To the person that asked the question, headcanon's first paragraph is pretty much right on and answers the question. The downvotes likely came from the tribalis

To the person that asked the question, headcanon's first paragraph is pretty much right on and answers the question. The downvotes likely came from the tribalism expressed in the second paragraph ("uneducated backwater hicks"). American politics are way too polarized. IMO that polarization comes from two sources: (1) demagogues like Cruz and Trump who lure people in by convincing them that they are the "true" Americans, and making them believe that everything would be so much better were it not for the pernicious influence of some other group (Democrats/scientists/LGBT folks/academics/Muslims/Mexicans/etc.). The very best fuel for this fire is (2), being denigrated by people who self-identify as one of those groups that the demagogues are trying to make them scared of. Like, imagine some perfectly decent person who has lived all his life in some small town in Nebraska, who isn't very educated but also isn't a terrible person who goes around looking for excuses to hate people. Rural voters are statistically more religious and more conservative, so he probably has extra peer pressure to be like that himself, but at the same time is a little creeped out by people like Cruz who seem to be trying to convince him that atheist non-white city dwellers think that him and his family and friends are subhuman, and are trying to take away his rights and his livelihood. So he's on the fence, until one day he stumbles across someone complaining about "uneducated backwater hicks", at which point he decides that Cruz might be right after all, because clearly these college-educated urban strangers really do hate him and his friends and relatives. It's a vicious circle that's only broken when people just suck it up and take the high road, but it feels like there's just never quite enough people willing to do that to make a difference. It's easy to judge less educated or less successful people, and I'm sure it feels really cathartic to do so. Especially when many of those people are being used as pawns by demagogues who are actively trying to roll back civilization. It's much harder to turn the other cheek and try to find common ground with them. Sadly that's the only way the trend towards cultural polarization is ever going to reverse, because neither side is going anyplace.