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

[Averroës Nix]

The gap dividing large metros from small towns and rural areas tends to be significant everywhere, and politics represent only a small slice of significant differences that encompass both attitudes and way of life.

This is particularly true if you look beyond Western Europe and Japan, and even more true when you acknowledge that not every part of the United States shares the rural-urban continuum that defines certain parts of the American South. To talk about the rural United States is to talk about areas that vary substantially in their present ethnic and religious makeups, settlement histories, proximity to urban centers, and sources of wealth.

Many of the claims made about rural America in this thread are flat-out untrue: OP's portrait of religiosity owes more to the neuroses of Southern suburbia than it does to the countryside, and while rural households are more likely to own a gun, the fetishization of "modern sporting rifles" that inspires dumb young guys to walk into Starbucks carrying AR-15s is hardly a product of small town America.

[Averroës Nix]

I sense a lot more condescension in this response to my post than I see in my post. OP asked a question about why the culltural gap in the US is so much wider than what is seen in other developed nations. Noting the history of American geographic and social mobility and easily observable population trends within our borders, I made an argument centered on self-selection. Strange to me that no one actually wants to engage with the OT and instead talk about how I'm "sneering". I don't think it's wrong to be able to admit that America's rural areas are typically not bastions of opportunity.

Urban self-selection isn't distinctive to the United States, though, and most of what OP says about rural areas is wrong or a caricature.

The self-selection trend can also be read in the opposite direction: Rural areas and small towns do a fantastic job of raising brilliant kids with lots of potential and somehow do this for generations even as those with urban aspirations sort themselves out. They consistently produce a surplus of capable, ambitious young people.

It's true that the schools and professional families living in these areas tend to reinforce the narrative that success is measured by the distance you put between yourself and your hometown. But the issue isn't so much that the hometown is a bad place to live as that it doesn't offer sufficient opportunities for everyone.

If your parent has a successful business, or if you have strong enough local ties that you have a good chance of landing a decent job (most likely in local government, after a stint in college, or in the trades), staying is very much an option. People who do that aren't regarded as failures; they become pillars of the community.