Why is the urban-rural "gap" in shared cultural understanding so much bigger in the US?

[Indy Texas]

If you go to a major city in the US, you will find people who generally support a right to abortion, who believe it is important for the government to ensure adequate access to education and healthcare, who support same-sex marriage and nondiscrimination, who believe some level of restriction on gun ownership is warranted for safety, and who believe in evolution and global warming.

If you drive just a few hours away from that major city (maybe less than that), you will encounter people who believe a woman who takes a morning-after pill should be charged with murder, that public education is a satanic conspiracy, that public healthcare is tyranny, that LGBT people should face social censure at best or public execution at worst, that guns are so important that AR-15s should be carried on a trip to the grocery store, that climate change is a hoax and that the world was literally created in six days.

While urban-rural political polarization is seen in other developed countries, it seems to mainly stem from disagreements regarding immigration and various fiscal or economic imbalances between regions. There does not seem to be such a dramatic gap between, say, a Londoner or someone in the Midlands, or between a Berliner and someone in a small village, on issues like religion and science.

Why does it seem like our "culture wars" go so much deeper and there is so much irreconcilability between our cities and our rural areas compared to Western Europe or Japan? (Which of course have their differences, but which seem to be much milder in degree and kind.)