, that causes "Animosity."

I grew up from ages 8 - 16 in a small Indiana town.  Not as unpopulated as what you describe, but you'd have to drive half an hour from where I lived to find a stoplight.  I was right in the middle of an almost suburban like cluster of homes around a post office, church, and elementary school surrounded by expanses of farmland.  Almost suburban in that there were some clusters of a dozen-at-most homes built close together amidst the larger properties and fields/woods.  I was right in the middle of town, just 5 minutes walk down the street from the post office, and the road I lived on, plus another road adjacent to me were both short dead ends.  I also grew up on well water.  So not as remote as you by the sound of it, but I think I qualify for first-hand experience comment.

Your experience with them is most definitely not universal.  Mine was "clannish horrible people like from Silent Hill".  I have actually described the place for a long time as "like how small towns are depicted in horror movies."  That hospitality you say they have did not extend to anyone who didn't fit in with the local culture.  I'm 37, and was also interested in computers from an early age.  My earliest memory is playing Frogger with my dad at 2 years old.  And we were early adopters of internet.  Started on a 28.8 modem in 1996.  This is just one of the things that had me marked as the fair game nerd kid.  Others were playing D&D, liking books, or talking in "big words".  It was a minority who were truly assholes to me, like you say.  But I wasn't considered a part of the community, so those assholes could do whatever they wanted, and no one cared.  No one thought twice about a laugh at my expense, or about participating in non-violent fuckery.  Authority figures would approve, or even participate, as I have described here in the past.  And our home was vandalized while we were in the process of moving away from that place.  They tarred my dad's treasured canoe, which had been his dad's, who died when he was a kid.  My parents weren't even "city folk" exactly.  They'd both grown up farmers.

And the culture was truly fucked in ways that have little to do with resentment for or misunderstanding by city folk.  Anti-intellectualism is real and rampant.  I grew up hearing lynching and gaybashing jokes regularly.  Witnessed some small animal torture by my neighbors (such as testing out the new BB gun on the birds living in their own birdhouse).  Heard jovial stories about gruesome torture of cats (don't know why but hatred of cats is really common among hicks), gossiped openly in the middle of class without any fear of others hearing and no one who heard showing any disgust or protest.  Things like setting them on fire, or tying their tails together and throwing them over a line so they hang against each other and fight.  The people who would chase you off their property with a shotgun weren't defending their farmland from being torn up by city folk who didn't know better.  They were defending small broken down meth shacks with half starved angry dogs tied up on their front lawns (one that almost mauled me and my brother once when it broke its chain and got loose).  When I sold candy bars door to door to raise funds for the elementary school at 9 years old, there were plenty who were nice about it, but also people who answered the door naked or groups of angry men in flannel drinking and yelling "Git outta here - we don't want nothin!"  It's not like that kind of stuff was every house, but considering I didn't visit that many houses (there weren't many to visit)...

And from what I've heard, such places, around Indiana at least, have gotten even worse in recent years.  Hard drug problems in rural Indiana are even worse than urban, and small towns like that are generally really fucked up, hateful places.  And I don't mean to imply that all of ruraldom is like that.  I know there's nice places and nice people out there away from cities and suburbs.  I visited one just a couple weeks ago and met some nice people.  Just felt like it should be pointed out from first-hand experience that your description and explanation of rural people and places are definitely not universal.

[Maximum Spin]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I grew up from ages 8 - 16 in a small Indiana town.  Not as unpopulated as what you describe, but you'd have to drive half an hour from where I lived to find a stoplight.  I was right in the middle of an almost suburban like cluster of homes around a post office, church, and elementary school surrounded by expanses of farmland.  Almost suburban in that there were some clusters of a dozen-at-most homes built close together amidst the larger properties and fields/woods.  I was right in the middle of town, just 5 minutes walk down the street from the post office, and the road I lived on, plus another road adjacent to me were both short dead ends.  I also grew up on well water.  So not as remote as you by the sound of it, but I think I qualify for first-hand experience comment.

Your experience with them is most definitely not universal.  Mine was "clannish horrible people like from Silent Hill".  I have actually described the place for a long time as "like how small towns are depicted in horror movies."  That hospitality you say they have did not extend to anyone who didn't fit in with the local culture.  I'm 37, and was also interested in computers from an early age.  My earliest memory is playing Frogger with my dad at 2 years old.  And we were early adopters of internet.  Started on a 28.8 modem in 1996.  This is just one of the things that had me marked as the fair game nerd kid.  Others were playing D&D, liking books, or talking in "big words".  It was a minority who were truly assholes to me, like you say.  But I wasn't considered a part of the community, so those assholes could do whatever they wanted, and no one cared.  No one thought twice about a laugh at my expense, or about participating in non-violent fuckery.  Authority figures would approve, or even participate, as I have described here in the past.  And our home was vandalized while we were in the process of moving away from that place.  They tarred my dad's treasured canoe, which had been his dad's, who died when he was a kid.  My parents weren't even "city folk" exactly.  They'd both grown up farmers.

And the culture was truly fucked in ways that have little to do with resentment for or misunderstanding by city folk.  Anti-intellectualism is real and rampant.  I grew up hearing lynching and gaybashing jokes regularly.  Witnessed some small animal torture by my neighbors (such as testing out the new BB gun on the birds living in their own birdhouse).  Heard jovial stories about gruesome torture of cats (don't know why but hatred of cats is really common among hicks), gossiped openly in the middle of class without any fear of others hearing and no one who heard showing any disgust or protest.  Things like setting them on fire, or tying their tails together and throwing them over a line so they hang against each other and fight.  The people who would chase you off their property with a shotgun weren't defending their farmland from being torn up by city folk who didn't know better.  They were defending small broken down meth shacks with half starved angry dogs tied up on their front lawns (one that almost mauled me and my brother once when it broke its chain and got loose).  When I sold candy bars door to door to raise funds for the elementary school at 9 years old, there were plenty who were nice about it, but also people who answered the door naked or groups of angry men in flannel drinking and yelling "Git outta here - we don't want nothin!"  It's not like that kind of stuff was every house, but considering I didn't visit that many houses (there weren't many to visit)...

And from what I've heard, such places, around Indiana at least, have gotten even worse in recent years.  Hard drug problems in rural Indiana are even worse than urban, and small towns like that are generally really fucked up, hateful places.  And I don't mean to imply that all of ruraldom is like that.  I know there's nice places and nice people out there away from cities and suburbs.  I visited one just a couple weeks ago and met some nice people.  Just felt like it should be pointed out from first-hand experience that your description and explanation of rural people and places are definitely not universal.

Right, this doesn't sound like 'rural', this sounds like 'poor peri-Rust-Belt suburbs', which is exactly how you're describing it. These should be treated as different countries. People who live in towns and cities are awful people, of course.
(You actually sold those candy bars door to door? I didn't know anyone really did that, as opposed to just giving the thing to your parents to pass around at work and so on, but then, I'm at least a generation and a half after you)
Another important, but often downplayed, factor is where the people who live there come from, which defines the culture there. People where I live don't hate cats, for example: That attitude comes from specific parts of Europe where it has existed as a superstition since medieval times. Migrants bring their culture with them. This is why I always say that America is not one country.