General Discussion

Rural America is envious of city America. They hold some falsehoods and some of it is just culture.

They have the impression that their taxes go to fund the cities, when the opposite is true. They have no clue the money that leaves the cities to support their roads, farms, schools, and lives.

But a lot of it is just the idea that people in the cities are more successful, smarter, and more worldly than they are. You spend any time in a rural community and the locals will spend a good portion of their conversations with you explaining common sense to you. They're obsessed with "common sense" and are convinced that small town local yokels are the only human beings anywhere that can grasp basic common sense. They'll explain to you common sense on groceries, common sense on schoolin, common sense on shoppin, and home ownin etc. etc. Stuff they say only small town folk really know. Then you look around at the train wrecks their lives are and you wonder where all their common sense is.

And they'll even treat people who got out of those small towns differently. Because they're envious of them, that they went away and were able to hack it and build a life in a place they don't think they'd be able to hack it. They feel left behind.